The only rational standardization of this measurement that I've been able to embrace is that Olympic as a modifier means that pool holds a Metric Fuckton of water, a unit of measure that is roughly equivalent to 25 shitloads.

There's also a chance that in primitive societies, there was a great deal more homogenization of the population.

Given the general isolation of communities, in the absence of modern travel and cultural mixing; hands, feet, and arm lengths might've been much closer to a standardized measurement than today.

We joke about the ease of weather prognostication where it is hot all the time, too, yet we're grateful for it.

Fortuitously, meteorologists are still of some value given their ability to predict damaging climatic events, like weather that might spin the roofs off our homes, or pose a threat to our electrical grids.

Extreme climatic events are today less fearful because of their predictability, but they've always happened. There was a hurricane in Galveston 123 years ago that caught beachgoers sitting in chairs near the water when a wall of incoming water 15+ feet high probably created a bemused look on their faces, for a few seconds.

Longer than the Titan passengers got to ponder their great good luck, but not by much.

Port Authority for Firefox blocks websites from using javascript to port scan your computer/network.

Since this defense has been available for a couple of years, is there any insidious effort afoot by the port jackers to circumvent?/p?

Absolutely, smaller doses can negatively impact a percentage of the population; but perhaps more often, it's the compilation of contributing factors that lead to a poor outcome.

Smoking is considered to be unhealthy in its own right, but it magnifies the health risk of exposure to things like silica, asbestos, and radon. So ideally, any small healthy habit you pick up might be a benefit multiplier.

How do you get employees to accept a pay cut without asking them to take a pay cut?

In a more perfect world, company executives might come to the individual personally and explain the options in an attempt to retain the employee, and in the grand scheme of things, retain that employee's care and respect for the company. Those folks who are forced by circumstance to accept their old jobs for less money just might be bitter and vindictive.

Well that's the thing, isn't it? It wouldn't be completely surprising to see the Chinese retaliate and ban some American site from their shores, and then pretty soon we have geofencing and internet protectionism within invisible borders.

Worse still, is how the authorities enforce such a ban. There's already going to be some heat coming to monitor the interwebz more efficiently after Jack Teixeira placed classified material on a small site and it went unnoticed for an extended period.

We're from the government and we're here to help! For your own good, citizens, we will now be surveilling your internet usage.

Great comment.

Stranger things... Our best hope against the proliferation of Artificial Intelligence is our litigious civil court system. Unlikely heroes, indeed.

Well, I have considered this, and, it's a classic case of mutually assured destruction.

If the cold war is any indication, the satellites are relatively safe.

Yep. Father-in-law did the splicing in the Air Force, and then as a civilian contractor. I'm not sure about the count for fiber optic, but the old copper data lines would typically be 100 pair or 200 pair of twin copper lines bringing in your internet accessibility.

In that instance, the folks who thought they were stealing copper might only have to sever 10 lines to kill 2000 strands.

That sounds familiar.

Defense contractors: "It's possibly only a matter of time before our enemies weaponize space."

Let's make sure we do it first and leave them no alternative.

If the smart phone I'm chained to can really be used as a listening device when I'm in traffic and listening to political talk shows, my social credit score is Subzero.

When they wipe out the first and worst of us, someone will be calmly telling a subordinate at my house to Finish Him.

I mean, I get that these influencers are, by and large, difficult people to like. They do have their massive follower bases, so it seems likely on the order of tomorrow's sunrise another will rise from the ashes of the one you destroy to pick up those aimless, needy followers.

Z

I'm not going to go into a treatise on why it is wrong to blackmail or steal from people you dislike or disagree with, although it seems that sensibly is the case.

The point I'm at odds with is how you could trust a blackmailer to stay bought. Like a politician, isn't he going to need a contribution next month, too?