I can see valuing natural diamonds highly if they have an interesting provenance. If it was my great-grandmother's or if it was used by someone famous or involved in some famous historical event, then I might be willing to pay $$$ for it. Ditto if it's authenticated as a meteorite diamond.

But otherwise, it's just a fancy rock.

"RoddyVision, please make all the cars look like hot rods and all the people walking look like babes on roller skates."

Sorry, but all RoddyVision allows you to do is pierce the alien signal and allow you to see things as they really are. Side affects include chronic migraines and an unfortunate tendency to run out of bubblegum.

...to an extent. Sure, the Army and Marines measure ground distances in kilometers and e.g. elevation in meters, and all services describe their weapons in terms of millimeters, but beyond that? The USAF and Navy still use nautical miles for distance, knots for speed, and feet for elevation. The navy still uses yards for range.

This is more accurate, and the reason is simple: those guys only see one color, and that's green (or blue for the Navy and Air Force) and there are no atheists in foxholes.

Dane-geld
A.D. 980-1016

IT IS always a temptation to an armed and agile nation
      To call upon a neighbour and to say: â"
"We invaded you last night â" we are quite prepared to fight,
      Unless you pay us cash to go away."

And that is called asking for Dane-geld,
      And the people who ask it explain
That you've only to pay 'em the Dane-geld
      And then you'll get rid of the Dane!

It is always a temptation for a rich and lazy nation,
      To puff and look important and to say: â"
"Though we know we should defeat you, we have not the time to meet you.
      We will therefore pay you cash to go away."

And that is called paying the Dane-geld;
      But we've proved it again and again,
That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld
      You never get rid of the Dane.

It is wrong to put temptation in the path of any nation,
      For fear they should succumb and go astray;
So when you are requested to pay up or be molested,
      You will find it better policy to say: --

"We never pay any-one Dane-geld,
      No matter how trifling the cost;
For the end of that game is oppression and shame,
      And the nation that plays it is lost!"

- Rudyard Kipling, 1911

I was extremely disappointed by Three Body problem. I thought some of the concepts were pretty cool (I actually thought the part where the Trisolarians build the Sophons was great) and the the story through the lens of the Cultural Revolution was an interesting viewpoint. But damn, the writing sucked. Like you, I plodded on hoping it would get better and like you, I wondered if it was just the translation, or because I didn't have the right cultural background to get the cues, but ultimately... it's some good ideas that are just awfully executed.

Freeze: Okay, except your air conditioning turns on full blast.
Halt: Possibly okay, if there's nobody behind you and you can handle the g-forces of going from 60 to 0 in 1ms.
Crash: File an insurance claim.

If you "sneak" amendments into an agreement, arguably said agreement would be invalid because you were duplicitous which prevented a meeting of the minds.

Let's say I write you a letter (on paper) and I encrypt this letter using a cypher that only you and I know. The government intercepts this letter and asserts it contains evidence of a crime. Are you or I compelled to assist in the decryption of that letter? No? Then why should electronic communications be any different?

Beyond that, how does preemptive invasion of the privacy of all persons (which is exactly what backdoors in encryption amount to) so that, at some future time, the government can sift the communications of those who may have broken the law not equate to a general warrant?

Worse than that was the federal government asserting that you could not grow wheat on your own land for your own use because such constituted "interstate commerce." Wickard v. Filburn, 317 U.S. 111 (1942) upheld that ridiculous notion.

"in Maricopa County"

If this phenomenon IS real, it's not limited to Canvas - even in my grandparent's day some teachers sorted students work before grading.

Randomness may not be required, but at least varying "who starts first" and maybe the "direction" (alphabetical or reverse-alphabetical) would add some fairness.

This assumes the phenomenon is real and not a one-off that will fail in a reproducibility study.

If this isn't real, it's not limited to Canvas - even in my grandparent's day some teachers sorted students work before grading.

Great question... and the best answer I can give is that it does, but possibly because they've been using it for so long that they accept its shortcomings as compared to the shortcomings they experience on linux.

You've triggered my PTSD. Well done.

I've tried linux on my spouse's machine. It is not a desktop OS that my family can use. Either Windows or MacOS are the only thing that works reliably and intuitively enough to perform the common tasks my family uses their computers for.

Windows was my go-to desktop on their machines as MacOS has the Apple Tax on hardware and they very much own the machine due to the need for appleID. But now Microsoft has basically done the same.

At this point, on slashdot, this will sound like I'm trolling, but I truly am not... I want to know what distros of Linux ACTUALLY are stable enough, and intuitive enough to have the non-technical-savvy (aka normal/average) person use it without being frustrated? So far, every attempt to switch to linux has resulted in violent rage from one or more of my family members because something just doesn't work.