What do you think was going through the heads of the people making that decision? Those people would be in my grandparents' or great-grandparents' generation. Would they think that extra sugar was a death sentence? I find that unlikely. Those decision-makers were puffing away like chimneys on pipes and unfiltered cigarettes. Even without reading Wikipedia on UK rationing you can probably guess that rationing was politically unpopular. The idea that people would hold onto rationing forever to avoid nebulous health consequences many decades in the future does not sound very plausible.

If there was such a thing as "National Close Your Eyes For Ten Seconds Day" it's plausible that it would have quite an effect on traffic accidents, even though it's just 0.01% of the day.

I'd agree that more data might make this disappear.

He also inspired the name of the British beef extract Bovril. Perhaps LLMs will get into the product-naming game (if they haven't already).

I was wary of learning Italian because it seems to muscle into spoken Spanish. I was in Spanish classes with a couple of other English people and they would use "ma" instead of "pero" for "but" without even noticing. Two decades later and I'm now learning Mandarin where "ma" has plenty of meanings depending on the tone.

Just out of interest, do you generally use the desktop or the mobile version of the site? I only ask because I think you have complained about "vacuous" subject lines on several occasions, whereas it's not something I would give any thought to when typing a reply. I wonder whether the presentation style makes it look either important (you), or barely noticeable (me).

You will notice I have not gone to any effort to change this subject line, either :)

If you had a 133 year supply of cigarettes, would you feel you needed to smoke them?

Bipolar actually has other meanings - #1 from Merriam-Webster is in play here.

1) having or marked by two mutually repellent forces or diametrically opposed natures or views

2) having or involving the use of two poles or polarities (e.g. bipolar transistors)

3) relating to, associated with, or occurring in both polar regions (e.g. Arctic/Antarctic birds)

4) psychology : being, characteristic of, or affected with a bipolar disorder

Mod parent up! (posting this as I accidentally clicked the wrong moderation - oops!)

From the lockdown era: IPv6 Adoption Hits 32%. Will Stats Show How Many Returned to the Office?

It should be Arno Penzias, not Arno Penzia.

LLM or no LLM, there is a long-standing policy against that: Wikipedia is not a publisher of original thought.

TAT-8 carried 280Mbit/s in the days when the equivalent number of telephone circuits was relevant. The Fastnet cable will deliver 320Tbit/s, so one million times more! I wonder how many newer cables cross TAT-8 and therefore lie on top of it? Dragging TAT-8 up from the sea floor sounds like it could cause some collateral damage. Perhaps they will leave some sections down there to avoid this.

Other links: Submarine cable repair animation, Informative article with annoying graphics

There's some prior art in buying land around new stations before building begins. "Metroland" is an area to the north west of London that was developed by the Metropolitan Railway on that basis. Build the stations, attract commuters, and make a profit from house sales and increased traffic. It would be interesting if the big gaps in CA high speed rail - San Jose to Central Valley, and Central Valley to LA, could be partly financed by commuter rail. People can commute a long way on high speed rail: look at Kent to London St Pancras on High Speed 1.

I think what they mean by "most flights from Raleigh-Durham International Airport in North Carolina to Portland, Maine, were canceled" is that airports north of Raleigh and south of Portland have canceled most of their flights. As RDU->PDM is operated by Breeze on Mondays and Fridays only, then taking it literally means a remarkably small percentage of US flights. Breeze have very nice A220s.

If we're using RFKjr as a comparison, then I haven't done lots of weird things.

Federated Union Of Bear Cub Carcass Dumpers Endorses RFK Jr.