paleogizmo

Something I haven't seen data on is how much domestic cat predation compares with population change from habitat loss/modification. The population density of some bird species increases in suburban areas where domestic cats are likely to be present. I suspect the impact of outdoor cats (at least on North American songbirds) is overstated.

Price gouging my old webcam at 2x purchase price on Ebay. The free market has to work somewhere in the pandemic, right?

Links to XKCD cartoons frequently get posted in the comments. While they might be funny in the context of the conversation, they don't usually add any information, so I assume they get downvoted for that reason.

My guess would be (mechanically) rectified ac. I'm not very knowledgeable about electrical machines, but I'd imagine that a generator with sinusoidal flux linkage and commutators would produce a waveform that looks like rectified single phase ac.

I never knew there were so many people into notebook/repl style calculators, for lack of an accepted term. How did these never take over from the skeuomorphic style? There clearly seems to be a market below the spreadsheet/Jupyter notebook use case.

Coming from a less-than-responsible owner, based on my experience with a well-fed housecat, the cat will definitely make them suffer until they succomb to exhaustion which will take a few minutes. Once playtime is over death is pretty fast, either crushing the windpipe or a canine slipped between the cervical vertebrae. That's still loads better than the glue trap where death is at least hours away after exhaustion sets in.

Glue traps are practical (though cruel) if you have property that you visit infrequently so changing out bait on snap traps isn't an option. If that isn't the case there are humane options that are also effective. I used the "Mice Cube" live traps off Amazon which worked well and don't pose a risk to pets or wild predators. Live traps do need to be checked frequently so the animal won't die horribly.

Definitely don't use poison. It's not painful for the rodents, but it makes its way up into the food chain. Mountain Lion P47 in CA is alleged to have died from rat poison ingestion.

Paint ticks a lot of nostalia boxes, but it really isn't very good even for the "draw box/arrow/text" on a screenshot purpose that most people use it for. It's annoying that it doesn't have a "paste as new image" option so I have to crop whatever I pasted in. Plus, whatever I draw goes on the background layer so I can't fiddle with it.

And just so people don't get the wrong idea, yes I hate new things too. Paint 3D is stupid. And why did Snipping Tool, which was almost decent, get replaced by Snip & Sketch which does absolutely nothing better?

I think GP was referring to petty vandalism rather than hyperbolic debate, i.e. the tendency of unwatched drying concrete to attract drawings of cartoon penises and bendy swastikas.

There really should be a name for the phenomenon if there isn't already.

AFAIK, it's more than just yelp employees that don't admit knowing about such practices, ex-yelp employees also don't admit knowing either. So far evidence points to yelp extortion being the work of independent scammers.

However, hasn't Google reviews pretty well made Yelp irrelevant at this point? And while there's lots to be concerned about Google's business model, I'm not aware of any potential for conflict-of-interest in Google reviews as with Yelp.

Where do these numbers come from? Google gives me the car being roughly equivalent with a single passenger. If these numbers are referring to a family of 4+ in one vehicle then it passes muster, but that's a big caveat.

Like other people have said, there is a balance to be found. There's certainly a middle ground to be found instead of "I don't like the Prius so I'm going to buy an F150." Assuming no significant externalities, the more sustainable choice is also the more inexpensive choice so that's a benefit. Choosing air travel also isn't all-or-nothing, for example traveling to Cartagena from the continental USA is much less miles and carbon emissions than Phuket. Last, air lines will adjust the frequency of their routes long term so voting with your wallet matters.

In this case a stiff-bristled 24" push broom works quite well and is cheap, easy and quiet if your driveway isn't too long.

I can't remember the source, but I think it relates to misinformation that 80s/90s kids were taught - that we were running out of landfill space. My understanding is that landfills don't use much land per capita and that their environmental impact really isn't bad in terms of poisoning ground water and such.

My beef is that (at least the general US population) isn't aware of what the resources required to produce packaging vs. the packaged item are. Probably the plastic packing on that 1/2 pound of bacon has a small carbon footprint compared to the meat inside, but I can only guess.

I'm guessing the practical meaning is that the inventor is not required to license the invention "at a fair and reasonable" price but is free to ask whatever he/she feels is appropriate. I could imagine a case where the industry the inventor wishes to market to is controlled by a cartel which colludes to offer a low price for the invention. In this case, the inventor may wish not to sell or license in the hope that the cartel breaks up or gives in.

In all fairness I'd be hesitant to live in Singapore on account of its high cost of living and poor work-life balance. However, there is a method to the madness as far as the legal system goes, which makes it tame to visit compare with other large cities in SE Asia or even western europe.

Singapore does have many positives (ease of forming a business, low crime, low corruption, a cost-effective single-payer healthcare system, good urban planning, taxing car ownership as an externality). I don't see how these go hand-in-hand with authoritarian government.

At least some western european nations have anti-hate speech laws, though I consider a country to have "free speech" if individuals are free to criticize the government. What are you referring to?