I don’t know enough about the risks to confidently say whether or not a ban is a good idea. (But what I do know leads me to keep using nonstick pans.) However, what jumped out at me in this article was this:

“Whether or not California passes a ban, Pfas is on the way out because consumers are demanding it,” Salter added. “If lawmakers represent their constituents then they’ll pass a ban, and if they represent billion dollar companies then they will oppose it.”

People freely choose whether or not to use nonstick pans, so how can passing a ban possibly represent constituents even in principle? A law regulating the negative externalities of pollution makes sense as something that constituents might want, but is the concern here really about the harm done to one person by a different person in a different house using nonstick cookware? It seems to me that laws like this are about protecting constituents from themselves, which is often justifiable but not really representative.

(A ban on pfas in other contexts where people don’t expect to find it does make sense as something that could represent constituents.)

Handcuffs can leave signs, but I’m not sure how examining a body could indicate that the person had been blindfolded. Were the bodies returned with blindfolds on?

kills fish

Stop staring at me with your dead eyes!

I grew up in a big city so I didn’t learn to drive until I was 23, and once I did, I realized how much I had been missing. A car with a full tank of gas really does feel like freedom to me, so I enjoy having a car that is good at being a car. I’m not particularly interested in aftermarket modifications, but I am willing to pay more for a car that is fast, handles well, and looks good.

You’re right in general, but 1:50,000 implies an average lifespan of 137 years, unless I’m missing something. I think 1:15,000 is a more reasonable estimate.

I was still a kid (under 18) when I had a green card so maybe I didn’t get the official lecture for that reason, and then my parents didn’t think it was important enough to tell me.

I think that having unenforced laws is in general a bad thing because then the government can use selective enforcement as a tool of oppression, so you won’t find me objecting to a repeal. Maybe it’ll happen if there’s ever a major backlash against Trump’s immigration policies.

Under federal law, registered foreign nationals must carry proof of registration with them at all times. But prior to a second Trump administration, it was rarely enforced.

Apparently green-card holders have to carry their green cards around all the time. This law was so rarely enforced that I never knew about it despite having been a green-card holder myself.

I read the full paper and I’m not qualified to evaluate the validity of the model being proposed but I find the idea that the population was

about 1000 individuals, which persisted for about 100,000 years

rather implausible. Implausible things sometimes turn out to be true but models frequently turn out to be wrong so if I were to bet, I would bet on the latter.

Plus, for the purpose of the OP, I think neanderthals and other close relatives of modern humans should count as people even if they have no living descendants.

The human population would have to be in the tens of thousands for that to be likely, and I’m not sure it was ever so low unless we’re arguing about technicalities regarding who counts as human during the process of evolution.

That… doesn’t seem bad? No one would mind if he also put some vegetables in there and called it a pasta salad.

One day we might be able to create operators with three or maybe even four question marks. Imagine the possibilities!

I don’t think “authority” necessarily means “legal authority” here, rather than just “we can’t make them”. Local EMS personnel can’t actually force (in the literal sense) federal agents to do anything and, at least to me, the tone of this memo implies that the person writing it is not happy about the state of affairs. The option to record that a federal agent refused patient transport seems like it is designed with the intent of recording whom to blame on the assumption that someone will get blamed eventually once the political situation changes. (I assume the name being obtained is the name of the agent.)

At that price, Greece is practically giving away this artillery, but how useful is it on a modern battlefield? I suppose that any artillery is good artillery…

I don’t understand what he was hoping to gain. Intercepting the flotilla without anyone getting hurt once it got close to Israel was well within Israel’s naval capabilities and received relatively little news coverage because everyone knew from the start that it would happen. Playing around with drones offended the countries that the flotilla was near when it happened, got a lot of unfavorable news coverage because it is such a weird thing to do, and likely wouldn’t have stopped the flotilla even if it had burned down several ships.

Poking people with sticks was against the rules of recess and I knew that, so I didn’t feel that I was punished unfairly. The teacher did let me know that the way that I did it was especially against the rules, but she didn’t punish me more because of that.

When I was little, I acted out cartoon violence by poking a girl’s butt with a stick and the teacher told me that I was in trouble for reasons that I would understand when I was older.

What gets me is when I’m not allowed to remove an external drive. Deleting a file can be delayed until later but here I am with a physical object that I need to detach from my computer and first I need to play hide and seek with the OS.

Checkmate feminists.

Is that symbolic support or are Dutch F35s actually (secretly?) engaging Russian drones?