Alistair Young @cerebrate@schelling.pt

@zarpaulus

Easily solved by putting me in charge of the testing procedure.

By the time I get done inventing a Western version of the Chinese Imperial examinations, I can _guarantee_ that there will be no identifiable demographic that will _not_ feel like I'm screwing them personally.

Normalize sending each other large blocks of random numbers.

So, today it occurred to me to wonder what a unit of blood is, in volume.

The internet said "approximately a pint", so I said, "oh, those bloody medics again, too special to call it a pint like everyone else".

Except it's not. It's around 525 ml, which is 43 ml smaller than a proper Imperial pint and 52 ml bigger than a colonial pint, and 40-odd ml may not be much blood but is frankly more than I care to lose track of.

So, again, what the hell, medics?

@aeva

Pretty please let me steal this for my fictional universe, because this is totally a craft that they'd be very, very into. I give it fifty years from "imma going to invent yarn that can do this just to see if I can" to "millions of obsessed hobbyists".

@cinebox

Only if the panther enjoys it!

(I have had a minipanther in the past I'm pretty sure would have enjoyed it.)

Real: a flammenwerfer that werfs flammen.

Plausible: a nebelwerfer that werfs nebel.

Too much: a panzerwerfer that werfs panzers.

As a writer of relatively firm SF, it should be established that even in the magical ignorance of deep history, the spell components for "fireball" can't be bat guano.

They're naphtha and white phosphorus.

#eldraeverse #writing

(Sadly, unlike many state constitutions, the US Constitution does not include a clause banning madmen and idiots from public office. Perhaps it was less clear at the time just how often that would come up.)

Now, maybe I'm just being terribly elitist, but I do think that if you are in favor of either price controls or tariffs at this point in human history, you probably shouldn't be allowed to hold office or even vote on the grounds that you have demonstrated a complete and utter lack of capacity to learn a goddamn thing from the roll of history.

Today in #drwho universe concepts:

The particularly extravagant greatcoat that is a _wearable_ TARDIS.

It is the cloak beneath which literally everything can be hidden.

And is.

Seen headline: _Trump Falsely Claims That 'Homicides Are Skyrocketing,' an Imaginary Trend He Blames on Kamala Harris_

...I have to admit, the image of Harris going around shivving people personally to make this particular trend sparked a moment of joy.

@mattwilcox

(3/3) Your second best option is checking Social Security numbers, except it's illegal and doubly so for the government to use those for anything that isn't Social Security, because that was instituted in a time in which anything that looked like a national ID was _clearly_ a Nazi/communist plot and no-one's going to show anyone their papers, dammit.

(A position that still has a lot of mindshare.)

So, y'know. We're talking about a This Defines My Entire Career level of willpower.

@mattwilcox

(2/3) Then check naturalization records and the State Department's files on people who have formally renounced their citizenship, and you _might_ have got about 95% of the way there.

@mattwilcox

(1/2) In theory, yeah, fair, but in practice you have to appreciate the sheer magnitude of the refactoring of the us.gov this would mean.

To exemplify, currently, if you want to find out if someone is a US citizen, you start out by trying to find a birth certificate in one of thousands of different county courthouses, many of which are still using paper records, and then _not_ find a matching certificate likewise in one of the same places...