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I have a stupid question about a stupid question, if that makes sense. I have gotten into a couple of debates with a young earth creationist friend of mine (I know!). The fact that we are still on speaking terms, and the fact that our debates have not devolved into ad-hominem screaming matches encourages me, a little bit. Last night our battle was over the age of the Earth. He told me he's fond of geology, and took exception when I mentioned how sedimentary rocks are formed (sediment deposit over millions of years). So, the long and short of it is I got him to agree to give me some time to type up detailed answers to his questions. The actual deal was that he'd type up 10 questions for me to answer, but I'm trying to get a head start. Now, I'm a biologist and environmental scientist by education, so evolution I can talk about until I'm blue in the face. I'm not so good on cosmology, geology, or the particulars of radiometric dating. My friend wants sources from me, since I told him he shouldn't take anyone's word for anything (including mine). I know there's a poo poo-ton of evidence to support the age of the Earth. I need to find it. Specifically, I'd like some scientific papers that cover it (and I'm not at university anymore so my ability to acquire such is limited). So my real stupid question: can I ask for help on this here, or should I make my own thread?
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Aug 4, 2011 02:35
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Eggplant Wizard posted:If you make your own thread, make it in SAL (under D&D). Thank you! That seems the perfect place for it. I uh... somehow didn't know that subforum was there. 
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Aug 4, 2011 12:34
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Figured this is the best place to ask something this stupid... Is there a new birth control thread somewhere? Had some questions and realized that the one I had bookmarked hasn't been active for a couple years and is now in fact locked. I had a looksee through A/T and also YLLS, didn't see a new one.
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Jan 28, 2021 00:04
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biracial bear for uncut posted:I don't think this is worth a thread of it's own, so hopefully this is the right place to ask about it. Either a trash bin, I would say, or possibly a trash compactor.
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Mar 1, 2021 15:50
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Either way, absolutely lawyer up. Seriously find the scummiest ambulance chasing-est lawyer you can find. My dad is an personal injury attorney and I can practically hear him salivating. The biggest case he ever settled was a man who got hit by a garbage truck while he was riding his bicycle across a parking lot entrance.
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Apr 9, 2021 15:02
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Literally Lewis Hamilton posted:Your dad is salivating because he’s going to get 33% to 40% of the settlement value. Well, yeah.  Still a good idea to lawyer up. Lawyers may be scummy, but insurance companies are the scummiest of scum. Don't try to handle them by yourself.
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Apr 9, 2021 16:48
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Anybody see those little double decker shopping carts at grocery stores? What is the appeal of those things? My local grocery seems to be getting more and more of those things. I haven't tried one myself, but I don't see them having much of an advantage over a regular shopping cart. Is it an old people thing? I mostly see old people using them.
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Apr 10, 2021 23:28
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Is there a general term for a piece of music that doesn't have lyrics? People use "song" to describe any piece of music, but technically songs have lyrics. I would never be enough of a pedantic weirdo to correct someone who used "song" this way, but I would like to know if there's a better word.
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Apr 18, 2021 22:15
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Thirteen Orphans posted:Reminds me of an old plot device medical shows use, the person prescribed the pills sees he takes once a day. The person is a Spanish speaker and takes eleven pills and dies. My Spanish is not good enough to understand what happened here. Why did the Spanish speaker take 11 pills?
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Apr 29, 2021 22:41
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Chubby Henparty posted:6 - he liked it (like the wizard's battle and when Wart suddenly has to find a sword for Kay) but I think he'd rather see something about knights going on adventures and battles and then build an encyclopedic network of which knight goes where and is related to who (this all started from watching The Sword and the Scoob and now he has absolute certainty of Shaggy's place in the canon). This might be a mite old for him yet but check out The Lost Years of Merlin by TA Barron. They're about Merlin, obv, in his late childhood to teen years. I read them when I was in middle school ish and I remember them being really good.
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Jun 1, 2021 20:49
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Organza Quiz posted:Sooo where did you go to school? Just, out of curiosity? Because this to me at least is like someone coming here and going "is it generally accepted that rainbows are caused by water droplets in the sky?" This is a bit harsh. When I was in school (90s), exactly how the dinosaurs died was still very much a mystery. The leading theory was an asteroid impact, but it was far from a settled matter. Now we can track, down to the minute, the asteroid that killed them (as in the video Tiggum linked), which is absolutely wild to me! EDIT: actually I'll do one better! Here's an extremely well done video that shows how the impact would have looked like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZDmTBqLkLI Silver Falcon fucked around with this message at 14:17 on Jun 24, 2021 |
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Jun 24, 2021 14:14
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Such Fun posted:Hypothetical: which city or region in the US would you folks recommend moving to? New England is pretty all right. Can't speak for Vermont or New Hampshire but I've been in Connecticut for 10 years at this point and I don't hate it yet. However I will give a caveat that I've never had to shovel my own snow more than digging my car out of the parking lot. I've lived in apartments the whole time so I've never had to shovel a sidewalk or driveway. From what I hear about coworkers and friends bitching about it, it sounds like hell and not something I'd ever be prepared to deal with. So yeah. It's nice up here, shovelling snow sucks. Basically.
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Jun 24, 2021 18:08
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Such Fun posted:As a Dutch person, I will have you know that I will be will be writing a letter to Mark Rutte, our premier, about what you have done. I think it's mostly distance. For instance, if I were telling people in Connecticut where I live, I would say the exact town. If I were talking to somebody elsewhere in New England, I would say I live near Hartford. For somebody, say, on the west coast, I would tell them I live in Connecticut, or just say "the northeast." If I were asked by someone outside the country, it gets trickier. A lot of folks around the world know where the major cities are, like Boston, New York, Los Angeles, etc. but they don't always have a good idea of individual states. When telling folks abroad where I'm from I might say "near New York," or "northeastern United States," or I might just say I'm from the US and only elaborate if they ask me where.
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Jun 24, 2021 20:31
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Powered Descent posted:As the afternoon wears on, at what elevation angle of the Sun in the sky does sunscreen start to become unnecessary? A rule of thumb I know is when your shadow is taller than you.
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Jul 3, 2021 22:53
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Lawnie posted:My dog found this young bird in my yard this morning. It hopped away quickly but hasn’t moved since it began hiding in some tall grass. It doesn’t look injured, but there is a mysterious illness affecting birds in my state. I can’t tell if it’s exhibiting symptoms or not, though. There are nests nearby but too high for me to reach to put him back in one. What should I do? Wait and see, or call a wildlife rehabilitation center? Located in Indiana. That's a fledgling. He probably recently left his nest. If he's not visibly injured he's probably fine. Keep an eye on him if you want, see if his parents swing around to check on him. Bird parents follow their fledglings around and continue to feed them and look after them for some time until the babies are old enough to fend entirely for themselves. If his parents don't show up, call your wildlife rehabber.
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Aug 1, 2021 17:49
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Everett False posted:Unfortunately it's for work, so we need to have normal access to a shredder and then a couple of times a year I do a big purge. I don't mind pulling off paperclips, but taking the staples out of a year's worth of files is The Worst. Sitting there and removing staple after staple and then carefully arranging pages into stacks of 6 because that's as much as the manual shredder can handle at a time... I can relate. I'm scanning stuff for a FOIA request. I hate hate HATE when I meticulously take the staple out of a stack of papers, feed it into the scanning machine, and then it turns out whoops there's a random paperclip buried halfway through the stack holding like 3 pages together and the machine jams and grinds to a screeching halt. WHO DOES THAT?!?!?;
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Oct 6, 2021 14:48
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Ramrod Hotshot posted:What's a good as hell brand of frozen pizza? When I was in college I basically lived off Mystic Pizza. I remember it being fairly decent, but they might be a regional brand? (I was in Rhode Island at the time.)
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Oct 10, 2021 22:35
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I just started a new job with the option to work from home. Last job I had that allowed that I just used my home PC and connected to a virtual machine but this job issued me a laptop and has you connect to a VPN. I don't have enough room on my computer desk to put a laptop and also my apartment is tiny. I dimly recall there is a thing like a... little desk on wheels where one could conceivably put a laptop and mouse and park it in front of the couch or something? Am I making this up? Does such a thing exist? We don't have a coffee table either. Like I said, tiny apartment. Suggestions would be welcome!
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Oct 24, 2021 15:01
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:This is why I emphasized that I haven't changed how I'm treating the jars. With the old PB, I could mix thoroughly once when I opened the jar, and then it'd be stable so long as I kept it in the fridge. With the new stuff, that isn't the case. They're both pretty well separated when I buy them, I do the same amount of mixing, so what's different? My dad would dump out the whole jar into a tupperware container, give it a good stir, and store it in the fridge that way. Maybe try that?
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Oct 27, 2021 20:24
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Wanted to pop back in here and thank everyone who gave me advice for my wfh setup! I'm ordering a KVM switch so I can use my existing monitor, keyboard, and mouse for my work laptop. And I really do need it. Hunching over the corner of my desk where the laptop would fit all day left me with a nasty backache. That's not sustainable. Oh and my new job has an expense allowance for desk chairs so I'm ordering a more comfortable one while I'm at it! i will work from home in style and comfort!
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Oct 30, 2021 20:39
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StrixNebulosa posted:Where do I go to find out if the Invisible Inc switch port is any good? The Switch thread is busy talking about hacked switches. Just post about it in the Switch thread. They go on weird tangents all the time in there. Somebody will answer your question.
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Dec 11, 2021 19:41
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CzarChasm posted:As long as we're on this software train, is there something like dropbox where I could have a main account with a user ID and password and put up files to share, then provide a temporary password to someone else so they could upload to that folder only, and the password would expire in about 30 min - 1 hour? My office uses Sharefile. Does exactly that. I don't know what is involved with setting it up, but you can absolutely generate download links that expire after a set amount of time, or that only a certain number of people can download, etc.
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Dec 18, 2021 04:05
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Hipster_Doofus posted:Astonishing that the sun is brighter from Pluto than the full moon is from here. Oh, yeah, there was a social media thing that NASA(?) did several years go called Pluto Time. They made a list of what time of day, in locations all over the world, at which the light level is comparable to high noon on Pluto. And since it was a social media thing, they encouraged people to go outside at that time of day, take a picture, and post it on Twitter with the hash tag. I did it because I was curious, and yeah, it was surprisingly bright out. The sun had set but there was still plenty of light out to read by, for example. Now granted that's high noon, so that's as bright as it gets, but still. It was pretty wild!
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Dec 19, 2021 20:32
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dustin.h posted:Realer question: I don't particularly care and will keep doing it either way, but is there a code issue with running old lights and appliances? Appliances not so much, but I'm very fond of 1910s lighting fixtures and I prefer original wiring. Never had an issue yet in 15 years, but it bothers some people and they tell me I'm violating "a code". Never what code and they can't tell me when pressed, just " a code"/ "Code" refers to building codes. Engineering standards that are meant to ensure places people live won't catch fire and kill them, or contain horrible substances that will give them cancer and eventually kill them. Old stuff can be, but is not always, a problem because it would have been put in before such "codes" existed. Look up what kind of horrific poo poo went into food before passage of the Pure Food and Drug act. Now extrapolate that to electrical wiring.
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Dec 20, 2021 19:38
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Ok here's a weird/random one. Is there some device that I can use to read ebooks on my phone, while in the bathtub, without getting my phone wet? I don't go in for physical books anymore, as I have nowhere to store them, so I started doing Kindle books instead. But I do most of my reading in the bathtub. So, figured since it's Christmas and all, figured it'd be a good time to look into that.
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Dec 24, 2021 22:51
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Captain Invictus posted:If it's from 1960-1966, it's probably somewhere amidst the boxes. I was literally thinking of that exact card when sorting through things, wondering if he had one lol Do give an update on how much bank you end up making on your secret hoard. Update on my stupid question from earlier about reading ebooks in the bathtub. I ended up trying the ziploc bag idea and it works a treat! Now I'm reading my usual fluff fantasy books in the bathtub for the low low price of zero extra dollars. Thanks to everyone who gave me advice!
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Dec 30, 2021 16:37
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Captain Invictus posted:well I showed those pictures to a guy I work with who flips sports cards and his eyes bugged out of his head and he told me to go to PSA ASAP and get them investigated for potential gradeable cards at the minimum, and said we've got at least a small fortune on our hands. If you end up making a thread for this, link it here! I'd follow it.
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Dec 31, 2021 15:34
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Jeza posted:What are some fun co-operative things to do with a partner over Discord? COVID is putting paid to anything outside for the next few weeks where I'm at. They aren't really a gamer but not totally uninitiated, so it's possible so long as it's relatively simplistic and can run on their old Mac laptop. First things that occurr to me is maybe play a nice slow-paced exploration game, screen share it with them, and let them direct you where to go? Then when I was trying to think of an example I realized you could also try playing Stardew Valley together? Stardew's co-op is excellent and the game is nice and chill. It would probably run fine on an old Mac? Don't actually know the answer to that.
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Jan 5, 2022 19:07
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Tiggum posted:Just say Americans. There are English speakers out there besides Brits, Aussies, and Americans.
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Jan 6, 2022 15:54
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DaveSauce posted:Reminder that the US government has decided that tomatoes are a vegetable for the purposes of regulation and nutrition, despite the fact that it is botanically a fruit. "Vegetable" is not a scientific term. It's purely a culinary category. "Fruit" on the other hand, is a scientific term with actual definitions behind it. So yes if the government wants to classify tomatoes based on how people actually use them "aka NOT IN A FRUIT SALAD" then that's completely valid.
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Jan 11, 2022 13:52
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Tiggum posted:Yes. It is. I think it's a bit disingenuous. Pumpkins are a type of squash, yes. But not all squashes are pumpkins.
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Jan 11, 2022 15:48
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Tiggum posted:It's absolutely not. That vegetable is known as a "butternut pumpkin" here. It's the primary ingredient in pumpkin soup. It's a pumpkin. Ah, another one of those regional things, and one that I didn't know about! I would call that particular gourd a butternut squash. For pumpkin soup I would use one of these bad boys:  Sugar pumpkin, also used in pies. (Northeast United States, here.)
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Jan 11, 2022 16:25
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I got a stupid question that's been kicking around in my head for awhile so I'll finally ask. I need to commission an artist who either does non-porn, or who does their porn under a different name. Zero judgment on artists who draw porn. Lord knows it pays the bills. It's just that I need a cover for a YA novel... so I don't want porn anywhere near it. I would of course pay cash money and follow whatever procedures for credit, etc. however that works. I just need to... find somebody who can do it.
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Jan 13, 2022 16:48
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Badger of Basra posted:As an American we learned a lot in school about large waves of immigration to this country in the 19th/early 20th century from Europe (not saying there haven't been others but these are very much emphasized in US history classes, at least in my experience). What I learned about in my high school history class was mostly how immigrants integrated after they arrived, and maybe some of why they left their native countries (famine in Ireland, no economic opportunity in Italy, the 1848 revolutions in Germany are commonly given reasons, among other things). This is tangentially related to your question, but I have Italian ancestry and I know that Italy is trying to get some their diaspora back. They offer citizenship to those with Italian ancestry. I'm going through the process myself, since my great-grandparents came over from Italy in the 1920s. (In great-grandpappy's case, he had to flee the country because he beat up a cop. Gg great-grandpappy, I'm proud of ya!) Of course they still don't make it easy for you because bureaucracy, but they do at least have a process to bring their diaspora back to the motherland.
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Feb 5, 2022 13:55
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Slimy Hog posted:Do people even write formal letters anymore? I have to all the time for my job. Fortunately most of the letters we send out are boilerplate, so you just have to copy-paste your specific poo poo and you're good to go.
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Feb 8, 2022 17:55
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dog nougat posted:What's the etiquette for adoption a stray cat? In addition to the note idea, you can try taking it to a vet or your local animal shelter and have them check if it has an ID chip.
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Feb 11, 2022 14:43
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Ornery and Hornery posted:Y'all got recommendations for multiplayer pc games with relatively low barriers (price + technical requirements) to entry? Jackbox games are pretty great for that sort of thing. Only one person needs to even have the game, and the rest can join on their own phone or computer.
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Mar 26, 2022 19:48
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Boba Pearl posted:What the gently caress? that's so hosed up. Regardless of whatever kind of answers you get here, I want to see this project when it's done. It sounds magical. 
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Apr 16, 2022 15:28
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credburn posted:I'm 38 and for the last eight years I've never met a single person who knew less about Doctor Who than I. And I've seen a couple episodes and uh, you know. I know what a Dalek is. There are a couple folks in my apartment complex with "My other car is a Tardis" bumper stickers. So, I'm aware the show exists, but I've still never watched it.
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May 19, 2022 14:31
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Boba Pearl posted:What's a good lesser demon to summon for your first time? Most beginning demon summoners seem to start with Pixie, in my experience.
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May 24, 2022 23:57
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