[-] Cuberoot@lemmynsfw.com 17 points 4 weeks ago

Historically, it's been alleged that some 'celibate' Catholic bishops fucked women. When the resulting bastard children grew up, they were rewarded with coveted Church appointments. If anyone noticed the apparent favoritism, they blamed the adultery on their brother, saying the appointee was a nephew (it: nipote) rather than the priest's own illegitimate son. Thus the origin of the term nepotism.

Probably some of them had different tastes and realized that fucking boys leaves less evidence.

64

I understand that the bite test was used by frontier merchants as a low-tech way to assay gold, which worked because elemental gold was softer than some of the less valuable alloys that might otherwise be mistaken for gold.

But Olympic gold medals contain less than 10% gold. They're exactly the type of forgery the bite test is intended to root out. I've even seen athletes breaking their teeth on silver or bronze medals which makes even less sense to me.

Is it all just a big fuck you to the IOC, mocking them for being too cheap to spring for real gold?

[-] Cuberoot@lemmynsfw.com 76 points 2 months ago

Sometimes it means "We don't want to spend a lot of money training this guy who we won't be able to retain if he gets a better offer."

At really entry-level jobs like fast food, where training is quick and turnover is always high, it sometimes also means "This guy might be able to read the workers' rights poster on the door and explain the workers' comp program to the idiot who spilled boiling grease on his foot.

[-] Cuberoot@lemmynsfw.com 33 points 2 months ago

I think FDA rules explicitly prohibit paying blood donors in the US. Ostensibly because if you do, the donation centers fill up with junkies who'll lie about not having hepatitis so they can get paid, or steal IDs so they can go twice a week until they die of anemia, raising the costs of safety testing and generally being injurious to public health. Of course, everyone else involved in the process gets paid, just not the donors -- quite dearly, as you'll learn if you're ever on the receiving end of a transfusion.

Plasma is paid because it falls under a different regulation and their research and industrial customers don't care that the plasma came from a crack whore.

[-] Cuberoot@lemmynsfw.com 96 points 3 months ago

This phrasing is so weaselly you baited me into fact-checking it. Congratulations!

on track to

meaning it's crediting Biden with things that haven't happened yet? I didn't investigate how many future acres he needs to make this meme true.

more land ... first-term persident

The Pacific Remote Islands are much larger, but mostly water. Created by Dubya, expanded by Obama, both times in their respective second terms.

modern

Personally, I'd have counted Carter as modern. His Alaska Conservation Act weighed in at 157 million acres. I think that one got Congressional approval too, so maybe they're only counting land protected by executive fiat.

[-] Cuberoot@lemmynsfw.com 15 points 3 months ago

I'm not a Libertarian, but I sympathize with some of their economic viewpoints -- significantly more so than tends to be welcome here. Unlike some of you, I don't speak to the motives and attitudes of all libertarians, only my own. I'm not a Republican. I don't smoke pot. I did vote for Jo Jorgensen in 2020. I do give a flying fuck about liberty. I don't confirm or deny being a myopic cunt.

Oddly enough, I do support some form of public healthcare. I'm well aware that most libertarians don't. A hundred years ago, maybe even 50 years ago, I wouldn't have either. The problem is that medical science has advanced to where a free market insurance model doesn't work as well as it used to. Health insurance used to be a luxury when lung cancer would kill a rich man almost as quickly as it killed a poor man. That's no longer the case, and the costs have accelerated to where the treatment can bankrupt an uninsured middle class man.

The real sinker however is pre-existing conditions. You can't insure a house that's already on fire, and we don't ask homeowners policies to do so. Waiting periods for costly conditions sometimes almost work, except for patients born a pre-existing medical condition. If the insurer had the choice, they'd just refuse to write the policy, even if treatment is cost-effective from a public policy standpoint.

So I support free market solutions where they exist. Health insurance may be one of the few situations where it doesn't.

[-] Cuberoot@lemmynsfw.com 22 points 4 months ago

There isn't much math to do really. Take as axioms that the obvious way to balance 2 or 3 tubes is in fact balanced, and that if you add a balanced arrangement of tubes to an already balanced arrangement, the result is still balanced.

[-] Cuberoot@lemmynsfw.com 45 points 6 months ago

So that's where they all went. I haven't seen those in circulation since I bought stamps from a vending machine.

[-] Cuberoot@lemmynsfw.com 25 points 6 months ago

How do you feel about 5318008?

[-] Cuberoot@lemmynsfw.com 23 points 6 months ago

Your #1 is the etymological meaning of the word. For precise usage, there should be at least some element of #2, lest you inadvertently misclassify a misanthrope who hates everybody. That's assuming you're using a gender-inclusive sense of the word 'guy'; anyone can be a misogynist.

[-] Cuberoot@lemmynsfw.com 27 points 8 months ago

Yeah, I'm just proud of myself because I fixed my house like a big boy tonight. Don't worry, there's still plenty of problems with my shitty house, but tonight I have a warm shitty house.

64
submitted 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) by Cuberoot@lemmynsfw.com to c/youshouldknow@lemmy.world

Because if it ices over, your furnace will stop working on the day^1^ you most needed it.

Flushing it out from the outside with a bucket of hot water and a pump similar to this one ^2^ will melt the ice and open up the drain and you will get heat again.

^1^ Day because if your freezing weather lasts much longer than that, your homebuilder probably engineered a house that could handle the cold. Unfortunately my house was built by southern rednecks who'd never heard of insulation.

^2^ Not an endorsement of any brand or retailer. Just make sure it has a long enough hose. That's what made it work better than some of the things I tried first.

[-] Cuberoot@lemmynsfw.com 50 points 8 months ago

Some governments try to make their sales tax less regressive by exempting certain necessities from it.

For example, my state taxes groceries, but exempts gun safes.

[-] Cuberoot@lemmynsfw.com 18 points 8 months ago

Well it isn't mine. I had a vasectomy.

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Cuberoot

joined 9 months ago