Thankfully, I haven’t noticed excessive farting in Archie. But I still have questions. Is my cat farting more or less than a small dog, say, a Chihuahua? What do cat farts usually smell like? And at what point is some farting too much farting?

Jackie Flynn Mogensen is a breaking news reporter at Scientific American. Before joining SciAm, she was a science reporter at Mother Jones, where she received a National Academies Eric and Wendy Schmidt Award for Excellence in Science Communications in 2024. Mogensen holds a master’s degree in environmental communication and a bachelor’s degree in earth sciences from Stanford University. She is based in New York City.

The numbering is weird, there aren’t actually 50 Propositions because you need a certain number of signatures to get something onto the ballots. Only like 10 Propositions actually make it onto the ballot each year.

Everyone is eligible to receive a mailer that contains the full wording of the proposition, a couple of pages summary with complete “for” and “against” arguments (and rebuttals), as well as a ~2 paragraph summary from a coalition of folks representing the “for” and “against” campaigns.

On top of that, outside groups like DSA provide “Voter guides” like the above, that you can independently research.

The ballot itself just has a title. You are not required to read anything to vote, but I’d wager most folks just read the official “for” and “against” blurbs and form an opinion.

ETA: You can see the official voter guides here, just scroll to the PDFs and choose your preferred language.

To be honest and blunt, the quick reference opposition arguments were quite weak, which is likely what carried this proposition over the line.

Communities are not legal institutions. The rules are suggestions to keep the community organized and on subject.

Just because a rule doesn’t exist, doesn’t mean mods are powerless to react to content that breaks the social order.

Not everything needs a rule unless it’s a significant problem or common misunderstanding.

That endorsement from the Michael J Fox Foundation carried a lot of weight, it seems.

https://www.californiadsa.org/voterguide#propositions

https://www.californiadsa.org/voterguide#propositions

That’s what’s wrong with America, nobody naming their kids Strom anymore.

My home loan is less than that and it already hurts to pay every month. With a second big loan, I’d have to declare bankruptcy.

Now if this is a gift of free money - I’d pay off that damn home loan so it’s one less thing to worry about. Remaining balance on the $1M would probably get invested in the hopes that I could push forward my retirement by a couple of decades.

This doesn’t at all answer your question, but Handbrake has always frustrated me by being aggressively opaque.

Like if you’re not trying to encode something to run on an iPod Nano from 2007, the presets are all arbitrary and wacky, and it gives you very little control over the underlying commands.

I GREATLY prefer StaxRip. It strikes the right balance for transparency, automation, and configuration for me. Closest thing to working with commands from scratch, without all of the headache. Only downside is it’s only built for Windows.

It works with Edge on Windows 11

Honestly would be a fun character build with the right DM.

A cursed rock that talks to you and demands sacrifices. After being thrown returns to your inventory in 6 seconds (start of your next turn)

Could do fun things like player can cast spells through the rock like a familiar.

It’s been a while since I studied etymology, but IIRC its original roots were associated with a sperm whale and a bowl of petunias as they fell from the skies.

PieFed.zip did a big password reset recently, so here I am with a fresh account. No regrets - these accounts are disposable. Karma is meaningless. Just post.

The question I ask every time I see this posted:

Who has access to my data at rest?

Dots are cheaper than UV filters and easier to apply retroactively. Both have the same effect of creating a visible obstruction for birds to discourage strikes.

FYI, not all bird glass has visible fritting. They also come with UV reflective coatings that are almost transparent to the human eye (unless you’re really close to the glass), e.g.,

Some UV treatments are stripes, others similar to an elongated version of the fritting from OP, and then there’s the camo-stick-like version above. Stripes are the most noticeable to humans.

ETA: From personal experience, the glass is completely transparent from ~2+ meters away, and you have to be very close or staring directly at glare from the sun to see it when <2m away.

ETA2: Someone else shared the Wikipedia article on bird collisions below, but I wanted to take a second to highlight this graph from the article:

If you think bird safe glass is cool, spaying/neutering your cats and keeping them inside or on a leash is waaay cooler.

(This graph doesn’t include indirect causes of death like climate change, deforestation, and pesticide use, but that doesn’t make responsible pet ownership any less cool)