Exactly. That was captured in one of Clippy’s most famous lines.

“I see you’re trying to write a letter. Can I help?”

“I see you’re trying to write a résumé. Can I help?”

This of course got parodied a million times:

“I see you’re trying to write a radical manifesto. Can I help?”

“I see you’re trying to write a suicide note. Can I help?”

I dunno. Samuel L. Jackson is a pretty big star. Scarlett Johansson too.

I dunno, the seas haven’t overtaken us, so I have to question the extent of Poseidon’s power. That is the god you meant, I’m sure.

Some of the christians in my family like to take the “let there be light” thing and claim that it’s talking about the big bang, anecdotally.

But that’s probably not even right. In my understanding, the Big Bang wasn’t actually bright, because the first phase of the universe was a superhot but opaque quantum soup. Even the weak nuclear force took time to become distinct from the electromagnetic force. I don’t know if energy packets of a combined electroweak field count as photons exactly.

Regardless, the first light as we know it (in the sense that it could traverse the universe) wasn’t until a few hundred million thousand years after the Big Bang, when the whole mess had cooled enough to become transparent. We now call that initial light the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation.

Edit: Misstated the age of the CMB

So they’ll just go build it in Chandler with all the others instead, I guess?

That’s why I sell exclusive Deprotonated Hydronium™. It costs even more but it’s worth it, and still zero calories. It’s the best way to enjoy tasty ions, for a more balanced lifestyle.

Ok correct, technically I guess the outer 2D surface of a bowling ball is a pair of pants. For the entire 3D object to qualify, the holes would have to be connected internally.

Huh. So mathematically, I guess a bowling ball is a pair of pants.

There are different levels of understanding.

I’m trained in physical sciences. I studied at university and then worked ~8 years for a research department and at one point learned 2D NMR and how to run molecular simulations on a supercomputer. I’m well aware of the challenges of winning grants against colleagues and getting papers published and surviving peer review and then hoping your work gets noticed outside your weird little niche.

My buddy is a schoolteacher. He can run circles around me with arithmetic and explain the scientific method in rap format. Kids eat it up! But he’s probably never done a gradient integral (not that I remember how either) or contributed to a collegiate press release.

We’re both ostensibly working with the same core principles but the reality ends up quite different. Context matters.

Monsieur Florbo

There’s a national urgent medical line (111)

What? I’ve been lied to. I was told the UK line was 0118 999 881 999 119 725… 3