Not exactly the prompt, but “Chuck” Season 2 Episode 13: “Chuck Versus the Suburbs.”

Ants already have taken over the world. They vastly outnumber humans and already live in just about every area humans do.

Which one? He seems to have so many these days, but none of them are the American electorate.

2 * 0 = 0

Doubling the mass of photons is no change.

Repealing Bournoulli’s principle requires changing how kinetic collisions of molecules translates into bulk measurables like pressure and density. There’s no way to predict what that does without first specifying more about what changes are made.

Go ahead and sign up for a non-euclidean geometry course. Constant pi assumes flat geometry, and I’m ok with that.

Liquid cooling is meant to be contained in tubes, fittings, and resevoirs. You have to use mineral oil if you want an aquarium pc.

It disincentivizes speculative holding and buying up inventory to reduce supply without demonstrated demand. Large landlords are willing to sit on vacant inventory in order to keep market rates high. By penalizing holding units vacant, that should incentivise either setting more competitive rents, or selling/not buying excess inventory.

In markets where there is a true undersupply of inventory and there aren’t vacancies then, yes, this policy wouldn’t have much benefit.

That’s why the homestead credit would only be payable to the resident. Residency is what matters here not the paper owner.

I won’t claim there aren’t potential loopholes in a casually described plan, but the one you brought up doesn’t apply without fraudulent claims of residency.

Currently, large corporate landlords are willing to let housing units sit empty vs letting market rates drop. A company with 500 units makes the same amount leasing 400 units at $1500/mo as they would leasing 470 units at $1300/mo and they have less overhead. The realpage software lets them coordinate with all the other corporate landlords without direct communication.

The reason I think this policy would help renters is by making vacant units significantly more expensive and pushing corporate property managers to actually compete rather than sit on vacancies.

I think I’d rather see this adressed on the property tax side with a homestead tax exemption. Let counties and municipalities significantly raise property tax rates then offer homestead tax rebates to the primary resident. Maybe even offer a monthly rebate to match rent/mortgage payments. Rent would go up, but the rebate should match the rent increase.

This would make empty units, short term rentals, and vacation home more expensive to hold on to compared to being pccupied by a long term resident. This would also let each region decide on the ratio of occupied vs unoccupied net property tax rates to dial in what works for them. A coastal community might have a much different equilibrium point than a suburb to a big city for example.

A lot of areas already have homestead exemptions for seniors and low income residents, so it doesn’t even require much in terms of new legal frameworks.

Ground hornets pattern match too. I had a massive nest I had never noticed in an old stump. They hadn’t bothered me despite having walked by numerous times. Then one time I hit the nest with the riding mower. Man that sucked. I’m not outright allergic, but a dozen stings does make me feel sick. After that, anytime I got within 20ft of the nest with the mower they would come out in force.

Then a few years later I had the same thing happen with a raised garden bed. They never bothered me and I didn’t even know they were there, until my weedwacker attacked the entrance of the nest. I had to steer clear of that section of the garden for a few weeks after.

Ground hornets are horrible.

And they will make sure to continue to not know a single thing about what was said. Ignorance isn’t a valid legal defence, but it sure is a common deflection tactic these days. Law makers have a professional and ethical obligation to become informed on the issues their constituents care about, but it seems like it’s rare to find one that remembers that obligation.

Will Forte. His voice and “quirky” style I find just irritating and not at all amusing.

High aspect ratio just doesn’t roll off the tongue does it?

Yeah, black holes in media where they are depicted as a giant space vacuum cleaner is a big pet peave of mine. Unless you get really close, nothing is remarkable about the orbital mechanics of a black hole. The equivalent mass star would have burned you up at a much further distance than the gravity starts to become noticeably wonky.

It’s a shame that writers focus so much on the gravity and neglect accretion disks and astrophysical jets which do extend large distances and are visually stunning as well.

What could one legislator cost, Michael, 25,000 dollars?

Iowa pays its general assembly members a salary of $25k a yr. So $200k a yr in lobbying from a single company potentially buys a lot of influence.

Definitely, any changes natural or anthropogenic would be measured and to great accuracy. I just wanted to point out that the notion of the general public, especially if conditioned to distrust scientists and authorities, not noticing changes isn’t the outlandish part. See global warming denial despite years of record setting temperatures.

Ignoring conspiracy theory stuff, people aren’t very good at perceiving changes in light levels if they happen gradually. During any solar eclipse there are wide bands where only a partial eclipse is observed. It’s pretty common for people in those bands to not notice that something has changed even with 50% occlusion.

Do new oil and gas leases qualify as weather modification? What about clear cutting forests and draining wetlands?

American chestnuts will die here, but I have a magnificent large Chinese chestnut tree in my yard. It’s not the same, but at least we get to harvest some 10-15 gallons of chestnuts every fall.