I've been playing an online game where you just try to name as many US cities as you can. Here's my map. My goal was to name all the cities over 500,000 people. I am stubbornly short one such city. I haven't looked up the correct answer yet.
Can you guess which one American city over 500,000 people I'm missing?
I've been canoodling around with it for a week or so, and I've been listing generic city names and getting a surprising number of correct answers that way, including some big cities.
You named 2,826 cities, with a total population of 120,814,720 (46.35% of the national urban population in 2020).
I also got 234 of 339 cities over 100,000 people (69.0%).
Edit: I checked, here's the city I missed:
In case anyone's wondering...
1: Pest-control companies said they didn't know which pesticide they used because they hadn't diagnosed the problem yet. They hadn't chosen a pesticide. (edit: or, more likely, the person on the phone isn't an exterminator and doesn't know)
2: The company that didn't say she had to wash all her clothes, etc. just skipped that step to get a customer. The moths will likely be back within a year, because they laid eggs in the folds of old clothes or stacks of cardboard or ruffles on the edge of a couch cushion. I realize it's a pain, but it's the only way to solve the problem (thereby minimizing the total number of "murdered" moths, the cost of treatment and the amount of pesticide used).
3: This seems more like burgeoning OCD than legitimate animal welfare concerns. Switch to hardwood floors, synthetic fabrics and no whole cereal grains if you really care so damn much about moths.
4: Carpet moths don't eat carpets. They eat human hair, insects and animal leavings, etc. Actually carpet moths don't eat, but carpet-moth caterpillars do.
I edit scientific journal articles and one of the companies I work for has a pretty sophisticated AI that does a first pass, I'm just cleaning up and fixing the things the AI fails at. Their AI has gotten good at the basics of grammar and capitalization, n-dashes and hyphens, that kind of thing. But it remains utterly hopeless at fixing non-English speakers' incorrect use of words, which is a huge part of what I do. Stuff like the difference between "go down", "decline", "reduce", "lessen", "lower", "decrease" and "diminish", for example, which you pretty much have to be a native English speaker or South Korean to get.
Mushguffler
2mo ago
Do you think any new countries will become independent in the next twenty or so years?
Mushguffler
9mo ago
I was in the grocery store the other day when I noticed a brand of ginger beer from Bermuda. That struck a chord with me because at some point I saw a cooking show where someone mentioned "a famous brand of Bermudan ginger beer" -- you know how they don't say the names of companies that aren't advertisers, so that was how they described it in lieu of actually naming it. I wanted to try it, so I bought it and liked it.
I was just curious if anyone else has experienced something similar -- an attempt to avoid giving free advertising to something instead drawing more attention to it. I'm certain if they had just said "Barritt's ginger beer", it wouldn't have stuck in my mind at all.
Mushguffler
1yr ago
Until Trump, Republicans had been consistently voting for the prior runner-up in presidential nominations. IIRC Romney, McCain, Dubya, Dole, HW, Reagan and Nixon were all nominated after being in second-place in the prior primary.
Mushguffler
1yr ago
I don't even think Dems needed to lie about their intentions or beliefs. They put up ads like "Cox is too consistently conservative for Maryland", which they really believed (and the recent election suggests they were correct to believe that). There's nothing wrong with advertising your beliefs.
Mushguffler
1yr ago
I'm finding all the pictures in comments very offputting. Can we ban that?
Mushguffler
7mo ago
I gave up and got the answer. It's not one of those states, but I think it is a suburb. I had heard of it though.
I should have gotten that one,
Mushguffler
9mo ago
AFAIK, the main plausible explanation is that it's a cover for top-secret stealth aircraft. The gov't doesn't want to explain, so they just imply it's probably aliens. Schumer's bill contains an exemption for national security data, which will encompass anything meaningful. They know perfectly well the Chinese and Russians know this, it's a kabuki show for the normies because it's easier than both keeping that stuff secret and batting away paranormal "researchers". The change in policy was to put up a lightning rod to attract conspiracy theorists rather than trying to repel them.
Mushguffler
9mo ago
easy majors (communications is a big one)
A friend of mine's wife once was begging me for help with an assignment for a class for her communications degree. The assignment was to watch a TED talk and write four sentences about it. That was the entirety of the assignment. She needed help.
Mushguffler
1yr ago
Do you use one of those self-control applications to stop you from e.g. wasting time on Facebook or reddit? I've been using one for a couple years, and I've noticed something. I usually keep the timer at a particular duration until I have a reason to change it, so right now it's at four hours and 17 minutes, it has been there for months. I set it a couple times a day.
I've noticed the time almost always runs out within a minute or two of me going to bed. I often seen it pop up (because it's done) literally as I'm getting up to to leave. Other times I check it just before going to bed and see it has like two minutes left.
I am curious if this happens to other people. Am I subconsciously timing my bedtime to sync up with the end of my blocking software's timer?
Mushguffler
1yr ago
Their English is often near-perfect. It's usually better than the papers from English-speaking countries.
Mushguffler
1yr ago
Lol, I only got 8/12, I suck. I don't think I got a single woman right either. Honestly I suspect most of the ones I got right were gay men who were left-wingers. I'm gay myself, I think I just have good gaydar.
Verdict: Women are an enigma wrapped in a mystery, covered in... something I have no interest in.
Mushguffler
1yr ago
Everyone knows the government can't make sure inflation is 0, so instead they try to make inflation be about 2%, so even if they mess up and miss that goal by a little at least it's better than deflation.
If inflation were zero, it would amount to deflation over time as productivity and population increases. You have to have a little inflation to keep up with growth.
Mushguffler
1yr ago
Seems to me you have it exactly backwards. A bunch of stealthy fires approximating a mass layoff over time means no one will know when the layoffs will end. Musk said he was going to lay off a bunch of people, then he did. Those who remain should be, and I would wager are, confident that they are not also on the verge of being laidoff.
I don't think shitposting matters in the long run. I also am dubious Musk's plans will lead to profitability.
Mushguffler
1yr ago
I think it would be good if there were seven weekly posts like the Culture War Round-Up. That would help with user retention, I think. Like there could be one for economics, since that's not necessarily "culture war" per se.
Mushguffler
1mo ago
I read recently that cats have been evolving to be less friendly to humans, at least in the West, because friendly pet cats are spayed or neutered, as are strays that are caught by people. The cats that are reproducing are strays unfriendly enough to avoid animal control. Seems plausible the same effect is occurring for dogs.
Mushguffler
1yr ago
I have a Puerto Rican friend whose daughter has terrible taste in men. Every time I see him, he brings up out of the blue like "You know, Peruvians are all retarded and they fuck dogs", and I'll say "your daughter's dating a Peruvian guy huh?" He's got a reason to dislike every Spanish-speaking nationality. Colombians beat their wives and are all gay, Venezuelans are poor and smell like trash, Salvadorans are miniature gangsters, Mexicans are morons, etc. She's had a lot of boyfriends.
Mushguffler
1yr ago
In D&D a long time ago, I mentioned that you could estimate the time by using the width of your fingers to measure the distance between the sun and the horizon. My friends pooh-poohed this and mentioned it for years as an example of me being stupid and believing in dumb shit.
Until Johnny Depp did it in a Pirates of the Caribbean movie. Then they accepted that it was real. No amount of me googling it, finding good sources or even literally doing it so they could see it was real would help. They had to see Johnny Depp do it.
Mushguffler
1yr ago
The main competitor to Amazon for ebooks is Smashwords, who pay authors a bit more. We'd appreciate off-Amazon sales, if you want to give them a try.
Mushguffler
1yr ago
Ontario's leader is under heavy fire for playing hardball and preventing educational workers from getting large raises. I don't know the details well, but couldn't one argue this is what fighting inflation looks like?
Only if those raises would otherwise come from new currency (i.e. the Canadian central bank prints new money), which I would assume is not the case. I don't think that has any connection to inflation.
Mushguffler
1yr ago
Lol, I'm here to eradicate hate and bang mad pussy... and I'm all out of pussy.
In the recent Memphis police shooting case, some have noted that, aside from the actual assaulting officers, several others were apparently standing by and not intervening. That is a violation of Memphis PD policy and may be a criminal act.
In most (all?) states, people in mandatory-reporting professions, such as teachers, are required to report certain kinds of wrongdoing.
My understanding is that it is widely accepted that teachers et al do report mere suspicions of wrongdoing even against their coworkers. But cops seem to rarely do so. Do you think that's inherent to the us v them nature of policing? It forces people to a side more intensely than teachers and such? Or is that the law requires teachers to report any suspicion but the Memphis PD are only supposed to report the things they witness (I think)? But this recent incident clearly goes well beyond a suspicion...
Just curious what others think.
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