This is only partially true. Very early on, this was the case - Chinese characters started as pictograms representing objects and concepts. But this was fairly limiting in how much complexity you could capture without creating an unmanageably large set of unique pictograms. So the system evolved to use compound characters (characters made up of 2 or more components) incorporating phonetic (i.e. pronunciation) information into the writing system.

Most Chinese characters used in past 2000 years are made up of parts related to their meaning or category of meaning, and parts related to the pronunciation of the spoken word they represent (at least at some point in time, typically in Old Chinese) - these are called phono-semantic compound characters. The first comprehensive dictionary of Chinese characters that was created almost 2000 years ago already classified over 80% of all characters as phono-semantic compounds. This percentage also went up over time in later dictionaries as new compound characters were still being added.

As an example the character for book (書) - is made up of 2 parts, the semantic part is 聿 (brush - in its original form a literal picture of a hand holding a brush) on top (so the word is related to writing or painting), and 者 on the bottom (the meaning of 者 is not important here (it was a picture of a mouth eating sugarcane originally, but lost this meaning long time ago), but 者 in Old Chinese was pronounced similar to the Old Chinese spoken word for book, so it serves a purely phonetic function here)

When Chinese writing was adopted in Japan, it wasn’t really used to write Japanese - it was used to write Classical Chinese. Literate people would translate from Japanese to Chinese (which they would have been fluent in) and write it down in Classical Chinese grammar and vocabulary, not spoken Japanese grammar. They could also read it back and translate on the fly into spoken Japanese for Japanese speaking audience. They also brought in the Chinese pronunciation of the Characters into Japanese (in fact several different versions of this over time - see Go-on, Kan-on, etc.) so the phonetic hints in the characters were still useful when learning the system.

Attempting to write spoken Japanese using Chinese characters was difficult, initially they would actually use Chinese characters stripped of their meaning to represent Japanese syllables. These were later simplified to become modern kana

Spoken Chinese itself evolved beyond the monosyllabic written Classical Chinese (which remained quite rigid), so for a long time, Chinese also wrote essentially in a different language from how they spoke. It was only fairly recently that vernacular Chinese began to be written (rather than Classical Chinese) with it’s polysyllabic words (most words in modern Chinese have 2 or more syllables, and require 2 or more characters to write, further distancing modern words from the original simple pictogram meanings)

So while the idea of some kind of universal abstract concept representation divorced from phonetics sounds intriguing, in practice it is a poor way to capture the complexity and nuance of spoken languages, and all languages (including Chinese) that attempted to adopt it ended up having to build various phonetic hints and workarounds to make the system actually useful and practical for writing.

Depends on the species

It’s the Infinite Improbability Drive though, not Probability, that makes no sense :)

+1 for MoCA

I switched from powerline to MoCA about 10 years ago, and it was a huge step up. Even though it’s half duplex, since MoCA version 2.5, there is enough total bandwidth available to sustain 1 Gbps in 2 directions simultaneously, so it is functionally almost equivalent to full duplex 1 gig Ethernet (except for few ms of extra latency)

pihole often doesn’t help, as many IoT devices either use their own DNS servers and ignore the one provided by your network, and sometimes even skip DNS completely and just connect to hardcoded IPs directly. Even blocking DNS at the firewall/router is getting more difficult with increasing use of DNS over HTTPS and custom DNS server IPs that aren’t in public lists. (I block all known DNS server IPs at my firewall, forcing any device to use my own DNS servers, but even that is not always completely effective)

It’s usually best to isolate IoT devices on VLANs with no internet access (blocked at the router/firewall) Although there are now even devices that can autonomously connect to external WiFi networks like Amazon Sidewalk, to gain internet access and bypassing any restrictions you might try to place on them…

Hiking pants made of synthetic materials. They are superior to cotton jeans in every way honestly. I live in So Cal, and often hike in the desert, and still wear long hiking pants - but made of synthetic materials. (My goto is pants from Prana, but mainly because they have a factory outlet near me so I can get them cheap, there are other options as well) They dry out much faster than cotton, both when it comes to sweat, they don’t get soaked and uncomfortable like cotton jeans, and when crossing rivers. They are much lighter than cotton jeans, and material is stretchy, allowing full range of motion when scrambling over rocks. They also last longer than jeans.

I grew up hiking and backpacking in jeans (and heavy boots), with 60+ lbs external aluminum frame packs, many decades ago, and now hike and backpack in lightweight synthetic pants and trail runners and 20 lbs base weight pack - I don’t think I could ever go back.

Fun fact, California doesn’t mandate safety or roadworthiness inspections for personal vehicles at all - only emissions.

This was a bit of a surprise to me when I moved here, given CAs reputation.

To differentiate it from O - making 0 narrow is a common way to do that

The #1 best show is Twin Peaks: The Return of course :)

The last Bolt model year was 2023 - you can’t really find new ones at dealer lots anymore. There is supposed to be a new version coming at some point, but no official details or timeframe yet.

Plenty of countries have national parks btw. Many of them had them before America.

Well not really though ? Yellowstone established in 1872 is generally considered the first national park, in the modern sense of the term*, and inspired others to follow in the next couple of decades in Canada, New Zealand and Australia. It wasn’t until the 1900s that the first national park was established in Europe.

* there are a couple of other places that also claim this distinction, depending on how exactly you define what a national park is, but not many

Calling national parks “America’s best idea” is a quote from historian and environmentalist Wallace Stegner - I think the point of it is not to toot some US exceptionalism horn - in context it’s more of an acknowledgment that America deserves a lot of criticism - saying that national parks are America’s best idea is actually putting a bit of shade on other American exceptionalism claims, especially during the Reagan “shining city upon a hill” era.

According to CBP’s own stats they conducted 42725 basic and 4322 advanced searches of electronic devices at US ports of entry last year (so before any new policies of the current administration took effect)

“Under a basic search, a border agent physically inspects your phone and reviews what they can, while an advanced search means the agent can potentially download all of your files using an external device.”

This is true, however you can still be targeted for extra checks by both customs and immigration if they have a reason to suspect you, even when departing the US. Both CBP and ICE have access to departing passenger lists.

For example you are required to declare larger sums of cash being carried out of the country (over $10k). You are supposed to go to customs and fill out a form, but many people do not know this, often legal immigrant workers taking cash back to their home countries. CBP uses dogs trained to smell cash and patrols departure lounges in airports, and if they pick you out, you can be searched, and any undeclared cash will simply be seized if found.

It’s easy to imagine with the current administration they could start targeting people based on social media posts or some kind of previously compiled political profile or “enemies” list or whatever, if they aren’t already.

It was the 90s… rules were different then ! I still have my white pants deep in the closet somewhere… they haven’t seen the light of day in a while though :)

I worked at Bell Labs back when this photo was taken - my office pretty much looked exactly like this, chair, furniture, Sun SPARCStation on the floor…

Bjarne still rocks white pants sometimes to this day though ! And the same haircut - he really committed to the look :)

For most citrus the pith has no flavor at all, definitely not bitter. Most people object to the texture and blandness/lack of flavor, which I can understand. I have a bunch of citrus trees in my yard, and learned to not mind the pith, mainly due to laziness (I eat a lot of oranges) - and it’s a good source of fiber.

Western diet is actually notoriously low on fiber and high in sugar, and the citrus pith is also high in vitamin C.

So for many people eating the pith would actually be a healthier choice - in the context of their low fiber/high sugar diet.

I first got on the Internet just as the shift from :-) to :) was happening, only geezers still used :-) and :) was the hip new thing…

Expat is short for expatriate, not ex-patriot. Both expatriate and patriot do come from the same Latin root (patria, fatherland) via French.

But yes, expatriate means someone who lives outside (ex) of their fatherland (patria) - can be used for both immigrant or emigrant, depending on context.

The word average is often used to mean mean, however it can be used less specifically - median is a type of average as well.

From Merriam-Webster definition of average:

1a) a single value (such as a mean, mode, or median) that summarizes or represents the general significance of a set of unequal values

Also, things like testosterone levels in a population usually follow a normal distribution, where both mean and median are the same, so the distinction is often meaningless for practical purposes