You are aware of first past the post right? That really needs to be the first thing on your agenda to get fixed. Until then, the USA will ALWAYS be a two-party system (with brief blips in change over).

“just as many”? Press X to doubt. I don’t doubt you’ve heard some, but people just don’t care about cat breeds in the same way people care about dog breeds.

Hence the meme

54%?? Yikes.

300 Nazis outing themselves and going to prison to (hopefully) be rehabilitated with counseling?

Don’t threaten me with a good time.

(I am aware the prison system is not super fantastic in Australia, but we’re miles ahead of the US, and some of this 300 may actually be dissuaded. And also, they’re Nazis, so. If you believe your fellow human beings are animals, then you don’t get free speech, sorry.)

Thanks for sharing this

How does it breathe?

I completely seriously, put forth that it’s the soul-crushing, rampant late-stage capitalism, with poor worker protections, much more than the lack of political freedom, is what is driving the low birth rates. (Now, obviously different story during one child policy).

I just think people are way to quick to overlook the economics, which is currently happening almost everywhere (the stupid house prices, real wages not keeping up with price inflation, the wealth gap between the richest and poorest of a nation getting larger, etc)

If China became a mutli-party representative democracy overnight, you can bet your ass no one is going to be having any more children than they are right now.

If you were to ask the average Chinese person if they support their government, the answer would be yes, despite what some people outside China would like to believe. (On average, of course there are still a notable number who aren’t happy at all with the government).

In the end, it doesn’t even matter

Is this “Um ackchyually” bait? 😅

The Commonwealth isn’t the countries with the British Monarch as head of state.

But yeah, the British Monarch is the head of state in Australia. Annoyingly

Yeah, if we can’t even manage to enshrine a bloody advisory body to parliament with no powers into the constitution, then good luck getting a republic with the conservative media grip over this country.

I’m actually astonished how left-leaning we are in general, given the situation. But yeah, the Voice to Parliament referendum gives me very little hope in people voting to become a republic.

While I know that these days, bugs in code can cause real-world harm (personal info leaks, superannuation records lost, lol google), I find it humorous to think of the equivalent, even worse outcomes in my discipline (chemical/process engineering).

“Didn’t do any checks, fuck it, I know this calculation is fire 🔥”

Later: 🔥🔥💥

So, if you plan an arson as a protest, is that 8 years or 18 years?

I am always neutral on this sort of thing (i.e. I believe in democracy, and despite what people will have you believe, Taiwan is not a monolith of opinion of the one China / reunification / independence question)

But this is fucking hilarious

I actually think these are fine. If I can quickly recognise each on my homescreen (I don’t use labels) then it’s fine, and I’ve never had a problem with any of these.

I like it because each company each has its own set of apps, and they have somewhat unified app icons.

Proton is the same, which similar icons as google but with their own unified branding.

I like it, personally.

(Pressure) * (volume) = (# moles) * (gas constant) * (temperature)

The ideal gas law.

In another thread I admit I didn’t explain my position here well enough. I would only not explain this equation given sufficient context (e.g. I’ve shown all those variables in a table, and my intended audience is people familiar with basic chemistry, which I’d expect would be everyone reading the report for this particular example, since this is high school chemistry, and the topic of all reports I work on is chemical engineering.)

People can read the conclusions if they’re not familiar with chemistry, and for the detail, they’re not my intended audience anyway.

Generally I still hold the position that you should define variables as much as possible, unless it’s overly cumbersome, given your intended audience would clearly understand anyway.

In context this simple equation is obvious even if you change the symbols, as long as there is sufficient context to draw from.

No worries friend, no hard feelings and appreciate the engagement!

Yeah, agree it is a bit wishy washy in terms of gauging how much explanation to include ¯_(ツ)_/¯

I suppose (in my opinion) the mindset should be: include as much explanation as possible, without it being cumbersome.

I personally err on the side of over-explanation and have had some senior engineers give me feedback that it’s too much. Still learning for myself how much is too much.

Totally agree though, that there are many cases where people leave things out as assumed, when it’s not really reasonable to do so.

A side-thought on specificity: one of my biggest pet peeves is when people list pressure with the units of kPa, when they really mean kPag. In industry, you are rarely talking in absolute pressure (other than for pressure differences) and people then get lazy/don’t know/assume it’s fine to do something like: set point 100 kPa (when they mean 100 kPag). It isn’t fine though, because at lower pressures atmosphere counts for a pretty large percentage of the absolute value.

Understand your frustration with how I’ve communicated my position, sorry about that:

My justification for the examples I’ve given is there still needs to be other context, is based on complexity of the equation, and the intended audience of that equation.

An example of me not explaining a very simple equation would be perhaps a table of various cases:

| — | mass flow (kg/hr) | density (kg/m³) | Volumetric flow (m³/hr), V = m/ρ | | Case 1 | blah blah | blah blah | blah | | Etc. | … | … | … |

Realising now that markdown tables don’t seem to work 😅, hopefully this is still clear.

It may be a touch better to put variable symbols in the other columns, but:

1. You still have the final answer (the purpose of my report, I’m not writing a thesis here)
2. It should be plainly obvious by the units, and the fact those are the previous two variables, to someone who has the ability to understand (and is the intended audience of that little equation)

As a recent example for this, in a data sheet I recently prepared, I literally just put a * in the references column and said “*calculated from other data sheet values” for the volumetric flow rate, because the intended audience would know how to do that, and the purpose was for me to communicate how that value was determined.

Me putting in the V = m/ρ in the hypothetical example I gave above is a just a little mind jog for the reader.

Where more complicated equations are used, of course these are properly referenced, usually even with the standard or book it’s come from.

I’ll redefine my position to: Clearly define all variables, unless it’s abundantly obvious to your intended audience from context.

My intended audience of the conclusions or final values are the layman. My intended audience of everything else is someone with a very basic chemical engineering understanding.

Your last point is a strawman:

I find it a bit contradicting to the very point you made about defining variables. If anything, one might be some home-grown genius that has real business getting into details but only ever used Chinese characters as variables

Because I’m writing in English, for an English speaking audience, and there is no such thing as a home-grown genius getting into my area because it’s a legal requirement that they have an honours degree. Even still, the two assumed knowledge equations I mentioned, which I would only not reference with sufficient context, would STILL be recognisable with totally random symbols.

| mass flow (kg/hr) | density (kg/m³) | Volumetric flow (m³/hr), 容 = 质/密 | Yup, a bit odd in an English context, but with the units information (always mandatory, of course) completely understandable.

There ya go (only used it up until highschool physics, in Australia, iirc), I definitely have no business reading anything regarding voltage then 😅

Thanks for sharing

You only have to define it once in a document, book, whatever. Also, it’s not like you’d ever need to do this for handwritten notes, only for a wider audience, or if you intend for something to be read by not just you.

No one is suggesting you don’t use symbols, just that you define them, and not assume the reader uses the same symbols as you. Which, so often, they don’t. (How many different ones have you come across just in highschool and uni. I came across multiple)

I’m no physicist, but surely there is a huge range of symbols for the same thing, especially the more niche you get.

Lol fair point regarding Eng: “Engineering”.

But Nah, I think assumed knowledge of PV=nRT is fair in context, since if you don’t know what it is, you’ll only be reading the conclusion, not getting into the weeds of a calculation document.

I’m not going even going to be explaining if I have a column that’s says volumetric flow rate, with V=m/ρ. If I give mass flow rate and density (with units, of course), and use these extremely common symbols, and someone doesn’t understand, then they have no real business getting to this level of detail anyway.

I do agree that in most cases not defining your variables is bad practice, but there is some nuance, depending on the intended audience and how common a formula is, and the format of whatever it is you’re writing.