…That does not, in fact, make it any better.

That makes it even more terrorism.

Not a war crime; terrorism. Hezbollah is a political organization.

Calculators also say that dividing by 0 is an error, but logic says that the answer is infinite. (If i recall, it’s more correctly ‘undefined’, but I’m years out of math classes now.)

That is, as you divide a number by a smaller and smaller number, the product increases. 1/.1=10, 1/.01=100, 1/.001=1000, etc. As the denominator approaches 0, the product approaches infinity. But you can’t quantify infinity per se, which results in an undefined error.

If someone that’s a mathematician wants to explain this correctly, I’m all ears.

But the tree never makes a sound.

That depends on how you define ‘sound’. If it’s only perception and interpretation that creates sound, then sure, a tree falling with nothing to hear or perceive it makes no sound. But if you label sound as the vibration created independent of the perception of the phenomena, then sound happens regardless of whether it’s perceived or not. Since we label some sounds as imperceptible, or outside of human hearing ranges, my interpretation would be that the phenomena is the sound, rather than the perception of it.

You get “compensated for you time” not paid

That’s what they say, but that’s not what actually happens. If the phlebotomist fucks up the draw, and your flow rate is so poor that they can’t get what they need, you don’t get paid. (Ask me how i know this.)

And yeah, IIRC most of the plasma goes to create clotting agents for people with hemophilia.

Blatantly false. “MSM [men who have sex with men] accounted for 67% (21,400) of the 31,800 estimated new HIV infections in 2022 and 87% of estimated infections among all males.”

When you consider that gay and bisexual men make up a small percentage of the overall population–under 5%–the fact that gay and bisexual men account for 87% of all HIV infections in men tells you just how alarming this is.

EDIT: For the people downvoting this - do you have statistics that you consider to be better, or more up-to-date? Do you want to refute them? Then post something and prove the CDC wrong. Downvoting because you don’t like things that are factually correct isn’t doing anything except making you look like a petulant child.

PS - wear a goddamn condom if you and your partner aren’t 100% monogamous. Yeah, no one likes them, I get it. But that’s a lot better than getting infected with HIV and needing to pay for expensive anti-retrovirals for the rest of your life.

In the past, I’ve had my local hospital call me asking for a blood donation, for example, because of an upcoming surgery of a hospitalised kid that shares my blood group. I got money for that too.

In the US, AFAIK you can’t get paid for whole blood. If you did, you would have to be paid significantly more than they pay for plasma, given that you can only do whole blood every two months.

To the question, it’s not a “scam” by any conventional definition. You are getting real money in return for the plasma.

The problem with the whole system is that if there was no payment for plasma, there wouldn’t be nearly enough people donating plasma for the need that there is. (You’re typically looking at 1+ hour per session, 2x/week.) That doesn’t include whatever travel time is involved. That’s a pretty steep time commitment every week for something that’s a very nebulous public good.

I think a better question is, is the amount that you’re being compensated fair and reasonable? Give the profit margins that are involved in products made from blood plasma, my inclination is that it is not a fair and reasonable amount. Plasma centers in my area vary in how much they pay, but it’s typically in the neighborhood of $50-$75 (USD); in other parts it’s lower, and in some areas it’s significantly higher. It’s clear that they can pay more, but choose not to because it increases their profit margin. That is something I have a problem with.

The book is brilliant, even if it’s difficult to read and follow. The satire of art criticism is just so on point.

…And it’s hard to know if the Navidson record and house never really existed or not (in the context of the book) because of the way Johnny is slowly unraveling. It’s got strong elements of cosmic horror to it, along with razor-sharp satire, and the delineation in writings styles between Johnny’s personal narrative, Zampano, and the various journal articles are written really sells the entire piece.

More like going to a cheap motel and not expecting bedbugs.

Disagree on VR, depending. I use a VR dry fire training system, and it’s def. improved my real-world shooting.

Nuke the world.

That’s not murder; it’s a war crime.

I’ve heard that kind of thing about a number of non-profits. Makes me wonder how they manage to attract so many awful people.

Or maybe people in general are just awful.

That’s not necessarily valuable, exactly. Yes, companies charge a lot for consumer ink jet printer ink, but prices go down dramatically when you’re talking about commercial printing. A two liter bottle of high-end dye sublimation ink runs about $200 (might be up since I last bought in 2021), and the dye sublimation ink for the HP printer I operate costs about $700/10L.

If your printer has replaceable print heads that aren’t part of the ink cartridge, and if you can retrofit a bulk ink system, then you quickly find out that ink is pretty inexpensive.

Senior managers were also awful then; part of their job is making sure that the lower level managers don’t suck, and they weren’t.

That’s why you generally would want to call cops; it’s supposed to be their job, and they’re supposed to be trained to do shit like that. No, they often aren’t, and don’t do their job, but they’re probably better equipped to deal with it than most non-police are.

I have gotten in the middle of something before–a driver in a huge pickup truck trying to run over a motorcyclist that he was angry at–and shit is not fun. It’s one of the few times that I wish that I remembered to carry concealed regularly, or at all.

Interfering in a domestic dispute is a really, really good way to get assaulted.

I quit smoking four times, IIRC. The first week was always the shitty part, and then it would get dramatically easier. Three of the times I started back up because my ex-wife would secretly start smoking, get tired of hiding it, and offer me cigarettes (‘just one, as a treat’). The last time I quit we were in the process of separating prior to divorce, and so that shit didn’t happen. That was a little over ten years ago now.

This last time I quit because I was waking up every morning coughing. I had that nasty dark-yellow smokers’ phlegm that I’d cough up, and I’d have that first cigarette along with my cup of coffee. When I realized the direction my health was going, and that no amount of cardio and weight training was going to fix it, that’s when I decided to quit.

Each time I quit was cold turkey, no aids. The times I tried cutting back, using gum, etc., all failed miserably. Vaping wasn’t a thing at the time.

I still love the smell of cigarettes, pipes, and cigars. That’s never going to stop. But it’s pretty easy to resist now.

Oxygen now stably bonds with three hydrogen atoms, not two. The new formula for water is H3O.

Good luck with any kind of life form that we would recognize as being alive evolving.

Nope. Still good for a few years.

But that’s because I always buy toilet paper and paper towels at Costco, and buy more when I’m down to two cases.

Two is one, one is none.

I’ve heard that packing gauze into a gunshot wound to stop the bleeding is pretty unpleasant. I’ve also heard that a tourniquet that’s on properly is unbearably painful as well.