“Thank you for your answer to my first question. Could you please also address questions 2 and 3?”

At least by numbering the questions you make it easier to re-ask them.

Opening a new line of credit is only a temporary hit to your score. Multiple cards in a short time will be a bigger hit, but it’ll eventually pass.

Most if not all of those cards offer a free credit report that could tell you how much of an impact this had on your score and how quickly it improves. If you have another existing card (don’t sign up for another one) you may be able to see the change to your score once these hard credit pulls hit your credit report.

If not, wait a month or so and use one of your free annual credit reports. You get one report per year from each agency for free, with no consequence to your credit score. There’s 3 credit agencies, so in principle you can check your credit every 4 months for no cost.

The deep sea detector in the news uses Cherenkov radiation to detect the neutrino.

A neutrino can interact with the nuclei in water molecules (so hydrogen and oxygen nuclei) and produce a charged particle like an electron or a muon. The outgoing particles carry the energy of the incident neutrino, so they can be emitted at a speed greater than the speed of light in the liquid medium.

Note this is much less than the speed of light in a vacuum, so this isn’t breaking any physics. When charged particles (electrons, muons) pass through a medium at speeds greater than light in that medium, they emit Cherenkov light in a forward cone.

The Cherenkov light is analogous to the shockwave formed when breaking the sound barrier. Since it points in the direction the particle was traveling, you can detect the shape of the light cone with a large array of photon detectors and reconstruct the direction of the neutrino.

$8.99 - a Safeway in the bay area

The stand, just because it’s a much bigger scale novel with lots of interesting characters, world building, and a lot of story.

The dead zone is one I probably won’t reread. But it’s definitely worth it once, like most of King’s work. And the fact that it has uncomfortable parallels to Trump and the MAGA movement adds another element.

I highly recommend it. The stand is one of those novels I reread every few years.

If you think that’s prescient, try King’s “The Dead Zone”. It’s about a president who makes insane campaign promises (“put pollution in garbage bags and send it to space”), has rallies with mixture of party vibes and violent populism, and who has a signature hat.

There are discounts and tax credits for those with low income who live in the area, and exemptions for people with medical conditions that prevent them from using public transit source.

Street parking in NYC is $9 an hour, and long term parking garages typically charge like $400 per month. If you’re driving in NYC the $9 per day congestion pricing isn’t going to be the thing that makes it unaffordable.

This is what I do - make a big pot of chili or soup for the week. But I recognize that this might not work for everyone. At my work there’s a conveniently located fridge and microwave, and I can eat in my office with the door shut for a quiet meal. If any of those things weren’t there it might not be worth it.

I also enjoy cooking, and don’t mind spending time making my meal for the week. If the prep work was a real chore then it’d be much more tempting to buy something premade every day.

Relevant XKCD

Vampires hate this one weird trick

It doesn’t get more American than solving healthcare with gun violence.

I believe apple has the led hardwire in MacBooks webcams.

Closing vim is like landing a plane: anytime you can walk away unscathed it’s a success.

My employer has a “buy American” policy that kicks in for purchases over a certain dollar amount. To get an exemption, you need to identify 2 domestic options and state why they aren’t sufficient.

Recently I needed to replace a module in an existing system that happens to be made by a non-US company. There is literally no valid alternative - only this one company makes the modules that are compatible with each other.

So I had to identify 2 American made products that were vaguely similar and state why they didn’t meet our specifications. Though “Vaguely similar” is a stretch - it was equivalent to explaining to someone why you can’t buy AA batteries to replace a car battery.

The article is real, btw

She also had a knack for capturing their speaking pattern in her transcribed replies.

Same here, which is why my Bluesky feed is much better. Everyone wants to be where everyone else is (that isn’t X), and it seems like that’s Bluesky.

I’m gonna echo what others have said here. The mastodon signup process is too complex, and searching for instructions just leads to “what is the fediverse and/or activitypub” explainers.

I created a mastodon account a few years ago and it was my first introduction to the fediverse. It was frustrating and I only persevered because I REALLY wanted to replace twitter.

Once I got it set up, I realized that no one who I followed on twitter was there. My feed is currently like 2 people, plus a bunch of dead accounts from people who dipped their toe in but didn’t stay.

Joining Bluesky was simple, and there were already a bunch of accounts I wanted to follow. The recent influx has increased that, and it feels a lot like old school twitter without the nazis.

People originally joined twitter (and stuck with it for so long) because that’s where everyone else is. Mastadon is too clunky join and use, so people aren’t.

Heartbreaking: The Worst Person You Know Just Made A Great Point

I fear I’m gonna get a lot of mileage out of that headline over the next 4 years.