DrBob

CostCo is a rare good player in the retail space. They have a great reputation as an employer.

No, you're getting downvoted because there is no such thing as "genetically fat". Metabolic disorders are a different beast, but even those can be controlled by diet. The psychological tradeoffs of restrictive diets make them a difficult choice for many people who prefer a pharmaceutical route instead. At the fringe people will deny there is a "lifestyle" intervention option at all.

It's voter suppression. By limiting the number of voting locations and understanding them you make long lines where people will wait for hours to vote. By not allowing food or water to be handed out they hope people will get discouraged and leave the line. The official reason is that it could be construed as a bribe to vote a certain way.

I'll bite. Airlines are a great example because there are really strong physical constraints on flight, but the basic rules apply to almost every piece of built infrastructure. What does it take to make a plane "accessible" and what standards will it be built to? Are we going to accomodate "small fats" up to 300 lbs or so, or will we continue into the 500 lb range or 700 lb? This matters because aisles, seats, and doorways will all need to built to standard.

If you've seen the "Big Johns" in Vegas you'll know that the washroom alone will take up the entire width of a small passenger jet. That will allow for the oversize toilet, room to turn, the doorway and aisle. That means there will only be one unless we turn them sideways to put in two. But those toilets now remove 6-8 rows of seats. So that's 18-24 fewer paying passengers. I could go on here but you get the idea.

Widening the aisle would require removing 1-2 seats per row. And the remaining seats become wider so there are now 3-4 people per row instead of six. So the economics really matters here.

These discussions are true for every piece of infrastructure. It's not just a matter of making things bigger to allow people room to move and sit. Every supporting piece of infrastructure has to match. What does it do to land use if parking spaces need to be 50% wider to accomodate larger vehicle doors that swing fully open?

The built environment is a series of interdependent systems that are built to a set of standards - some tightly regulated and some informal. Changing those to accomodate a larger body size is not a simple task.

I have no idea why it got a first.

Pick lots of ballise fruit in White Orchard. It is tougher to find later on.

The Kingdom of Loathing guys (Jick and Mr Skullhead) had a development approach to keep their game system balanced. They felt that players had different primary motivations/enjoyment in the game and they wanted to make sure there was something for everyone. They divided players into four groups: Hearts, Clubs, Spades, and Diamonds.

Hearts enjoyed the social aspects of the game and would use the chat system and clans extensively.

Clubs were the PvP crowd and weren't happy unless there were meaningful opportunities to battle other players.

Spades are explorers and look to every nook and cranny of the environment, and are interested in underlying game mechanics (this is me).

Diamonds are collectors and completists. They will scour environments to ensure they got everything and do all the sides because they want all the stuff.

It makes it difficult to make within group comparisons due to the shifting baselines. They are fine for "gee whiz" global impression but simply not appropriate for detailed analysis. And yes, I greatly despise them.

This isn't beautiful, it's borderline unreadable. A stack like this is a very poor choice to show changes in relative proportion over time. A simple XY plot with dots would be better.

Just beautiful. This might have become my favorite Autumn leaf metaphor replacing Zachary Lucky's "Summer's shed skin".

I got it wrong 😡 Prairie voles are the "monogamous" ones. But here's a general interest article on the topic. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/monogamous-prairie-voles-reveal-the-neurobiology-of-love/

There is great work on prairie vs mountain voles. Mountain voles are pair bonded and meadow voles are not (I think that's right). All of them are rodent polyamorous nymphomaniacs with respect to the breeding, it's just that the mountain ones prefer co-nesting with the same vole regardless of who they're banging. There is a brain difference with respect to oxytocin sensitivity that seems to control the nesting behavior.