TIL: Today I Learned

[trader/warrior]

TIL that heavy water definitely tastes slightly sweeter than normal distilled water to me. I'd tasted it before but used a plastic syringe, which I was afraid may have imparted its own taste, and only tasted a few drops. But using a glass pipette to take out a full mL from my recent 90 mL acquisition, there was an obvious slightly sweetish flavor to the heavy water, whereas distilled water just tasted like nothing. Some people who have tasted heavy water have reported no difference, while others report the same slightly sweet taste. I wonder if the ability to taste heavy water might be genetic somehow, like the ability to smell asparagus in the urine or to taste a few particular compounds.

The Cody's Lab youtube channel did an interesting subjective test on this recently, testing oxygen-18 water as well, which is equally heavy yet doesn't seem to taste similarly sweet. No idea how any of this works, yet somehow interesting.

 

[Lohrenswald]

Afro-Abkhazians

Spoiler :

 

[Bootstoots]

The Cody's Lab youtube channel did an interesting subjective test on this recently, testing oxygen-18 water as well, which is equally heavy yet doesn't seem to taste similarly sweet. No idea how any of this works, yet somehow interesting.

I've seen that video and love his channel! I predicted before seeing the outcome that the O-18 water would taste normal, because chemical isotope effects depend strongly on the ratio of the mass of the isotopes. O-18 is only 12.5% heavier than O-16, whereas H-2 is 100% heavier than H-1. So the chemistry of H2O-18 is much more similar to regular water than to D2O, even though its mass is the same as D2O.

Here is a list of the properties of many of water's isotopologues. So for instance deuterium heavy water has a melting point of 3.82 C and a boiling point of 101.40 C, whereas the same values for O-18 water are 0.28 C and 100.15 C. However, the difference is still enough to cause changes in oxygen isotope ratios in water around the world: it's slightly easier to evaporate O-16 water than O-18 water, so rain is depleted in O-18 compared to seawater, and it's slightly easier to precipitate O-18 back to liquid, so the water vapor becomes even more depleted of O-18 as the water vapor moves across a continental landmass. The other cool thing is that when precipitation falls on permanent ice and freezes, the ice sheets act as a long-term sink of O-18-depleted water. So the ocean gets more enriched in O-18 than normal during an ice age. There are also temperature-dependent effects on how easily certain organisms incorporate O-18 in their shells, and the combination of the two can be used by geologists to estimate what past temperatures and global ice cover were. It's one of several proxies that are used as paleothermometers.

There are several mad science channels that are awesome - him, Applied Science, NileRed, NurdRage, and ChemPlayer among others. Here's one by Applied Science, in which he makes a heavy-duty acrylic chamber, designed to withstand 100 atmospheres of pressure. Then he puts dry ice in and lets it melt under its own vapor pressure at room temperature. Cranking up the temp a little more, the boundary between the liquid and vapor CO2 vanishes and it's all a single fluid - supercritical CO2. Then he cools it back down and it condenses back into liquid and vapor phases again. It's really neat because we normally never see supercritical fluids in real life: it's all just solids, liquids, and gases to us. Cody's Lab does this as well in a more dramatic way using heavy-duty glass tubing, then breaks one of them in front of a high-speed camera to film the explosion.

 

[Commodore]

The basic rule for analysing the multi-sided wars that resulted in and from the breakup of Yugoslavia is that everyone (else but me) is a war criminal.

Accuse the Croatians of doing anything wrong during that time period though and they go into apoplectic fits of rage and claim all the accusations against them were fabricated by the West.

 

[Arakhor]

Accuse the Croatians of doing anything wrong during that time period though and they go into apoplectic fits of rage and claim all the accusations against them were fabricated by the West.

The same could be said about various nationalities at different times.

 

[Commodore]

The same could be said about various nationalities at different times.

Yeah, but it gets a little weird when every Croatian who comments on the matter denies any of it even happened and the Serbs were the only ones killing innocent people. And what do they cite as the source to justify such denial? Well their government told them so, of course.

My favorite excuse though has to do with an incident in which a Croat militia of 2,500 launched an unprovoked attack against 900 Canadian peacekeepers. The excuse I keep hearing from the Croatians I've been trolling on this issue (at least the ones that don't outright deny the incident occurred) is that the militia mistook the Canadians for the Serbs and that's why they attacked. Sounds plausible, right? Sure, until you realize that the Canadians were there as UN peacekeepers, meaning they were wearing the bright blue helmets and berets and their vehicles were painted solid white with big black "UN" lettering on them. Yep, easily mistaken for Serbs.

 

[Glassfan]

Do you guys have Police Radar Trailers in your towns?

When I see one in my neighborhood I always speed up to see how high I can score. When you go over the speed limit the readout starts blinking at you. Today I learned that if you can speed up in excess of 25 mph over the speed limit, cop car "cherry lights" start flashing at you. Very cool...

 

[Commodore]

TIL: Apparently Blizzard is very upset about people giving Overwatch the Rule 34 treatment and has actually contracted other companies to find Overwatch porn and take it down.

 

[Traitorfish]

Perhaps they thought the "UN" stood for "un-Croatian", and therefore "Serb".

 

[Takhisis]

Yeah, but it gets a little weird when every Croatian who comments on the matter denies any of it even happened and the Serbs were the only ones killing innocent people. And what do they cite as the source to justify such denial? Well their government told them so, of course.

As I said, everyone else but me is a war criminal.

 

[Bootstoots]

Do you guys have Police Radar Trailers in your towns?

View attachment 471454

When I see one in my neighborhood I always speed up to see how high I can score. When you go over the speed limit the readout starts blinking at you. Today I learned that if you can speed up in excess of 25 mph over the speed limit, cop car "cherry lights" start flashing at you. Very cool...

Don't those sometimes have speed cameras attached? I used to charge at them too, especially non-work-zone ones, but then stopped on hearing that some have speed cameras. But I don't know if that is true.

 

[Commodore]

Don't those sometimes have speed cameras attached? I used to charge at them too, especially non-work-zone ones, but then stopped on hearing that some have speed cameras. But I don't know if that is true.

It's not true. You are in Illinois, right? Traffic enforcement cameras are illegal in the state of Illinois, so if the cops there are still using them, any ticket they issue you from the use of those cameras will be unenforceable.

 

[Bootstoots]

Well, that's good to know. I still wouldn't charge a construction zone sign, though - as I learned during "traffic safety class" to discharge an extremely minor ticket, speeding fines for construction zones in this state are approximately $1000 (including court fees and whatnot) and require a mandatory physical appearance in court. Further, construction zone speed limits apply whether or not workers are present. On the other hand, school zones are much less strict: if no children are physically present on the sidewalk or in the street, or even if they are but it is not strictly between 7 am and 4 pm on a weekday, school zone limits don't apply. They can even be in a playground, provided it's fenced off.

I did once get a speeding ticket from a camera in Tennessee. It was a 4-lane divided highway, interstate quality except for occasional intersections, but it was still signed at an artificially low 55 mph. I was caught doing the dastardly deed of driving 66 in a 55. I was not happy about that. At least it was only $75 and no points. It was clearly one of those things where the legislature went "we can't raise taxes as it would violate the only principle we Republicans still have, so we'll just have low speed limits and put in camera-based speed traps everywhere".

 

[Commodore]

"we can't raise taxes as it would violate the only principle we Republicans still have, so we'll just have low speed limits and put in camera-based speed traps everywhere"

That's surprising since usually the most resistance to the use of speed cameras comes from Republicans. It's one of their more admirable qualities.

In any case, I've learned most tickets can be ignored, especially if you don't live in the state in which it was issued. I remember getting a parking ticket once in my home city. I never paid it. Eventually I got a nasty-gram in the mail saying a warrant had been issued for my arrest for not paying the ticket. Well that was clearly a lie since this was before I joined the Army and no evidence of this arrest warrant came up during my background investigation for my security clearance. And no, I didn't tell the Army about it either.

 

[Bootstoots]

I wouldn't recommend doing that - real bench warrants for unpaid tickets are really common nowadays, leading to your arrest if you got pulled over and it came up on their background check, and states now electronically share information and warrants freely among each other. There are also roving camera cars that scan license plate numbers looking for license plates and matching them with databases of "wanted" vehicles. Unpaid tickets are the sort of thing you could get away with 10 or 15 years ago but which would be extremely dangerous today. $75 is a pretty small price to pay to avoid that risk.

 

[Commodore]

I wouldn't recommend doing that - real bench warrants for unpaid tickets are really common nowadays, leading to your arrest if you got pulled over and it came up on their background check, and states now electronically share information and warrants freely among each other. There are also roving camera cars that scan license plate numbers looking for license plates and matching them with databases of "wanted" vehicles. Unpaid tickets are the sort of thing you could get away with 10 or 15 years ago but which would be extremely dangerous today. $75 is a pretty small price to pay to avoid that risk.

Eh, the cops aren't as omnipresent as they would have you believe. My father is an expediter and has around 4 or 5 outstanding tickets in NYC alone and has never paid them. Never once has he suffered any consequences for them and he's been back to NYC many times and even got the other tickets while still having outstanding ones.

And these tickets definitely aren't from 10 to 15 years ago either. So I'd say it's just as easy to get away with unpaid tickets now as it was in the past. They just don't want you to think that way because they obviously want you to pay your tickets. And while they may issue a real warrant for your arrest, it's doubtful they will actually do it unless they are trying to take you down for a larger crime due to just about every prison in the US suffering from overcrowding. They aren't going to waste their already extremely limited resources locking up someone who didn't pay their speeding ticket. Hell, here in Cincinnati, prison overcrowding is so bad that unless you murdered or raped someone, you only spend a few days in prison then get released on house arrest for the remainder of your sentence.

 

[Samez]

What is the argument for speed cameras to be illeagal?
We usually have stationary or mobile radar scanners around which take the nice pictures or there is a cop with a laser gun earning the money right there. We also have cameras checking the minimal safety distances between cars on the Autobahn, and last but not least cameras checking red light crossing.

 

[Commodore]

What is the argument for speed cameras to be illeagal?

I don't know about other countries, but in the US minor traffic violations usually require a police officer to be physically present and witness the offense for a citation to be issued and actually be enforceable. So the argument is that cameras are not police officers, and therefore citations cannot be issued based on the footage they capture.

 

[Mouthwash]

TIL that Plotinus has an entry on Wikipedia. Not a stump article either.

How many of you knew about this?

 

[Arakhor]

I knew that he was an academic author (and what his name was), but I didn't realise that he had his own entry on Wikipedia.