Well, all I can say is that clearly there’s a subset of people that those pictograms don’t reliably work for. I am tertiary educated, so well beyond third grade!

As for the products, I have not had issues with longevity - most of the kits are chipboard (particle board) and I have reasonable expectations for it (as long as you avoid moisture it can last ages).

I understand that they’re trying to make it language-agnostic, but I do think it would be helpful to at least have the part names on the components page (even if they’re given in multiple languages). Today’s kit had a jig for the nails to help you align them for attaching the back panel of the cabinet, but it wasn’t initially clear what it was for (even with the picture “demonstrating” its use). Labelling it on the parts page would have saved time trying to work out what it was for, especially since (at first glance) the picture looked like it was some kind of spacer to keep the top of the cabinet off the wall!

I agree about the tolerances on the wood kits too. You’ve got to be really careful screwing in the pins that are used as part of the joins, since if they’re not perfectly aligned it can be a real pain to get the two pieces to fit together.

Thankfully that’s not a common problem I’ve had…

Thanks. I always read the instructions ahead of time to avoid getting caught out and do sort the pieces first. I’ve never had issues mixing up pieces – the most common issue I have is that sometimes a given step is not clear to me. I find the picture-only guides like IKEA the worst for this as every so often there is a picture which is ambiguous.

Today’s biggest problem was the orientation issue, particularly as I had to assemble it in-situ. I knew exactly what piece was what, but it was critical to know which edge was the top and front, given how I had to assemble it, and there was no way to know that without going back and forth in the manual to compare how the assembly of the side (early in the manual) was positioned for the final assembly (later in the manual).

I agree. I think one of the arguments for the amillennial view is that it was talking about the Roman Emperor of the time.

Oh, I know that the Antichrist (the definitive article) signs an agreement with Israel (that’s what starts off the 7-year Tribulation, if I recall correctly). Trump hasn’t done that, nor does he meet a couple of other specific requirements, so I don’t consider him to be the Antichrist (note the uppercase).

That said, he’s definitely consistent with many of the attributes and I think meets the definition of an antichrist (lowercase) - hence why I said he’s that type of person.

I’d say only the idiotic ones who believe in a pre-Tribulation Rapture would want that. It really makes me wonder how many “Christians” have actually read the Bible they claim to believe (and how many would be those told “Depart from me, for I never knew you” Matt. 7:23).

In my experience, Christianity is pretty divided over “End Times” worldviews - amillennial (no literal millennium, which usually says that there is no literal Tribulation either and so Antichrist isn’t as much of a threat) vs. premillennial (we’re living prior to a literal millennial reign of Christ on Earth, and there is a specific individual who will be the Antichrist and hold power during the 7-year Tribulation). Within the latter it gets even messier - rapture or no rapture? Ezekiel’s War prior to the Tribulation or during it?

Whilst one can argue for the Rapture from the Bible, it’s definitely not as clear-cut as the Antichrist or Tribulation period - so if it were me, I would not be in an hurry to usher in the reign of the Antichrist especially when he will hunt down and execute Christians during the Tribulation.

Trump is an antichrist (not the definitive article, but the type of person described in the Bible). It really can’t get any clearer at this point.

I’m not an expert here, but considering that he is literally threatening other nations’ vessels in international waters, I’m wondering at what point the actions of the US Navy to “interdict every vessel” would constitute an act of war.

Hopefully the rest of the world increases the pressure on Trump and the US since it looks very much like he’s completely to blame for the rising oil costs around the globe.

The ship’s top speed is proportional to the speed of the narrative.

I still have my cereal box AoE CD somewhere…

I understand not being able to support newer eBook formats or certain content on older devices; standards change, as do the capabilities of devices (resolution, storage, etc.) and that makes sense. But unless I’m missing something major, there shouldn’t be any issue with them allowing users to keep accessing their account and purchase already-compatible eBooks for these older devices. Basically bricking it if you de-register or factory reset is absurd.

I’m familiar with a previous edition of that.

However, this one really does your head in: https://openlibrary.org/books/OL3484848M/Complex_analysis

One of the “Short Treks” would have been the ideal place to try it.

Wow, they’ve definitely spent a lot of time on it! I don’t agree with it all either, and (to me) the biggest difference is that I always accepted that the 23rd Century had to have at least two rates of stardate progression (TOS, then the TOS movies) before the TNG/DS9/VOY 5-digit system came into effect in the early 24th.

I’m also not beyond ignoring a handful of stardates to get the majority to make sense, since, as the author of that site says, there wasn’t actually a canon system and so the writers were just loosely progressing the dates. Getting everything to align perfectly just isn’t going to happen.

What does bother me is that Discovery didn’t even make an attempt to fit any kind of system - the stardates given in its first two seasons are clearly just trying to match the “vibe” of TOS without thinking about it any further than that. Unlike TOS, where you can somewhat reshuffle episodes around to make some sort of nearly-sensible progression of stardates, DSC’s serialised nature completely undermines that.

As the author finally concludes, though, DSC has to force a stardate reset – something that does not surprise me in the slightest, since it’s obvious from the rate of stardate progression in TOS that the most recent zero had to occur less than year prior to the start of the series. Of course, there’s no in-universe explanation for how Starfleet would have kept track of the various stardate cycles (since the 23rd Century would necessarily have seen multiple resets to limit stardates to 4 digits), but I don’t see any other option.

Not sure, but they do point to Charlie Camarda, whose concerns did get published by our national media service back in February: https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2026-02-18/artemis-ii-heat-shield-concerns-charlie-camarda/106233804

Our government is usually technologically inept.

The first online census (2016) crashed the system because they didn’t allow enough capacity. Anyone with half a brain could have told them that most people were going to try to use it during one particular time – after dinner (especially since the paper census is supposed to count everyone on that particular night). Instead, they decided to rate it for only 1 million form submissions per hour, despite estimating that two-thirds of Australians would fill it out online. At one person per family, that’s around 4 million online submissions. Now factor in that the eastern states have most of the population (and are all in the same time zone at that time of year) and, predictably, the site went down after dinner on census night.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-08-09/abs-website-inaccessible-on-census-night/7711652

So, funnily enough, most of the online stardate calculators make the same mistake I did (start of year = xx000). However, this one doesn’t – it uses the ‘Homestead’ reference instead (based on the source code).

Interesting! If the stardate cycle isn’t aligned with the calendar year, that would make sense (from a production perspective) since the broadcast seasons aren’t aligned to it either. The thought did cross my mind but I’ve never seen it commented upon elsewhere, so thanks for the details.

I doubt Voyager’s clocks would be that much out of sync (especially once contact was re-established with the Federation, as that would reduce any offset to minutes or hours at most), so I usually put down that degree of inaccuracy to the writing (I seriously doubt the writers did anything other than just tried to evenly progress the dates between the start and end of the season).

Interesting. If LLMs can deobfuscate code, I wonder if they (or other AI engines) will make it easier to bypass DRM.