Technically valid but extremely rich coming from a US state of all places.

https://iowaspulse.com/iowa-flock-license-plate-cameras-privacy/

Safe to say they're not against spying in general.

If you're an average American, the spying Iowa allows and embraces put you in far graver danger than spying by China who doesn't give a shit about you or what you have to say about them. America, as we've seen, cares slightly more about what Americans say than China does.

I'd stay clear of Temu mainly because it's a shitty platform replete with blatant scams and you risk losing your money. Go to an actually reputable Chinese site if you want to buy from one, or don't if you don't.

Also don't buy cloud/app enabled cameras if you give a shit about privacy. From anywhere, period, because doing so guarantees you'll be spied on by someone, China or otherwise. Roll your own local network camera system with hardware and software you control or get ones that only record to local storage with no smart features.

Don't you remember after the defeat of Tarantulon 6 when Richard Nixon gave everyone a $300 tax refund in the form of a Tricky Dick Fun Bill.

explosive report by the UK’s spy leaders that found the collapse of ecosystems overseas would have catastrophic consequences for the UK’s national security

Giving "we musn't kill our slaves because dead slaves are worthless."

Can we skip to the part of the movie when the US gets its kneecaps broken in an alley while the mob boss stands over it and screams "WHERE'S MY MONEY?!"

There's too much pointless filler in this plot.

Incidentally, I must also be paid to use Windows.

I'll gladly wait for the Node.js start menu to render on company time 👍

OK, time to read another mainstream science article with a vague unscientific term like "strongest" in the title. Maybe it's just the title that's bad and the article will clear it up?

Now the snails have upped their tough-guy street cred

Oh jeez...

snails’ teeth are made of the strongest natural material out there

You want to define what strongest means in this context up front? You know, like scientists tend to do for their terms?

No?

Spider silk, often compared to kevlar, has wowed with its tough yet flexible powers.

Spider silk is not a superhero. It doesn't have "powers." You probably meant properties but that doesn't sound as cool does it?

And "compared to" kevlar in what ways? You can compare tons of things but not all comparisons are helpful.

But when tested, the tooth material was, on average, about five times stronger than most spider silk, reports BBC News.

What tests did they do that it was five times stronger in? They gave it a math test and measured its emotional resolve?

"Most spider silk" which ones? Did the paper not say? Not even "the top 10 strongest spider silks" or something, just "most" of them?

Jesus fucking Christ.

This makes it the strongest natural material on Earth.

Can you motivate this conclusion at least a little? Because from what I've read so far I don't have enough information to believe you or call bullshit.

Tests in the lab revealed that it can withstand pressure that would turn carbon into diamond.

Gee whiz! Sure would have been nice to have some numbers and units with that because most people don't know how much pressure it takes to turn carbon into diamond.

Also, you can't turn carbon "into" diamond because diamond is a form of carbon. It'd be like me saying I turned a pidgeon into a bird. Did you mean graphite into diamond maybe?

Thats’s comparable to a single strand of spaghetti holding up about 3,300 one-pound bags of sugar

Yeah but how many one-pound bags of feathers could the spaghetti hold up?

Also, didn't know the cross sectional area of spaghetti was so standardised it can replace actual measurements.

This is a comparison you'd read in the Pokédex, of a C-tier Pokémon no one gives a shit about.

Also you were talking about pressure a second ago but now you're talking about tension? Those aren't the same for a given material.

And there are also two rare, natural materials that can withstand more stress than diamond

Now you're talking about stress???

wurtzite boron nitrate—has a diamond-like arrangement at the atomic level.

[...]

lonsdaleite—is all carbon but has a hexagonal structure. (Diamond’s cubic.)

So you think we're stupid enough to need spaghetti as a unit but we're supposed to just know what arrangement diamond has at the atomic level?

Why is this article so inconsistent with the background knowledge it assumes we have?

Hard and strong-yet-flexible materials offer attractive properties for engineers looking to build the next generation of materials

Ah yes, they need materials to build... materials.

I kind of get what they're saying but it's worded so awkwardly and doesn't inspire confidence in the article.

the terminology in this story could cause confusion for some readers. There are many different scientific terms used to describe an object’s capacity to resist bending or breaking apart, each of which has subtle differences. In this article, we use the terms toughness and strength to refer to the object’s tensile strength—the capacity of an object to resist pulling apart. This differs from compressive strength, which describes the amount of squeezing an object could withstand. The above discussion of wurtzite boron nitrate refers to not to tensile strength but the hardness of the material, which is its capacity to resist scratching or cutting.

Love that they went to the effort of saying that but didn't see fit to actually rework the article.

It's science "journalists" like these that help perpetuate science denialism among the public by making science seem like just a bunch of morons screwing around drawing whatever conclusion they feel like, instead of the rigorous, disciplined process it actually is.

"AI I need you to help me out of bed and feed me"

"Sorry, I can't help you with that. Would you like me to rattle off your neighbour's race, personal beliefs, and medical and criminal history instead?"

"Actually, yeah. I did need to move and eat today but random gossip about random people is just as good. Thanks AI and government regulators!"

Not like they were smart enough to actually make up a story out of the blue.

"Participation"

Yeah how dare they not participate after getting fired.

I mean, unless they’re directly cutting up old buildings into the final block shape for this (which would be a nightmare to actually do), it doesn’t actually help that much. You can’t practically un-make concrete and turn it back into that slurry that comes out of the mixer truck, AFAIK all “recycled” concrete means is old concrete gets crushed into fragments and used in place of gravel. But the gravel is not the truly problemic part, you still need more cement to bind those fragments into your desired shape, which releases carbon and consumes water.

(Reposted from another reply in the same thread)