You're absolutely right! There's something called the "Kolmogorov Zero-One Law" that says "the probability of something always happening again is either 100% or 0%". But usually, what people mean by this is that anything where the probability of it happening on any given day is some minimum nonzero amount (or a probability that goes to zero, but slowly enough that the probabilities add up over time), then it's going to happen eventually with probability 1.

My stalker follows this advice, and I really wish she wouldn't.

12 o'clock Noon is when the sun is directly North/South/overhead, but not East or West any. But because it would be impossible to keep appointments if everywhere kept its own local time, we break geography into big chunks called "time zones." Everywhere in that zone agrees to use the same time, which is about correct for the middle of the zone, and is exactly one hour offset from the zones on either side.

Because the sun is over the east before it's over the west, the eastern zones experience things like sunrise, local noon, and sunset before zones to the west. So, if local noon is 12o'clock, then by the time it's 12 in the central zone, it's already 1 on the east where local noon happened an hour ago.

Overcome two big lies at once.

Cancer is not a type of cell. It's a word for any type of cell that isn't listening to its programmed instructions to stop diving and die (apoptosis) after it stops being useful to the body. So, brain cells that become cancerous look like brain cells. Heart cells that become cancerous look like heart cells. And so on.

Your son is probably confused because we often show children pictures of soot-damaged lung tissue and talk about how smoking causes cancer, so it's easy to think that those pictures are "what cancer looks like." But no, cancer cells look like any other, usually.

Okay. That's fair. I will say that many of the other categories you lost will be predominated by people unwilling to scan through that much nuance. This is a dilemma I know well: I write curricula for proof-based math modules, and the balance between showing enough steps not to lose anyone and not so many that even otherwise enthusiastic students feel their eyes glaze over is a difficult optimization problem. I only meant that I might have struck a different point on that spectrum in service of that balance.

I'm pretty sure there are whole pages that are both redundant and devoid of content. Just words for words' sake. Like, I don't mean to insult you as the author. I was having a side conversation with someone else who thought your paper wasn't even connected to your thesis, and I said, essentially, "there's some content there, but you've really got to hunt for it." But no, I don't think there are reasonable consumers of philosophy who would have their knowledge or insight positively added to by most of the sentences in that paper.

I think there are four or five reasonably-sized sentences worth of insight there, and I would have been delighted to read those four or five sentences. I resent being sent on a scavenger hunt to find that insight scattered across pages and pages of filler and fluff.

There's a cogent point in there, relevant by reasonable standards, but it definitely falls afoul of the "either say something or stop talking" rule.

Grain. Both Sulphur and Nitrogen fertilizer are being taken off the market by crises throughout Asia (Russia's wars of expansion and Chinese collapse). Food is about to get pricy in most places.

It saves me five minutes a few times per day. At least an hour per week. Even at minimum wage, it's paid for itself in a few months.

Or buy commercial-grade Japanese products. Regular size, but also efficient and effective. For instance, I just got rid of my kettle for a Zojirushi water-boiler. Hot water on demand, five minutes faster, with a similar countertop profile as a kettle.

The only positive thing that can be said about this post is that the title is an accurate summary of the article.