Isn’t saying “alkalinity is a stabilizer the prevents pH from wildly swinging up or down the spectrum” somewhat like saying “shortness is a stabilizer that prevents height from wildly swinging up or down”?

Assuming the reference to urban dictionary is some next-level Kinja shit. Urban dictionary is where you go to find out what morons think of things.

Good kinja, there.

Well done. This is how to do a “distillation take.”

Never mind. It’s just going to start a flame war.

Alas, Babylon was a lot happier. Written in the 50's, I think. Not very accurate, but it wasn’t bad for the tweener times when I read it.

Reminds me of the book I read in 9th grade: Alas, Babylon. I think by Pat Frank? It was pretty good.

Same! UFO 54-40 messed with my very young head.

That’s...beautiful and sad. We’re happy to have you here, for right now.

Lance Armstrong is a great case—he was even more pointed and forthright than King has been, and for longer. Maybe she’s right, and anyone (like me) who has doubts about her authenticity is being influenced by what’s happened before, and the only solution is total banning. Except that the testing is often easily…

True. I was kind of put off by King’s holier-than-thou attitude a bit, but it’s a hell of a lot more understandable than the “pearl-clutching” of sports journalism.

There was a discussion about this type of thing years ago on slate.com and one of the examples was Gary Sheffield having received 3 consecutive eye surgeries which made his vision 20/10.

Oh, I think they regulate the fun purposes, too. :-)

Fine, I’ll google it myself. Sheesh.

Yeah, it’s covered by the awesomely-named:

Exactly. However, they probably don’t consider their jurisdiction to be infinite, but the language is probably already in place for, e.g., “how far up are you going?” and/or “for what purpose do you need FAA permission to be in the air?” So, while we can accept that they need permission to go through the air to get…

Sorry, I was being cheeky. I knew it would backfire. You’re not a Deist, but it just reminds me of all the political and social maneuverings that have happened in U.S. History where people could basically be atheists, but would claim to be Deists, because that was essentially a form of “socially acceptable atheism”…

The term is “deist,” then.

No. You misunderstand me. I’m not saying the graph itself is having an effect, or that the graph is misplaced, or even that it’s not a good, informative, helpful graph. I’m saying that the graph is showing the effect of other media (aside from 538). I was too succinct at first, and I’m sure I’m too succinct now, but…

Starred for your spelling, you plucky Candadian? Brit? Australian? Either way, yeah, here where it’s spelled “favorite”, the rage and shock are manufactured at a terrifying pace. :-)