FYI, a kitchen cupboard full of cans is an excellent target for these. It’s amazingly off putting to hope the cupboard have have the contents staring back at you in silent judgement.
Extra kudos if you manage to get a friend/relative without them realising you’re a suspect.
It’s more sibling rivalry than hate. It’s far more terrifying. It gets even more so when something actually threatens either one. Anyone who’s seen the result of picking on the youngest of 3 brothers knows exactly what I mean.
A lot if it is selection bias. Humans prefer animals that show those traits. We instinctively understand how they are thinking/feeling, and that makes us more comfortable with it.
It’s also worth noting that complex mental pathways take a long time to evolve. Nature tends to play with there tuning, rather than strip it out when unnecessary. Most solitary creatures had ancestors that formed groups. There’s no reason to risk breaking useful instincts. They just get overriden by newer ones.
I know someone who developed a load of the underlying code. It’s a lot of bodging, and sensors being ran past their nominal lifespan. Some of them just go a bit unreliable, and the error accumulate until it starts triggering errors.
The scale based ones are quite common in the UK. It’s designed to detect someone putting 2 things into the bag at once.
Unfortunately, it requires the weight to actually be correct, to be programmed in properly, and for the scale to work properly.
Even with problems, it still lets 1 staff member man 8 tills, however, which speeds things up considerably.
I’ve seen “personal identification PIN number” used far too much in the press. I’m not sure who it says more about, journalists, or their readers.
We also set up an excellent photo booth with the same setup.
A DSLR, on a tripod, a cheap remote trigger, and some photography lamps. We used drapes to box it off a bit. Throw in some inflatable props, and let the kids/drunks make it awesome.
The photos on the TV just encouraged others to join in the fun.
Less than 10 years ago, though they were getting obsolete at the time.
I had good luck with these at my wedding. Instead of disposable cameras, I put cheap digital cameras. It didn’t take long for guests to realise that the pictures were appearing on a large tv, in a sideshow. People got a lot more creative when they realised they would be seen quickly, not weeks later.
I managed to get them working without proprietary software, too. The onboard script logged into WiFi and uploaded the photos over ftp.
Given their size and the level of tech at the time, it was pretty impressive.
0.5% is so tiny that it disappears into the noise. It’s a 1 in 200 difference. In theory, it would make a difference. In practice, you won’t be able to measure it. Other confounding factors would bury it.
The difference is about 0.5%. A mass weighing 100kg at the north pole would only weigh 99.5kg at the equator. Most of the difference is the centerfugal force of the earth’s rotation.
I’ve not checked the numbers, but apparently it’s detectable in Olympic sports. More height records get broken at equatorial latitudes that higher ones.
I’m fairly sure I’ve see this picture, or one similar before. It predated stable diffusion, so would have to have been made manually.
What we need is clean, efficient treatment paths for acute depression. Barriers to treatment are the worst thing possible.
We need to work on attacking root causes, not just throw some drugs at the person and call it a day.
We need to help teach depressed people HOW to start pulling themselves out, not just to try harder.
Once the patient is stable, we need to NOT just wash our hands of them, treatment wise. This is the time that spending mental effort will lead to far bigger gains.
It’s the difference between telling someone with broken legs to “walk it off” vs emergency treatment, casts for 6+ weeks, and then physiotherapy where “walk it off” becomes walk on it to rebuild your strength.
The “just try harder” mentality got me into the mess Ive been in. It burnt me out, and it took me decades to even realise how bad I actually was, and years more to even start getting the help I actually needed. Even now, I have to fight for it. 1 slip up, and I’m set back months or years in the process. It’s like putting the hospital A&E department on the 5th floor, with no lifts, and expecting people to walk up if they really want treatment.
All of those points are things that depression actively disrupts. It’s akin to asking an American, living hand to mouth, to just pay out of pocket. It’s not a case of not going on an extra holiday. It’s a case of not making rent payments to do it.
Depression can leave you without enough mental resources to even maintain basic functionality. An upfront cost, for a payout potential years down the line, is simply more than many can afford.
The worst part is that you are correct. However, it’s the same correctness as telling someone about to lose their house to “just make more money”. Technically correct, but useless and callous in practice.
To be fair, my research is decades old at this point.
Some slight ramdom paper reading, back in my uni days. Though I’ve ran across it via other sources over the years since. Unfortunately I don’t have any links to hand though.
It might better be described as people put numbers into categories. Most people have a 10-20 category. 19.99 fits. 20.00 gets bumped up to the next box. It’s a sub/semi conscious thing. If we use our higher thought process, we can deal with the numbers. That takes effort however, by default, we chunk. The price just abuses a common rollover point most people share.
It’s a subconscious thing. It’s how our brain is wired. It’s a bit like advertising. Most people don’t like ads. However, when confronted my 2 similar products, we will go with the familiar one. The source of that familiarity is irrelevant, ads make it familiar, just the same as using it, or a recommendation.
It’s possible to override both of these effects, but that requires a level of conscious effort. I can almost guarantee you’ve been caught by both at different times. You just didn’t notice (since noticing would allow you to correct).
Basically, $19.99 is in the category “under $20”. $20.00 is in “over $20”. Without conscious correction, you act on this.
It was originally to force the cashier to open the till.
Say an item was $20. If the customer paid with a $20 note, then the cashier could, intheory, pocket it, without it showing up on the rocords. If it was $19.99 they needed to open the till to get a cent out. This meant it was recorded, and so the till wouldn’t balance.
Most people round down. Their brain locks on to the 1 of 19.99, and approximates it to 10.00. We need to actively counter this to see it as 20.00. It’s a skill most people don’t apply all the time, and a number can’t even do.
Once you can do it reliably, it’s mind-boggling that others can’t, but it’s still a learnt skill, that needs to be applied.
You got to feel for anyone who ever legitimately fell, and landed, impaling themselves on something. You can guarantee that no-one involved will EVER believe them that it was an accident.