The New Coffee Room

@jon-nyc

@Mik said in Anyone else do the monthly Apple iPhone plan?:

My 12 is still going strong and the overnight charge almost always lasts the whole day. I don't use a lot of storage on my phone. Can't see the fixed cost.

Same! LOL. Great mind think alike.

@Axtremus said in Deporation - Not Just for Spanish people any more:

About training the American workers... How about sending American workers to South Korea to train there, then bring them back to build the factories in the USA?

I think part of the "problem" doing something like that is that the most learning experience comes during a factory/plant/refinery startup. Unexpected problems, new equipment, etc.

Training at an already operating plant/factory/refinery, etc is good but leaves a lot behind.

I have a friend who did/does a lot of startup work for oil plants and said that starting up a new plant (6 months to a year) was worth years of experience vs. working in a existing steady state oil plant.

Maybe somewhat analogy to a military doctor in the field in wartime vs. a doctor working in a rural hospital.

https://www.npr.org/2025/09/16/nx-s1-5535545/pythagorean-triple-square-day-9-16-25

Once a century, a very special day comes along. That day is today — 9/16/25.

Pi Day (3/14) often comes with sweet treats; Square Root Day (4/4/16 or 5/5/25, for example) has a certain numerical rhyme. But the particular string of numbers in today's date may be especially delightful to the brains of mathematicians and the casual nerds among us.

First, "all three of the entries in that date are perfect squares — and what I mean by that is 9 is equal to 32, 16 is equal to 42, and 25 is equal to 52," says
Next, those perfect squares come from consecutive numbers — three, four, and five.

But perhaps most special of all is that three, four, and five are an example of what's called a Pythagorean triple.

https://media.defense.gov/2025/Sep/15/2003799859/-1/-1/1/GROOMING-STANDARDS-FOR-FACIAL-HAIR.PDF

from another source

The new face of the military will be one without facial hair, even if that means enduring painful razor bumps. Service members who require a medical shaving waiver for more than one year must be separated from the military, Defense
Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered in a memo dated Aug. 20 and released publicly Monday. “The grooming standard set by the U.S. military is to be clean shaven and neat in presentation for a proper military appearance,” the memo states.
https://www.stripes.com/theaters/us/2025-09-16/pentagon-limits-medical-shaving-waivers-19111274.html

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cq8e57eexn2o

Two teenagers who peed into a pot of broth at a hotpot restaurant have been ordered to pay 2.2m yuan ($309,000; £227,000) to two catering companies in China.
The incident, which happened in February at a Shanghai branch of China's biggest hotpot chain Haidilao, sparked widespread criticism after the 17-year-olds posted a video of their drunken act online.
There is no suggestion that anyone consumed the contaminated broth but Haidilao had offered to pay thousands of diners who dined at the restaurant in the days following the incident.
In March, Haidilao sought more than 23m yuan in losses, saying this took into account the amount it compensated customers over the incident.

Last Friday, a Shanghai court found that the teenagers had infringed upon the companies' property rights as well as reputation through "acts of insult", noting that their actions contaminated tableware and "caused strong discomfort among the public".
It also found that the teens' parents had "failed to fulfil their duty of guardianship" and ordered that they bear the compensation, state media reported.
This includes 2m yuan for operational and reputational damage, 130,000 yuan to one of the caterers for tableware losses and cleaning expenses, and 70,000 yuan in legal costs.

Or rank choice.

Finally got around to reading this. It was a good read.

Not a surprise about the below and am not sure how and when it will change.

The shift reflects deeper problems in American governance. Rising partisanship makes bipartisan cooperation on individual bills increasingly difficult. Members face stronger pressure from party leadership and interest groups to maintain unified positions rather than seek compromise.

Electoral incentives compound these problems. Representatives from safe districts face more pressure from primary challengers who punish any appearance of cooperation with the opposing party. This dynamic rewards ideological purity over pragmatic problem-solving.

Media coverage also reinforces polarization by focusing on conflict rather than legislative substance. Complex policy debates get reduced to simple narratives about political winners and losers that make compromise appear weak rather than necessary.

Kind of ties in to your forum thread about Joe Manchin book.

@jon-nyc said in This week in lawfare:

Pro tip: If you want to effectively deny having an enemies list, don’t publish it.

LOL Funny how people when given evidence about past things they said/did, still try and lie their way out of it.

I have seen the movie "the Sting". That was a fun movie all the way through to the end.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/article/rare-tooth-in-eye-surgery-restores-mans-vision-after-two-decades/

In a healthy eye, the cornea acts like a windshield, allowing light to pass through to the lens and then to the retina, where it is converted into electrical signals sent to the brain. The cornea’s clarity depends on adequate lubrication and a steady renewal of cells by limbal stem cells. In conditions like Stevens-Johnson syndrome, those systems fail.

When the cornea is permanently opaque and the eye rejects a cornea transplant, surgeons sometimes turn to tooth-in-eye surgery.

A canine tooth, which is the longest tooth in the human mouth, is extracted from the jaw, along with a thin layer of bone around the tooth that provides support and blood, keeping it alive. The tooth is then shaved into a 4 millimeter-thick block and drilled to hold a plastic optical cylinder, explained Dr. Ben Kang, Chapman’s oral maxillofacial surgeon and division head of Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery at Vancouver General Hospital.

The shaved tooth, with the lens in place, is implanted into the patient’s cheek or eyelid for several months, allowing soft tissue to grow around it.

“The tooth is a really ideal structure for holding a focusing element in place,” Moloney said. “It’s hard, it’s rigid, it survives in poor environments, and the body accepts it because it’s part of its own.”

The next step is to make a hole in the front of the patient’s eye to create space for the new complex.

Once the tooth-lens complex is integrated with living tissue, it is surgically attached to the front of the eye, replacing the damaged cornea’s function. Tissue from inside the patient’s mouth is used to cover the tooth part of the device, giving the new eye a pink shade. Light can then pass through the clear lens to the retina, enabling vision again, provided that everything behind the cornea — the retina and optic nerve— remains healthy.

Moloney said there are two types of candidates for the surgery: people like Chapman, who have tried every other procedure, or those who are so severely affected by their initial disease that doctors know from the outset that other options won’t work.

The surgery, which can take over 12 hours across two stages, is rare and performed by only a handful of specialists worldwide. But for people who qualify, success can mean regaining nearly normal vision.

Just finished a Taiwan series called "Light the Night". Quite good, I thought. Life, love, drama, and murder in a Taiwan hostess bar in the late 1980's Taipei city. Good acting and very atmospheric.

Perfect example of how president Trump was against and then for it, so his supporters were at first against Tik Tok but now for it.

https://nodebb.the-new-coffee-room.club/topic/10826/unvaccinated-america-in-5-charts?_=1757985226300

interesting.

@jon-nyc that is true. It just shows how strong a "hold" he has on the Republics. He can change his mind 180 degrees, and the same people who were cheering his previous choice would be just as loud cheering his 180 different choice.

Yup, the "middle" type of politician is hard to exist in today's world. Looks like it would be an interesting reading.

Somewhat related, was looking through Chicago Tribune newspaper and there was an article about a former governor of Illinois named Jim Edgar who just died. He was one of the most popular governors in Illinois ever, but said in a article that he "would have trouble winning a primary in todays world"

Edgar’s fiscal conservativism and moderate stance on social issues, including his support for abortion rights, for years made him the template for a successful statewide Republican candidate. But in recent years, that template has been ignored by many hopefuls who wound up going down in defeat. Edgar himself said he doubted he could win a primary in the Trump-era of far-right GOP ideology.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/09/14/former-two-term-illinois-gov-jim-edgar-who-led-the-state-through-much-of-the-1990s-dies-at-79/

"Personal Trainers Hate This One Trick to Lose Weight"

@bachophile said in Some maps:

Something similar in SE Asia, but specifically Indonesia. The term there is "jam kurat" or "rubber time". LOL