There’s the old saying: “If you have to ask how much it costs, you can’t afford it.”

So they’re either incompetent, are hoping you are, or they’re playing to this logic and only want rich customers.

These options are not mutually exclusive either.

We’ll only rejoin if it makes the rich people who live here a lot of money, and that would have to be as soon as possible after that happens.

Otherwise, picture a child sitting, pouting and petulant, arms folded tight, on a stool in a corner saying “no!”

There’s a vague possibility of long-term gains turning their heads as well, but the armchair physicist and psychologist in me thinks that the gain would need to be proportional to the square of time in order get through their greedy little brains.

My parents were of the opinion they were an elaborate hoax until they had me draw what I saw in one of them.

This was in a newspaper 30 or so years ago maybe. The image was accompanied by a depth-map image of what should be visible, but they covered that up. Then they asked if I’d looked at the newspaper before them because, even with my terrible art skills, it was clearly what was in the depth-map version.

I think they believed me in the end though.

FWIW, I can see them and am probably some level of ADHD or autistic. I would have expected the correlation to be the other way around to be honest, i.e. more neurodiverse folks can see magic eye images than neurotypicals, but our two data points aren’t enough to say one way or the other, only that maybe neurodiversity has nothing to do with the ability after all.

2140000000 for decimal round number enjoyers

0x7FEEDBAC for hexadecimal pun enjoyers

Edit: See responses for why this probably wouldn’t work. Nonetheless, if I was a grower I might look into it anyway just to see what happens. How much could a dry corner of a field affect margins anyway…

Fun fact: Rice can be grown in the dry. The reason it’s grown in the wet is that, unlike other grasses, it tolerates being grown in the wet, and so the water protects the rice from unspecified environmental factors.

My point here being the question as to whether the factors that destroy rice in the dry are worse than these flamingos. And if not, there’s a solution presenting itself here.

My parents recently got rid of a set of encyclopedias that they’d had in the house since at least the '90s. I don’t actually remember where they came from or exactly when they were suddenly there, but recently they got rid of them (donated to charity) and I was a little offended - not that I said as much - that they didn’t offer them to me.

They weren’t even recent. They were printed in the early ‘50s, but in my parents’ (still) no-Internet house, those encyclopedias were a good pastime.

There are usually several sets of the same available on eBay, but 1) the good sets are a bit out of my price range, 2) I have internet here and 3) I’m already hoarding far too much stuff.

Obligatory caution that that can backfire if the recipient insists that the debtor counts the pennies. Or if the creditor refuses the pennies entirely, which is legal in some jurisdictions. (e.g. in the UK, pennies and 2p coins are legal tender up to amounts of only 20 pence. Anything beyond that is left to the discretion of the recipient.)

Well, no, but in a sense, I kind of was. The ovum already existed and had for <mother’s age at the time> years, but the exact sperm did not. I came along too much later for that to have been possible. But my DNA was all there. Just not assembled in the right order yet.

Alternatively, if you believe in reincarnation, I still might have been. I have at least one relative who was there who didn’t make it to my birth. Maybe I’m one of them come back.

If that was a conscious choice, that may have been a mistake, but that’s another story.

The site malfunctioned for me because of the NoScript browser extension, so for a second I thought I’d somehow become colour-blind.

Once I sorted that problem, it loaded the example images properly and they all look different to me, confirming that I’m not colour-blind.

You mean, right-click and save-as the images that are built into the site before uploading them somewhere else? That seems unnecessary. Anyone could grab those from the site themselves. Or use the site.

The site malfunctioned for me because of the NoScript browser extension, so for a second I thought I’d somehow become colour-blind.

Once I sorted that problem, it loaded the example images properly and they all look different to me, confirming that I’m not colour-blind.

Oh man, I was freaking out for a second after clicking one of the simulations and seeing no difference from the regular image. Then I thought to check whether NoScript had blocked scripts from the site. Yeah. So, it hadn’t loaded the simulated image and I was seeing the original.

Look, if I’m wrong, I’m wrong, but you’re not making a good case here. Brine is also known as salt water. Just how much of a stretch is that? Sea water is salt water. Sea water is also known as brine. Depending on which term we use, either the sea turns into milk or it doesn’t. This is a problem.

But then this is all a hypothetical and maybe the real bend is how far we’re both getting out of shape over this :p

This. The modern mathematical symbols, at least in their current use, are no older than 550 years. Heck, the numerals we use are about as old as that. The Arabic world had a head start with early versions of those numerals, but even then, those are only twice as old as the oldest mathematical symbols still in use.

Prior to that, people wrote things out in words, or, as you suggest, invented their own symbologies and shorthands.

I have a book around here somewhere that shows how Diophantus wrote a particular polynomial equation and it’s all Greek letters, some with macrons (overlines), some superscripts that don’t mean what we’d use superscripts to mean, and one large upturned capital psi in the middle of it. Mind-boggling.

And they’d be more mystified by our notation than we are by theirs because at least we (or some of us) know what Greek letters and numerals are. They’d have no such head start.

Information paradox detected. You’ll somehow die and your own advanced biology will become the trigger you went there to seek.

Another name for brine is “salt water”. Now is it water or not?

My kettle boils a mug’s worth of water in less than a minute, and it takes me longer than that for even a brief toilet visit and washing of hands. I have learned not to switch the kettle on until I get back from the bathroom, otherwise I’ll be boiling the water twice.

Important factors: 1) Britain has 230V mains power so electric kettles can boil water incredibly quickly, 2) The stereotype about Brits and tea is true in my case. I get through three to six mugs of the stuff per day. 3) Hot tea must be made with boiling water. Power isn’t cheap and re-boiling the water adds up over time.

Now you have to define “water form”. What percentage of dissolved constituents prevent water from being “water form”? Or is it how it looks rather than what’s in it?

It’s possible to have a brine solution of 25% salt that looks like ordinary water, at least at first glance, for example. Would only the H2O molecules in that be replaced by milk or would the salt be replaced as well?

What if I add food dye to a glass of water beforehand? That doesn’t look like water any more, so would that get turned into milk? Would the dye stay?

How about if I mixed an emulsifier, oil and chalk dust into a glass of water beforehand? That’s not milk, but it looks like milk. What would happen with that? And then we’re back to percentages again, I guess.

https://theconversation.com/palestine-action-what-it-means-to-proscribe-a-group-and-what-the-effects-could-be-259619

This article states that injuries are alleged to have resulted from the group’s actions. I should have added this to my original comment in the first place, but better late than never.

I was adding an edit to that part of my comment to clarify as you were submitting yours. I agree that it doesn’t even look like they’re seeking to injure anyone.