Semjeza

Sulphuric Acid acts on trousers and carpets. Wooden desks seem remarkably immune.

Found out after getting an actual chemical and chemistry set from a deceased relative. Parents didn’t check what was in it, just “chemistry is educational, good he’s learning”.

I was either dropping magnesium or potassium into a beaker of sulphuric acid as both of them were in the set too. And I was either a butterfingered lummox, or the act of dropping the metal into unbalanced the beaker knocked it over and the sulphuric acid cascaded onto my jeans eating through them and making my leg itchy, and bubbling the carpet into a stinky white then grey foam. I can still picture-ish that sight; and I’m normally not very visually minded, a testament to the deep impression the experience left on me.

Was much more sensible after that: just burning magnesium and chucking potassium into tub of water in the garden like you do in Chemistry class from time to time.

I thought it was a common first name because of all the fooling around in the Cyberdog dressing rooms?

No, that’s Europe.

The PRC days off are appalling in comparison. And the previous comment didn’t even mention make up days.

Generally they’re not, provided they can keep it low key.

And since within the PRC it’s quite easy to fire people, and courts and settlement is about how much 面子 you can make the company lose without pissing off local authorities vs. the 关系 and pressure they can bring to bear to have you drop it there’s not much to be done.

“ask” that people do overtime, and then fire them for not being a team player, or downmote them into a stressful deadend if they don’t take the voluntary overtime.

I appreciate the choice made over X-ray fish, Xantops, and Xerus.

Going hard, and I wonder what other letters have.

Other guy did a good job on the main points, but I’ll add something I saw in a study on a kind of bird in the US:

The birds realised cigarette butts had an antibacterial effect, and made efforts to collect and use cigarette butts in their nest building for eggs and chicks.

Learning and making use of novel materials.

You’re not wrong, but I’ve also seen people calling Pluto-Charon binary dwarf planets.

But yes, the IAU tends to only pin down definitions when one is becoming unworkable - in this case the ever larger numbers of trans-Neptune objects that were potential planets.

The arbitrary cutoff size being to ensure continuity of the scientific consensus in popular awareness when I was a child isn’t a stupid rule.

Not even when a larger kuiper belt object is found.

Not even, when since mass is the primary means of estimating size until we fly a probe out there, we estimate a smaller but much with much more mass object to be larger and we debate a 10th planet yet again.

I’m only down with the “Pluto is a planet” crowd, if they rep Ceres and at least one of the others (Eris, Hamuhea, Makemake, or one of the others I forget) too.

So there’s no version of the solar system where there’s only 9 planets. It’s 11+ lads.