lol what?

‘con’ (in "pro(s) and “con(s)”) is for ‘contra.’ From the OED:

An argument or consideration in favour of something; reasoning in support of a proposition, thesis, etc. Chiefly in pros and cons (also pros and contras): reasons or arguments for and against something, advantages and disadvantages. Occas. also pro and contra (also pro and con): argument, debate.

Con is obviously shortened in modern usage, because it better matched “pro”.

“Con” means “against” and has nothing to do with “with” (or Latin “cum”).

An anecdote in agreement:

The CEO of my company left in September 2025. For years leading up to that, there were 3-4 layoffs/riffs of approx. 5% reductions. Never hired more US employees except for VP and C-level until we became very top-heavy. What jobs they do replace are primarily India and some in Argentina, many are contractors. They “cook the books” by avoiding taxes and “creatively” avoiding reporting gains/losses due to having a large amount of contractors. 2025 ended up losing a ton of customers due to churn (i.e. leaving or not renewing contracts). Most of our customera are US or North America-based and the contractor teams have such high turnover that customers are sick of us not supporting them well anymore.

Know where that former CEO is now? An AI startup.

You’re right. I was thinking “alphabetic” would resonate more with a general audience, albeit not 100% accurate. Thanks for pointing it out!

As a bonus note, the term “mora” is used to describe a syllabic characters.

In case you’re wondering, the “Japanese” section of the shirt has a mixture of actual Katakana (usually used for “style” or foreign words) and Hiragana (used for native words and [grammar] case markers). Plus, random shapes that look somewhat like Katakana. Some appear to be backwards Katakana, while some are simply made up (like the “R” character).

Also, the shirt says you need to turn you head to read it… But traditional Japanese, which was written top-down and right-to-left, was readable without turning your head. T L K H I I I K N S E D A

I realize it’s meant as a joke. But if you know Japanese, even if only how to read the non-Kanji, alphabetic characters (Katakana and Hiragana), it borders on lame. Especially since they faked a bunch of the characters.

This is actually false in a literal translation sense. That’s the interpretation/implication of the title. Similar to how you would interpret the title of a biography called, “Abraham Lincoln”, as “The story (of the life) of Abraham Lincoln”, despite the latter not being the actual title.

In this case, the title is literally “Odysseyus” where “-us” is the nomative (subject) case case marker required in Latin. The English literal translation is, therefore, simply “Odyssey”, his name.

Because it’s an epic story, however, it matches English and general writing conventions to translate it as “The story/journey/epic/tale/what-have-you of Odyssey.”

Over time, especially in English, “O/odyssey” has taken on a more generic term, as well. So, adding the extra stuff in an interpreted translation (vs. literal translation) also helps differentiate the title of the book from a generic odyssey that might be a grand adventure by/with a different main character.

Even the Sun’s light can take thousands of years to actually exit the sun.

The wording is not how light from our sun works… Unless you’re simplifying greatly. It’s not in a maze or some container that takes thousands of years to escapes. The light is based on photons that are emitted via nuclear fusion then some mass being converted to energy/photons.

I’ve read that photons can bounce around (i.e. be absorbed and re-emitted) an estimated 40,000 years… but we all should understand that is a) an estimate and b) an estimate for the inner-most photons. Photons created via near-surface level areas of the sun may be emitted outward from the sun near-instantaneously.

All this to say that the light/photon(s) don’t/doesn’t start out as light. However, once a photon exists, it may be trapped for thousands of years due to the shear amount of mass trapping it and needing to be absorbed/re-emitted until space-bound!

$150 per hour? I’m in salaried software engineering and barely making a third of that after a promotion.

If what you propose happens, all the prices of everything would skyrocket… It seems good on paper, but it ignores all the greed of capitalism…

For better or worse, (the latter for rich folks…) there “needs” to be tiers of incomes (in Capitalism). Bumping the minimum just bumps the prices. We’ve already experience it with minimum wage bumps in the US. We don’t have an actual solution that works at the moment in the US because minimum wage increases automatically lead to greedier CEOs.

A social security number/card is not exclusive to citizens. Green card/permanent residents, for example, usually get them - particularly, if planning to/already working.

Any kind of national/citizen id would need a whole new process and require it be provided to 100% of existing citizens. Time-consuming and certainly a cost associated with the process.

It’s one of those “in theory” easy things, but a lot more difficult in practice, I imagine.

Interesting fact I learned when replacing detectors is that small humans (i.e. toddlers) are more likely to wake up and respond to human voices/words.

There are detectors, for example, that say “Fire” (in English-speaking countries, of course). And kids are statistically more likely to wake up and respond to the smoke detector alert than the brain-piercing, ear-splitting buzzers that are more standard.

I put the above ones in bedrooms and the horrible, deafening ones in hallways and common areas. I also went the 10yr lithium battery route. Had to search online to order these, because they’re not generally available at retail stores.

Papers probably was the wrong one to bold.

Effects (i.e. personal effects) is likely better and the first definition I found is “Items of personal property that one carries on one’s person, including identification, jewelry, and clothing.”.

I’d argue a phone falls under this definition.