Peterkin

Another excellent idea!

None whatsoever. But then, Gericke didn't know how to produce electricity and Volta didn't know to store it, until they figured it out. That's what science is: after you're done with speculating, you think, study, observe and experiment.

Interesting idea. You should investigate it scientifically.

No, it really doesn't. The food has precisely the number of calories it has, whether it's been sung-to or sworn-at or snubbed altogether. However, when you are happy cooking, you may apply seasoning more generously, or pay closer attention to temperature and duration, so that the food is prepared more competently than if you do it as an unwanted chore. The cat wolfed down her food - possibly because it was richer than usual - and chucked it up because it was unchewed. Or she had hairballs, as The Vat said. One of mine throws up at least once a week, because he's a greedy bugger and tries to gobble up everything before the other two get to it. Still manages to stay overweight, so I guess he's absorbing the energy. It's a form of self-comforting - easing anxiety or expressing pleasure, like the unconscious purring of a kitten - that some people developed in infancy and retain for life. It doesn't affect the food.

Nobody cares.

That seems the most likely reason.... And if it's a sales position, to see how well you do it.

It's kind of a trick question, isn't it? They already know why you need a job; they already know the choices available to you. Proceed on the assumption that they're aware of your situation. As to their motivation in asking: Maybe you have a skill that's in demand, and they don't want to hire somebody who will be poached away by a rival, once he's learned all their secrets. So they want some indication that you're not motivated pay alone. Maybe the position requires a certain degree of interpersonal confidence and they want to know how much bullshit to expect from you. Maybe they have recently introduces some costly upgrades and want to know whether that attracts good prospective employees. If you're not aware of anything like that, have no reason to prefer one employer over another from their POV, then think of your own: commuting time, flexibility, work environment, security, reputation of the company. If none of that is a factor, try simply an interest in the work itself. If you've applied to more than one company for the same position, be open about it: I want this job at whichever company feels like the best fit - or has the best benefit package - or offers it first.

Solar energy breakthrough: Perovskite cell with greater stability, efficiency

If true, I would expect it to be the result of a human preoccupation with marking milestones. I've made it to 90; I can let go now; I'll just hang on till my birthday and see the family one more time. Reportedly, Scott Nearing decided to stop living on his 100th birthday, but was so tough, it took two more weeks. I had a rather awful feeling today that I will die in a head-on collision on the highway. I suspect it's more the function of a growing phobia - speed - than an example of clairvoyance.

Commenting on your own feeling is not "a claim" that requires you to explain it rationally; it's just conversation. But I can certainly understand why someone would not talk about such feelings outside their intimate circle - or maybe even to anyone at all. People so often react negatively: think you're lying, or hallucinating, or deluded. And there are also the credulous who would pester you to make predictions for them, and charlatans who make false claims to clairvoyance. It seems best to keep one's genuine spooky experience private - so I wouldn't be surprised if the documentation were unreliable.

The same day or night, in every case. Before. Several weeks before, since mail from Europe took some time to arrive. We didn't have internet back then. No, she never "claimed" anything. She just said: "I think George is dead." or something like. Oh sure, but they were inconsequential events. Could have been just observation and projection or the standard fallback: coincidence. Deaf as a post to the paranormal, me.

Feeling that somebody you care for is about to die isn't funny. I've had lots of funny feelings, but as I've already admitted, not that one. Exactly. So, statistics, even supposed ones, shed very little light on this subject.

I don't think that would go unnoticed. Unreported, probably. I've never had it, and I can imagine someone deliberately ignoring or denying it because it's so unpleasant. My mother had it, only in regard to her siblings: I know of four occasions when she had a premonition of their or their spouse's death - that's just the times I was around to hear about it. So I'm not prepared to dismiss it out of hand. You can say it's been reported and recorded so many times; not how many times it's actually happened. There are no statistics about thing people feel but don't say. I don't think about is. It's appealing and frightening: Jung just requires too much of the fall-back-somebody-will-catch-you commitment to our common humanity.

Canadians in different regions might also use different terms. The words "ranch" and "bungalow" have both been used for the same style - single story house laid out along a central hallway; it was a change here from the standard two-storey plus attic, square brick construction that had been the most common before the 1950's. The post war subdivisions of inexpensive, uniform 2-bedroom homes were often referred to as ticky-tacky. In more affluent neighbourhoods, Craftsman, Cape Cod and Spanish colonial were popular.

Oh, I think the private sector still does its share. However thrifty and ecology-conscious individual citizens may be, business always has higher priorities: they'll spend a lot more on advertising their greenness than actually cutting down on their toxic byproducts and waste.

We wouldn't need to reduce consumption so much, if we just stopped the waste. https://blog.constellation.com/2021/01/22/energy-wasting-habits-at-home/ I almost neglected my noirest of betes! https://www.epa.gov/enforcement/environmental-challenge-military-munitions-and-federal-facilities

Why? More interestingly: How?

The more numerous and diverse "we" are, the less we reach consensus on anything. We were unable to ban them when two countries owned them. Now nine countries officially own them and several more have accidental possession through the breakdown of USSR and others are aspiring to own them and the waste products are scattered all over the world. Most of these countries can't agree on the shape of the table they'll sit at to discuss mutual annihilation. I'm no statistician, but I don't care for the odds.

No. But they are still possible candidates. True. I don't know who will actually do, but I do believe that the more people can, the more likely it becomes that one of them will. I'm not convinced the two scenarios are technically in the same realm of probability. Or diplomatic negotiability. The slightly larger previous question was whether the proliferation of nuclear weapons guarantees safety. I say "No", but I can't prove it. With that wholly inadequate contribution, I will now go back to watching "Madame Secretary".

Those are two possible candidates. Pakistan, Iran, China... or any number of unknown terrorist and criminal forces that get hold of illicit nuclear material for purposes you can't begin to guess, and set dirty bombs off in unpredicted locations. The existence of those things guarantees that everyone's at risk, the more players, large and small, national and transnational, known and unknown, will try to get in on the action.

It's insane. You can't regulate or negotiate insanity.

Yes, I think that's part of it. There are periods in every life of something like hiatus or fallowness, when not a lot happens, when we're not particularly creative or productive. Like writer's block or burnout; sometimes grief, or recovery from physical or mental trauma, depression... a lot of bad shit rains into people's lives, and they need time to regroup, rebuild before they get on with the next thing. Most of what happens in that interval is not noted or recorded. Usually, these periods last weeks or months, and then we're back at the desk, on deck, on the route, on the assembly line, our good reliable old selves. (not really; never the same) Those times-out are blank in the memory; time resumes, as if no time had passed. But life has gone by without us, and we can never catch up.

There is another factor. We calculate the segments of past time in relation to the whole. When you're two years old, a year is half of your life. Odds are, you can recall only the last week or so as a continuous segment, in which a large part of what happened was unique, unfamiliar. You may not recall any suppertimes except the one when you threw a tantrum over the carrots, but that's still an event. That week was 1/104th of all the time and events you've experienced, and you're already allocating memory-space according to significance. As your mental faculties expand, so does you memory - at the same time that novelty of experience and memorability of individual events diminish. What happened in the past week becomes a smaller and smaller portion of all that has happened in your lifetime. When a year is 1/50th of your life, the past week contains only 1/2600th of your experience, and most of what happened in that period is insignificant. (I also think Covid and lockdown tended to flatten all of our experiences, as fewer venues and opportunities for social encounters were available and much of our daily activity became constrained routine.)

No. At least, not by conventional means. Too few. However, if DNA is taken from all the individuals that are still alive - plus as many remnants of the dead ones as possible - it could be saved for a renaissance in some post-apocalyptic future.

There are some variables that could reduce the ill effects. If you are naturally nocturnal and don't have to make a huge change in your life habits, that would make the shift easier. The worst part of shift work is usually the shifting itself; having to reset your internal rhythms every few days. So, continuous night work is less harmful: once you've made the adjustment, you develop new habits. Another factor is: How much time do you have off work? Sleeping when everyone else is active puts a serious dent in your social life and relationships. Being deprived of sunlight is a further consideration: If you have two or three full days to be outdoors, and find pleasurably activities, that would be great help. And you would probably need a SAD light in winter. As a career, night work is not for everyone. As a short term arrangement, you could take steps to minimize the adverse effects..