And now I'm picturing a dragon with bombardier-beetle style pulsed jet boosters. And while I'd typically question your assumptions of how big dragons need to be in order to deserve the name, I'll assert that quetzocoatlus nothropi[1] was big enough.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quetzalcoatlus

"Dragon" as a classification is odd, because when you look at every kind of mythological creature that gets classified as such nowadays, sometimes from cultures that wouldn't have recognized the concept, you find that they have little in common beyond some vaguely reptilian vibe and being scary.

And I'm sorry but that thing is too goofy looking to be considered a dragon.

That's begging the question. We don't need to look "at every kind of mythological creature that gets classified as such nowadays" from "cultures that wouldn't have recognized the concept".

One could stick on those classified as such in western culture - which is where the fantasy novel about dragons and knights and spells and the rest are based on.

And in there, dragons have quite specific characteristic and vibes, as evidenced from medieval iconography of St George to countless fantasy book covers and illustrations.

But if we do expand the set under consideration then I'd suggest they do in fact have specific things in common. Large flying carnivorous reptiles. That won't cover all the various edge cases but I think it describes the vast majority of the popular usage of the term.

That definition would imply that sufficiently large flying dinosaurs qualify as dragons. And at least personally I think I agree with that conclusion. Dragons aren't purely fantasy, they're merely extinct (and never breathed fire IRL).

Dragons are dinosaurs, that is, closer to birds then contemporary reptiles.

Another curious historical point: gas masks were banned in Seattle, back in '99. I'm unsure if that was repealed because the majority of search results are about a new law regarding masked law enforcement.

https://www.historylink.org/File/2145

No, "the ledger" should record actual facts, and not whatever fictional alternatives we imagine.

Fact: This child's life was saved by the car being driven by a computer program instead of a human.

No, the fact is that the child sustained minor injuries. And, fact: no human driver made the decision to drive a vehicle in that exact position and velocity. Imagining a human-driven vehicle in the same place is certainly valid, but your imagination is not fact. I imagine that the kid would be better off if no vehicle was there. But that's not a fact, that's an interpretation -- perhaps the kid would have ended up dead under an entirely different tire if they hadn't been hit by the waymo!

This is a good point. Cars should be banned near schools. That is a logical conclusion given the facts.

Considering school buses kill children every year, do we ban them near schools as well?

That is not a logical conclusion given the facts.

Instead of a human who was driving exactly the same as the Waymo up until the instant the child ran out. Important distinction.

Fibonacci heaps are nice. They aren't state of the art, but it's a pretty data structure.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibonacci_heap

Only, it's members of the federal government overtly spreading disinformation and laughing about it. It will be a miracle if anything is left of the law enforcement and judiciary that would push back in three years' time.

Technically, if you're measuring surface area, it' important to remember that the earth is not a sphere. There's a bit of a paradox measuring shorelines: the shorter your ruler, the longer it gets, because you're able to capture more complex features. Pethaps the authors took an extremely precise measurement of the surface of Estonia, counting everything down to the sinus cavities of dogs sleeping in alleys...

Area isn’t notably affected by fractal boundaries. Only perimeter is.

Can you explain this more? It seems trivial to extrude a 2d coastline along a third dimension to produce a paradoxical areal calculation corresponding precisely to the perimeter paradox...

If you extrude a coastline into a wall the wall's surface area will blow up the same way the measured perimeter does, but that;s because you've turned a boundary-length problem into the area of a different object. It still doesn't mean the country's ordinary map area becomes paradoxical, the extra boundary detail only affects a vanishingly thin strip near the edge, so the enclosed 2D area stays well behaved.

Aha, so you've misunderstood my joke entirely. We agree about the math, please reread my original comment with the understanding that I'm insinuating that the article has deviated from "ordinary map area" and is instead measuring the fractal surface area contained within Estonia's perimeter.

[now that the joke is explained, feel free to laugh]

The funniest aspect of this conversation is the context: an author who made his living on telling the stories of fools he met in the gold rush. Some people can't be dissuaded by reason.

To the contrary, it's got that 90s feel that I'd expect of an 88×31 badge.

https://cyber.dabamos.de/88x31/

Also https://88x31.nl/, but there is a lot of overlap with these collections.

> How could a bang ever bring the wealth and peace that its prior friendship with allies brought?

It won't.