Things That Annoy Me, But Shouldn't

When you go to click on something but the entire webpage shifts and you click on something else.

 

Cloudy with a chance of meatballs. IDK

Sunday weather app says overcast with 10% chance of rain. What actually does that mean?*

Out of the 24 that make this day, am I to get (was I to get?) 2.4 hours of the wet stuff? Heavy, light? Maybe, a 1/10th chance in a 24hr stretch, a solitary raindrop'll fall on the wireless weather station somewhere in this region and register a dose of wetness for the records. Anyways, annoyed for I was stood with hose fully unreeled and in hand, when the spitter spatter of tiny drops came my way.




* I let me google that for me once, but have forgotten the outcome—so quick to search nowadays that I'm imporous(word?)— it doesn't soak in.

 

But it saves money on your water bill.

 

This damn site on my tablet comes in at a nice readable font size. But as soon as I do anything, touch anything, shift the page an iota, the font slams back down into something suitable for teens with big magnifying glasses. I think I've got the font on my tablet set to a readable level for these never-good and aging eyes, but somehow the forum demands that things be viewed on its terms.

 

How many is/are three times less than 100?
Some time after the turn of this fatuous century, we stopped being able to calculate multiples or fractions and switched to a system of rough-comparison math.
A building is no longer three times as tall as its neighbour; it is three times taller than the building next to it, B.
Now, the first statement would be easy to verify: If building B is five stories tall, building A has to be 5x3=15 stories tall, else the statement is false.
The second statement is impossible to verify: If building B is five stories, building A ought to be (5x3)+5= 20 stories tall... except that 'than' is not a valid mathematical operation, and so its meaning is ambiguous.
In the case of comparison downward - as x times smaller than - the statement is incalculable and usually inapplicable in actual numbers.
If building A is one third the size of building B, we might guess that it's one floor plus a mezzanine, or else compare the actual measurements in meters or feet.
However, if building A is three times shorter than building B, logically, it would have to be 10 stories underground. If the statement had any practical sense...
...so we just let it go by, without bothering to make sense of it...

Which, of course, is the whole point.

This wouldn't annoy me so much in commercial media, (yes, it did, but I might have gotten over it, as I wave other obfuscation ploys) but when scientists take it up in their media presentations -
well, that should not merely annoy, but alarm everyone.

 

If I could understand mathematical speech, I'm sure I would agree.

 

And that shouldn't bother me!
yet it does

 

I don't understand a lot of things, so it's not personal.

 

Somehow, I find it less than comforting!

 

I still miss it!

 

Opaque video game references, especially if they catch on and evolve over time and use. You ask someone for an explanation and neither the current version nor its antecedent make a lick of sense to you.

 

I would like to point out that the statement "three times as short" makes equally little sense in this scenario, because tallness is a measurable concept, whereas shortness is not. It's comparative.

 

@Oxymaroon

 

Hence the phrasing "one third as tall".
Is there, like, a taboo against even mentioning fractions?

 

Fractions are mischievous gremlins to people like me. Not everyone can be an engineer/rocket scientist like you

 

Fucking gophers. The little bastards are somewhat fun and till all the clay soil at my home, but they ate all my plants. Now I have to install these wire mesh things that stab me repeatedly every time I plant anything to even have a chance at growing anything. They even ate the God damn tree roots. Actually sunk my flowering myrtle. Completely out of hand. They are fuzzy buddies though...

 

No Frodo, the mind numbing length of integration problems are a form of dark tongue.

 

I honestly didn't know the concept of 1/3 is beyond most people nowadays. I should have... and now I do. Thanks for the update!

 

Even the concept of 1 is difficult for me to grasp.

 

Americans manage okay with quarters and dimes, and half-pounders [seethe, rage...] ?

Also it’s early in the morning @HP and that anecdote of the tenderloin economics nearly killed me off. It is my day off - giving me the - in tests 8 out of 10 owners who expressed a preference said their cat preferred it lesson - is degrading & cruel.

Anyways, I believed all the restaurant managers and self-employed clowns and stand-up influencers would be turning to the fields right now, the pay-back, pulling up the potatoes and beetroots, & turnips, all covered in mud. [or putting them in, either, or, fucking math(z)]