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[Great Order]

Doing another crossword, "musical work on Halloween e.g." came out as octopus.

What the everloving hell does this mean?

EDIT: Same for "Chilled treats on thanksgiving e.g." coming out as Novices

[hector13]

Is this a cryptic crossword? The “chilled treats” part could relate the the “ices” part of novices.

[Frumple]

chilled treats also sounds a lot like no vices, ha

... I got nothing on octopus, though.

[hector13]

chilled treats also sounds a lot like no vices, ha

... I got nothing on octopus, though.

Opus is probably the musical work part.

I get it now.

Oct is October, the month Halloween is in, and nov is November, the month in which Thanksgiving is in.

Definitely cryptic.

Evidently the on means it comes after the month part.

[McTraveller]

octopus is (abbreviation for month in which halloween occurs)+(a term for a musical work)

Kind of typical annoying crossword wordsmithing...

Yeah that "proper" acceleration is what I meant; if you are accelerating you can measure it.

Incidentally the observation about freefall is what led Einstein to general relativity; when you are in free fall, you actually aren't accelerating (which is why you can't measure any) - freefall is travel along a geodesic, which is a "straight" line in curved spacetime...

As for rotating I meant effects like electromagnetism or something; magnetic fields/forces around current-carrying wires are relativistic effects at very low speeds. So that's the kind of oddity I was pondering, not doppler effects.

[Great Order]

Upstairs and downstairs lights are on separate circuits, the circuit breakers aren't tripped, and there's power to everything except the lights, which aren't working on either circuit.

Anyone got any ideas as to what could cause this?

[Eric Blank]

Maybe the wires to the light fixtures specifically have bad connections. If the wiring to those is running in parallel then everything else would work fine.

[McTraveller]

Don't rule out that both lightbulbs failed at the same time. Can happen if they were from the same batch. Also if there is a voltage dip or spike, might kill them. Especially if they are really bargain-brand LED or CFL (because those tend to skimp on circuit protection).

Also did you check the breakers by turning them off, then on? Sometimes they don't look tripped, but to reset them, you have to turn them off first (can't go from "tripped" to "on", that won't work. So if they did trip, and someone else tried to reset them, maybe they did it wrong?)

Other possibility - are they on a GFI circuit, and did the GFI trip? Those can often be in surprisingly remote locations.

Also, could be ghosts. Or aliens.

[Great Order]

Not just bulbs, the two light circuits seem to be dead and it happened at the same time. It's at my gran's place so I can't just check it out, was hoping for some help in case it'd be something easily fixable but my mum's got an emergency electrician coming in tomorrow. I'm sure we can get an emergency exorcism in too if needed.

EDIT: Half the circuits are on one mains breaker, the other half on a separate one. The first mains breaker's flipped and won't unflip, so something's shorting on the first set of circuits, which includes the water heater as well so my gran's got no lights nor heating. At least it's pretty mild right now.

[Great Order]

At what pH will acids start causing burns?

Before anyone starts getting concerned, I'm thinking of stuff for a Cyberpunk RED campaign, I'm not huffing hydrochloric acid or planning to commit war crimes. Or not in real life.

[Frumple]

Two or under according to the EPA, from... googling that question exactly, heh. Bases start doing it at 11.5, apparently.

[Great Order]

When did the US overtake Europe (As a whole, I'm aware it was hardly united which makes the question tricky) as a world power? Was it WW2 or was it an earlier point that the US's might overtook and WW2 was just the final nail in Europe's coffin? Certainly after WW2 the US had overtaken, with Europe being divided between the American-lead capitalist West and the Russia-led communist East and the colonial empires being broken up.

[Frumple]

Ask a historian, ha. Far as I'm aware the US wasn't really "there" until WW2 fucked the entirety of europe/the eastern hemisphere into the dirt, though.

As I understand it the problem with europe wasn't some kind of division, though, it was that a substantial portion of it was rubble. US came into ascendancy post WW2 because WW2 had very physically wrecked every other potential world power in existence and it would take a good generation or three for them to recover.

The US was relatively unscathed, and between that and the untouched infrastructure buildup for the war that just let us sidle right into near dominance. If it hadn't been for that, it probably would have been a long while before the US reached the same level of comparative strength -- still probably would have happened, just due to the geographic advantages the states have, but it would have taken longer.