Divorce laws, which accrue, are written by state legislatures that are forward-looking in the laws they write. Backward-looking mechanisms for getting rid of laws that are no longer useful can help make sure that problematic laws don’t cause mischief, according to Laura Tharney of the New ...
Every country is different, and every country’s laws are different. Sometimes, these laws border on the seriously ridiculous, and other times they point to important cultural values that might be different than your own. We compiled a list of weird laws around the world you may not believe ...
But those are really just the beginning of odd state laws. Here is a law that, on paper, may sound silly: many ski-friendly states outright forbid the act of skiing while intoxicated. Such laws exist in Wyoming and Colorado, and can carry criminal penalties. That hot chocolate you're hol...
It’s common for judges to wrestle with complex questions as they try to apply old laws to new technology. But what’s so unusual about this decision is that the judges ended up giving opinions on technology that hasn’t been fully invented. “I think the opinion is really extraordinary,...
Not only are the flavor profiles and spices completely different in each place, but so are the food laws, so you never know what you’re going to get when you stop at a Taco Bell in Vietnam, or a hot dog stand in Iceland. (Real talk: get a hot dog in Iceland.) Dig your ...
While they sound like a device straight out of a dystopian sci-fi movie, flamethrowers, including Thermonator, are legal in 48 U.S. states. They aren’t classified as firearms by federal agencies, though they fall under general product liability and criminal laws. ...
The bottom line is it’s hard to apply human laws to robot persons. Let’s say a human shoots a robot, causing it to malfunction, lose power, and “die.” But the robot, once “murdered,” is rebuilt as good as new. If copies of its personality data are in safe storage, then th...
The quantum internet is a network that will let quantum devices exchange some information within an environment that harnesses the weird laws of quantum mechanics. In theory, this would lend the quantum internet unprecedented capabilities that are impossible to carry out with tod...
I believe this applies to photons and particles in general. The equations for physics always seem to allow collisions to be reversable and there are no laws that would not allow any set of particle interactions to be reversible. However, it is my opinion that photons are not reversible for ...
Oh, man, that’s tough. The one that popped into my head was “The Familiars” which I reprinted inI discovered it inedited by Jeff and Ann VanderMeer. It’s written by Micaela Morrissette, and is about a boy with a childhood friend that turns out to be something else entirely, the ...