March 16, 2016 at 03:49AM

Today I Learned: 1) Today I started learning how to mod for Xcom 2. Learning how game modding works is one of the side-things I've been meaning to do for a while now, and today I began. So far, it looks pretty simple -- many mods can be done more-or-less by changing configuration files, though the Xcom 2 modding kit has nice programmatic ways to do that in a somewhat version-controlled fashion. Unfortunately, for what I plan on doing, I'm going to need to change more than a couple of config files.... 2) Pepper spray is just capsaicin. Well, not *just* capsaicin -- it's about 1% capsaicin, which is ridiculously high percentage. Still, it's basically concentrated hot sauce. This surprised me, because I always thought pepper spray was similar in mechanism to the active ingredient in onions, which produces sulfuric acid when it dissolves in water in your eye or throat or nose. ...or does it? I did a little googling to double-check myself, but I found mixed answers from different sources. The most legit-looking sources make no claim about onion gas producing sulfuric acid, instead talking about its effect on receptors and nerves. The only actual experimental result I found was from a fellow internet-surfing skeptic: http://ift.tt/1LpWav2 Thanks to Mengsha Gong for sending me down this road! 3) From the same source as I just linked in #2, some fun facts about volumetric pipettes. It's a short read and has a nice diagram that I can't replicate in text, so I'll just link you to it: http://ift.tt/1WpHn45.