I really like this snippet from the justification for the symbol chosen: "APL apparently used +.×, which by combining a multi-character token, confusing attribute-access-like . syntax, and a unicode character, ranks somewhere below U+2603 SNOWMAN on our candidate list".
One of the reasons I have been such a fan of Python for so long is the relatively no-nonsense approach to design decisions that many others would have rushed through.
A meta-comment to your unrelated comment - there is a Chrome extension called "WhatFont"[1] that gives you a button you can click, which adds a tooltip to your cursor telling you what font it is hovering over! It's useful to be able to painlessly determine what beautiful font you're looking at :)
The parent wasn't claiming this; they were merely adding a single data point about a relevant topic! I for one had not thought about pre-filling the coupon code box before, and I'm glad the parent brought it to my attention.
The grandparent tested the idea, that showing a coupon which is already filled and active, will carry an illusion of a bargain and hence the customer will be more likely to convert.
To expand on your comment "rare diseases are actually quite common", I was struck by this in the article:
More than 7,000 such diseases exist, afflicting a total of 25 million to 30 million Americans
That's almost 10% of Americans! I suppose this shouldn't have been surprising given the Birthday Paradox [1], but the ~1/10 statistic puts things into perspective for me.
That means most of them must be mild. Because, clearly, 10% of Americans don't have something as serious as FOP. There's probably a long tail of increasingly rare and increasingly mild diseases, so that the cutoff is arbitrary.
Mild, or self-limiting or otherwise transitory. I know (closely) three people in two different countries who have a 15/100,000 disease that is self-limiting.
It wouldn't be very surprising to learn that every single person has some kind of genetic defect -- perhaps dozens -- but usually the compensatory mechanisms are strong enough to mask them, at least while you're young and strong overall. It makes a lot of sense that health should be a spectrum or a kind of dynamic equilibrium, rather than a binary on-off condition.
> A sense of wonder (sometimes jocularly or cynically
> abbreviated to 'sensawunda') is an emotional reaction
> to the reader suddenly confronting, understanding, or
> seeing a concept anew in the context of new
> information. [1]
I was unfamiliar with this concept! I can surely relate to the feeling though, especially in the context of seeing the beauty of a solution to a problem, maths or otherwise.
My absolute favorite is Białowieża Forest [1] - I died laughing many many times, and I even learned a thing or two along the way. For me, nothing beats enlightening educational entertainment such as this.
One of the reasons I have been such a fan of Python for so long is the relatively no-nonsense approach to design decisions that many others would have rushed through.