Just to reinforce your point, the difference between a cheap running shoe and an expensive running shoe is incredible. When I first started running a few years ago, I was using a very old pair of running shoes I’ve had for a long time. I’ve since been sticking with the New Balance Fresh Foam X 880s (because I have very wide feet and NB seems like the only brand that actually makes their best running shoes in 4E) and it’s like running on a cloud.

And then there’s also the Garmin watch that cost $300 (that I’m now stupidly considering upgrading to the new $600 Forerunner 965), the $120 HRM Pro chest strap, the $3000 Nordic Track x22i for indoor runs I got lightly used on Craigslist for a steal at $900, etc.

And then there’s the races where you’re spending $40, $50, $100+ depending on whether it’s a 5K or 10K or half-marathon. And good running clothes are pricey too.

The short answer is that it’s ultimately down to the number 43 (the number of protons technetium has) and the number of neutrons that could potentially form stable isotopes being atomically weird numbers.

The picture below shows relative stabilities of isotopes of different elements. N represents the number of neutrons, Z represents the number of protons. As a starting rule, moving above or below the N=Z line (creating an excess of protons or an excess of neutrons) tends to decrease overall stability.

You can see for lower atomic numbers, the most stable isotopes closely follow N=Z because protons and neutrons “balance” each other in the nucleus. But as you increase the atomic number (and therefore the number of protons), the protons begin to repel each other more strongly, which means additional neutrons are needed to make the nucleus stable. This is why the “line of stability” (the line of dark red “stable” elements) increases above the N=Z line as you increase the atomic number. Deviation from this line means an atom is less “beta stable” (and therefore more likely to beta-decay).

There are certain “magic” numbers of protons and neutrons that are more stable than others because they comprise a full shell. These occur at 2, 8, 20, 28, 50, 82, and 126. This means nuclei that have (or are very close to) one of these numbers of protons, or neutrons, or protons + neutrons, are inherently more stable. If you look at the other stable isotopes on the graph, you would expect a stable isotope of technetium would need around 55 neutrons to follow the line of stability.

As it turns out, the combinations of 43 protons and 55 (± a few) neutrons just can’t form a stable enough configuration to not beta-decay.

I spent 15 minutes looking at all the links and clicking on a few.

North Korea is apparently a functioning democracy that gives its civilians everything they need. They’re all extraordinary happy and love their fairly elected leader. The ones who defect only do it because they’re filthy, selfish capitalists.

Tiananmen Square was apparently not a massacre of thousands of unarmed civilian student protestors, but the site of a skirmish between capitalist pig armed provocateurs who assaulted and killed soldiers in cold blood and acted surprised when the soldiers (with extraordinary restraint) defended themselves against their attacks, leading to just 200 deaths (including those poor innocent soldiers).

The Uighurs are apparently all happy. The Chinese government forcibly took thousands, no, hundreds of thousands of people from their homes and placed them in camps, all out of a selfless desire to help those poor, misguided souls. There’s definitely no cultural oppression, no forced labor, and no human rights abuses. They’re just all-inclusive resorts with free “cultural lessons” to help them understand both Uighur and Chinese culture. The CCP loves their Muslim citizens and definitely doesn’t consider them terrorists in need of forced reeducation. All the horror stories we’ve heard from people whose family members were captured, or about forced organ harvesting, or rape and torture, they’re all just unproven lies. The Chinese government even offers tours of their Uighur “resorts” to prove to the world that it’s a diligent effort to support their Uighur brothers!

I can see it now:

A beautiful woman in a skimpy bikini posts a selfie from a sparkling beach in the Bahamas.

“I was able to fulfill my lifelong dream of taking a month-long trip to the Bahamas after winning the $35,000 jackpot at Chumba™ Casino! DM me for a code for $50 in free spins! 😘”

They will get an insane number of thirsty dudes addicted to online gambling.

During computer learning in a computer lab 15 years ago, I figured out that the student passwords were sequential, so I could easily guess other students’ passwords. If I logged in to their account while they were logged in, they would get booted and I’d hear the inevitable “Mrs Teacher! It says my session expired!”

I did that 2 or 3 times over the course of a few minutes before I got caught. The vice principal rambled on and on about how I was “disrupting learning” and how I “should be suspended for this” before finally telling me, “my mentor taught me a really important lesson. If your students don’t hate you, you aren’t doing your job.”

What a horrible piece of shit.