It needs air to combust but using CO2 instead of O2 increases the enthalpy of the reaction and makes a more energetic reaction. It’s something on the order of about 150-200 kJ/mol difference, IIRC.
Sounds similar to Brian Regan’s routine:
“Is your refrigerator running? NO?!” (Freaks out)
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That’s fair enough. On the (relatively few) occasions where a gas leak strikes th balance between ‘lack of fuel’ and ‘lack of oxidizer’ the resulting blast can be pretty impressive. It’s just that such outcomes are uncommon; markedly less common than break-ins, which are already a “we only installed the alarm because the insurance discount is larger than the occasional false-alarm charge” zone for most businesses not handling solid chunks of cash, pounds of jewelry, or the like.
I was mostly attracted by the somewhat unexpected prediction that fry-cooking, not technological limitations, is now the most likely impediment to real-time methane safety monitoring in the fast-food environment.
hee hee. Is wanting a tuktuk a cry for help as well? because i’d settle for one of those. basically i want to get to the grocery store and back without raising the sea level. 
scooter, tuktuk, toyota smart car, whatever. With an Isetta at least you can tell people you own a “beamer”. Telling people you have a BMW might be setting their expectations a bit too high though… 
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The IRS hoax of 2016 (calling folk to tell them they’ll be arrested if they don’t send All The Monies to some third party) wouldn’t work at all ever if you had to “want” in order to fall victim to a hoax. Fear is also a successful motivator.
I’m fairly certain—if not absolutely certain—that Prince Albert and Refrigerator Running are two of the earliest telephone pranks. 
Because my colleagues and I are technically reachable by anyone in our country by mundane means 100% of the time, we are faced with at least one … questionable contact per month. To the point where I have to remind them regularly <thing that bad folk try to get us to do is bad>.
But they do ask. We’re just lucky to have some veterans on board who know about social engineering and are extremely cynical.
If I was corporate at a fast food chain, we’d have every person we could spare calling every restaurant we had to let them know about the scam. Speaking … cynically, it wouldn’t be enough to prevent any further issues. Someone would still smash a window. Still, you’ve got to make a reasonable attempt to try.
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Given the fumes they put out, I’d be surprised if a tuktuk had better emissions than a new(ish) car. The main thing I noticed about Bajaj (the brand, but also what they call auto rickshaws in Ethiopia) is how smelly they are, like a lawn mower. They might use less gas than a car but I can’t imagine that they’re cleaner.
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With a Smart you can tell them you own a Mercedes, but sooner or later the truth will out. I suggest a tandem bicycle to improve your chances of a second date.
Although…
De gustibus non est disputandum.
How could this even happen?
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Hello
Is Charlie there?
No
Hello
Is Charlie there?
No
Hello
Is Charlie there?
No
Hello
Is Charlie there?
No
I
I
I
Hello
Is Charlie there?
NO!
Hello
This is Charlie. Any calls for me?
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Oblig: That’s the median.
Are they claiming that the All Writs Act requires my cooperation in flipping over the car? Otherwise, I just can’t take that seriously.
The kid was nuts to drive an Isetta on snowy streets, you were doing him or her a favor.
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Not so apocryphal the cow tipping… You have to tip them to trim hooves. They are strapped to a cool rotating table usually to do this, but technically tipping…
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I’m pretty surprised none of these managers stopped to say “Hey, we flame broil all of our burgers in that machine with the conveyor rack and the dozens of little open flames… If we had a significant gas leak, we’d already know about it…”.
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Reason 1001 why it is not good to require people to do anything the authorities say.
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I’m sure that, in retrospect, he realizes that and is grateful.
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I just find the Milgram experiment is brought up in a very reductive way. Yes, people can be manipulated into doing different things. Some people are very vulnerable to authority, but others are more vulnerable to other kinds of manipulation. Excessive trust in authority figures is a problem but it’s not the problem. People con people using authority, greed, fear, kindness or making the mark feel important [heroism] (“Spanish prisoner” [“Nigerian prince”] scams go greed/kindness, “Your account will be shut down if you don’t give us your password” use fear/authority, this BK prank is authority/heroism).
So when someone brings up Milgram I push back because it’s not human nature to do what we’re told. It’s human nature to do balance doing what we’re told; protecting ourselves; pursuing our interests; being kind to others; and feeling like our lives have meaning (and surely some other stuff). People are able to fast talk us into overvaluing a particular aspect of a particular situation. But just as authority sometimes gets people to do the wrong thing, it can also be part of getting people to do the right thing (e.g. law agency gives a warning to people about a scam and their trust in that authority overrides their eagerness to offer help to the con artist).
Milgram was personally very interested in what caused people to obey the Nazis. But if we are honest, we know that while many people did obey authority in support of that government, others were motivated by fear, others by career opportunity, others by seeing a larger meaning for themselves (we can probably rule out kindness in this case). It’s not all about authority.
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Magnesium burns hot enough to break the carbon-oxygen bond and use CO2 as an oxygen source, leaving behind magnesium oxide and elemental carbon (probably amorphous or graphite allotropes), kinda like the reaction behind Thermite.
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Not surprising when the penalty for failing to comply with authorities is being shot.
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