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  1. 9 points
    The other card-carrying woman here (though I have been absent a bit!). Anyone impregnated should be able to get her own treatment from a provider who is trained and still willing to perform the procedure. "Late term" is not a thing. "Later abortions" happen after a fetus is expected to be developed to viability and can survive outside the uterus but are necessary due to something non-viable about the fetus (it will never be viable outside a uterus). To force someone to continue growing a fetus that will never grow a brain, or statistically speaking has a 98% chance of not surviving due to ruptured amniotic sac or other complications, or for myriad other medical issues that none of us NOT trained in obstetrics fully understand, is cruel, dangerous and unethical. Anyone trained in the science who is willing to perform the procedure in-office or by medications (has taken an oath to do no harm and still feels the procedure is appropriate), should be able to provide that health care to the patient who wants it.
  2. 6 points
    New episode out now! DB Cooper was a Metallurgist with my good friend Drew Daniel. https://thecoopervortex.podbean.com/e/db-cooper-was-a-metallurgist-drew-daniel/ Enjoy!
  3. 6 points
    Sexual immorality is just a construct. The only immorality would be if someone is taking advantage of a child or a person otherwise not able to give informed consent. Homosexual sex is not immoral. Men entering the priesthood then using the posistion of trust to take advantage of children is immoral. Likewise it is not immoral for a boy or a girl to feel they don't fit your expectations of their sexuality. It is a struggle, and it may be very difficult for them, but it is not immoral.
  4. 5 points
    The Liberal justices really missed an opportunity to ask: If Biden were to order the assassination of the conservative members of this court because of their inability to place law before politics, do you believe Biden would have presidential immunity?
  5. 5 points
    My memory is that you didn’t really like Trump, but felt it was more important to keep Hillary Clinton out of the White House, so you voted for him. Id submit that Trump is a greater threat to how our country operates; one of the best things about the US is that we trust our succession, and that the person fills the position, not that the position is wrapped around the person. But that was threatened in 2020, and Trump has made it clear that he doesn’t intend to accept a loss this year, that he plans to pardon people who consider an invasion of the Capitol and the shenanigans that went along with it to be OK. In addition, his need for personal loyalty (rather than to the position) is very concerning. Personally, I consider this to be a significant threat to the structure of the country. Wendy P.
  6. 4 points
    (Warning - long) Winsor recently refloated the always popular nuclear-is-expensive-because-of-those-goddamn-hippies argument. Since he's not reading my posts any more, and since that's not relevant to the woke-bashing that's going on in that thread, I thought I'd break it out into a separate thread. First off, of course there is an element of cost associated with protests. When people don't like nuclear power (or aviation, or skydiving, or drag queens, or whatever) they protest, and those protests invariably make it more difficult/expensive to do whatever those people wanted to do initially - through demanding more regulation, or lobbying to deny permits, or promoting the bad over the good. In the case of nuclear power, however, that has very little to do with the rising costs. As a pilot and a skydiver, one thing I learned early on is that most aviation regulations were written in blood. The FAR that requires pilots to check the weather before they take off if they are flying to a different airport? That's not there because "bushy tailed Liberal Arts types in Boston/Cambridge" hated airplanes and wanted to screw up aviation. They are there because of the deaths of pilots who were surprised by weather after they took off. There are similar reasons for many of the regulations involved with nuclear power. The limits for worker exposure? That's not there because scaredycat liberals want to shut down nuclear power. That's because early on several people were injured and killed by radiation from poorly designed experiments and reactors. The Demon Core, for example, killed two people working with it. At that point, the risks of gamma radiation were known, but no one had been exposed to a fatal dose of neutron radiation before - something you can only get from a nuclear chain reaction, or via a very complex sort of particle accelerator. After those two deaths, more work was done on neutron radiation risks, and new limits were put in place. More regulations! Side note here - the reason most nuclear reactors are possible at all is due to a quirk of physics called "neutron cross section." It's basically the probability of a neutron hitting the nucleus of a fissile atom. Einstein's work made it clear that the slower the neutron, the more likely it was to hit that nucleus. This is important because "prompt criticality" - the sort of chain reaction we all learned about in school, and how nuclear bombs detonate - is VERY hard to regulate, since the reaction waxes and wanes over the course of hundreds of microseconds, too fast for humans to reliably control (as the physicists working with the Demon Core learned to their dismay.) However, it is possible to design nuclear reactors that cannot go prompt-critical, and can only reach criticality with delayed, or thermal, neutrons. These are neutrons that pass through a moderator (like water) and are slowed, as well as neutrons that are natually emitted from fission, just more slowly. This allows design of reactors with power time constants of seconds or tens of seconds, which makes regulation via control rods possible. Even better, if they lose their moderator (i.e. they lose coolant) the reaction slows automatically. In fact, if the reactor even just gets too hot and boils the water, the voids in the water moderator automatically reduce power generation (i.e. it has a "negative void coefficient.") This gave early reactor designers perhaps a bit too much confidence in the inherent safety of nuclear power. As people started working on reactors for power in peacetime, we saw some of those irrational emotion driven types Winsor was referring to in his post - but initally they were on the side of nuclear power. Nuclear power was so safe, easy and efficient, according to Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Lewis Strauss, that "it is not too much to expect that our children will enjoy in their homes electrical energy too cheap to meter." He saw so much of the promise of nuclear energy (both fission and fusion) and so little of the drawbacks that the future looked rosy indeed. Turns out, though, nuclear power is hard to do well. For example, if there is a LOCA (loss of coolant accident) in water-moderated reactor, the chain reaction does indeed stop. But the fuel is now full of short lived isotopes due to the neutron bombardment during operation, and those isotopes also decay and release neutrons. Not enough to sustain a chain reaction, but enough to cause additional fission and a LOT of heat. So although the reactor has technically shut down, it will still happily melt into a puddle of spent nuclear fuel, nuclear waste, moderator and steel. And it's hard to keep a reactor full of that stuff safe. And reactor designers started discovering this almost immediately. In most parts of the world, those designers have been very lucky that their mishaps have, for the most part, not resulted in large public health threats or loss of life. The first meltdown occurred at reactor EBR-1 in Idaho in 1955. This was a breeder reactor, so different design and different coolant, but same basic idea. A power excursion caused a partial meltdown, but cooling was restored and the core solidified before anything worse happened. The next occurred at the same facility, but in a different reactor - this time an experimental boiling water reactor. It was designed to not go prompt-critical for all the reasons listed above. However, when a technician removed a single control rod from the reactor, it did indeed go prompt-critical. Fortunately the core disassembled itself before nuclear weapon yields were reached, but the power excursion (20 gigawatts in a reactor designed to handle 3 megawatts) caused an explosion that killed three men in a fairly gruesome fashion. How could this have happened? This reactor was designed to be SAFE! It could not go prompt critical! Turns out two factors allowed this. One, some of the neutron poisons inside the reactor (that reduce reactivity) had corroded and flaked off. Two, it turns out that it takes water some milliseconds to boil, and this event happened in microseconds, so the voids could not form fast enough to shut down the reaction. Lesson learned. More regulation of nuclear power plant operation. In 1977, the nuclear reactor at the Millstone Nuclear Power Plant had its coolant level drop while the reactor was powered down, exposing the fuel elements to air (actually steam.) A hydrogen explosion occurred, which damaged the reactor and seriously injured one worker. How could this have happened? There's no hydrogen in a reactor! Where did it come from? The hot fuel elements, clad in zirconium, reacted with the steam to generate the hydrogen. Lesson learned. More regulation of nuclear power plant operation. Then Chernobyl happened. Fortunately for us the RBMK reactor is so different from US designs that a similar accident almost certainly can't happen here. But again the accident was due to something that no one had considered - that there is an operating regime for a reactor where poisons build up so quickly that it shuts down the reactor, and when they burn off (as they do eventually) then the reactor can restart so violently that it, again, goes prompt critical. So probably no effect on US reactors; ours can't go prompt critical. Although we initially thought the same thing about the SL-1 reactor in Idaho. Lesson learned. This time, no new regulations for the US. There are about a dozen of these. Three Mile Island, the most visible US incident, was the result of two mechanical failures and three coincident operator errors. And despite all the reassurances from the utility, the incident came very close to a containment breach - most of the core did in fact melt down, and a lot of it ended up on the bottom of the vessel. During the investigation, it was discovered that valves to the emergency feedwater supply were closed and never opened, there was no clear indication on the reactor status panel that the PORV was stuck open, and an operator actually shut off the emergency high pressure injection system. So failures of training, equipment and instrumentation. Lesson learned. More regulation of nuclear power plant operation. Then outside the US came Fukushima. A textbook case of how to shut down a nuclear reactor in an emergency, and everything looked good. But then a tidal wave damaged - not the reactor, not the control room, but the power lines and the generators that provided cooling water for the reactors when shut down. And THEY melted down. So failure to take into account protection of the entire plant - not just the reactor. Lesson learned. More regulation of nuclear power. These new lessons are why it's so hard to build new nuclear power plants. Recently the first nuclear reactor in decades opened at the Vogtle facility in Georgia. This was a simplified Gen IV design that's referred to as "walk-away safe" - no power needed to cool the reactor after an emergency shutdown. It was so simple that an early ad from GE for the reactor's original design touted "first concrete to fuel load in 36 months." From the beginning of the planning to the first operation took 20 years and came in $20 billion over budget. No protesters, just contractors screwing up, companies folding, and the usual very high level of quality required at a facility designed to safely contain a nuclear chain reaction. I keep hoping that, someday, we will get a Gen IV reactor design (or, heck, even a fusion reactor) that does indeed meet the promise made by Strauss all those years ago. What keeps us from getting there is not those goddamn hippies, and it's not evil liberals in suits toting briefcases. It's the fact that nuclear power is hard to do well, and we as a society have (wisely) demanded that it's done right.
  7. 4 points
    I'm good with it not being my, your, or the government's, business.
  8. 4 points
    I get all my power from solar. California now goes hours getting all its power from renewables for weeks on end - and all that is time we are not burning natural gas, thus saving that gas for the less developed parts of the US. As a result, natural gas prices are dropping, and air quality is improving. Solar fabrication equipment is one of the few things we export to China. US companies that make solar equipment are making billions and employing hundreds of thousands. So the citizens of the US will - and are already - benefiting from this. Jealousy is such an ugly emotion. Become a scientist or engineer, discover/invent something important and you too can be a millionaire! Only in your imagination. I am perfectly happy for you to think I am stupid. Like George Santos calling someone dishonest, or like Trump calling someone a liar. It's more a badge of honor than anything else.
  9. 4 points
  10. 4 points
    If the mandate of NPR is to report facts wouldn't republicans be excluded by definition?
  11. 4 points
    The reality is that based on where we’re at today, Biden is the only alternative. Maybe in 7 months, we’ll look at President Elect Trump and wish that there had of been another option, but at this stage in the game, Biden’s our horse. No doubt that Trump is a threat, but I wouldn’t write Biden off as nothing more than the lesser of evils. He’s done some good thinks like the Inflation Reduction Act, the CHIPs act, student debt….that are materially improving lives for lots of people. It’s hard to imagine that the trend wouldn’t continue if he gets another 4 years.
  12. 4 points
    As an outsider it's interesting to see the polarised debate. I am not sure that I would vote for someone in their 80's. Trump is awful, but I find it hard to believe Biden is the best alternative. Overall it is a really sad indictment of the state of US politics. The US have lost all moral authority on democracy and it's going to be interesting to watch.
  13. 4 points
    This thread has been going for three years now. What is puzzling is the fact, that apart from his enablers getting verdicts and having to face some serious consequences, the main goon has still managed to escape all efforts to dish out a vital conviction that Puts him into the place any normal joe blow would have been in no time
  14. 3 points
    Actually he did ask me about it some time ago. But I don't independently research the case, most of what I know about it I got from you guys here and on Shutter's forum, so what could I say about it that you guys don't already know better than me? Meanwhile, Darren just made another 'with my good friend' post with no other comment. So either he doesn't read this thread or he didn't find the humor in my post. Oh well, sorry. hehe
  15. 3 points
    Comparing political figures to Hitler has a long and ignominious history in the US, and has been overused so much that there's actually an Internet law about it; Godwin's Law states that if an online discussion goes on long enough, sooner or later someone will make a comparison to Hitler. Earlier, the philospher Leo Strauss had spoken of a very similar logical fallacy: reductio ad Hitlerum. The problem, of course, is that that means that if there IS a politician that proposes (for example) to exterminate a race of people, and people compare them validly to Hitler, no one takes any note of that. Just another Godwin attack. Comparisons of Trump to Hitler initially fell afoul of Godwin's law, because there really wasn't much similarity between a mealy-mouthed reality TV star and Hitler. Just another Godwin violation! Trump was something of a joke anyway. But lately the parallels have been getting scarier, and none other than Mike Godwin has written editorials stating "this time the comparison is valid." I just listened to an interview with Timothy Ryback, author of "Takeover: Hitler's Final Rise to Power." Ryback is an historian, and he wrote this book not by going through historical records, but by reading contemporary accounts of the time (newspapers, meeting minutes, pamphlets) so he could get a better sense of how this happened from the perspective of the people living through that time. He never mentions Trump in the book. But the parallels are astounding. While Hitler was building his power, he regularly used Polish immigrants (who were pouring across the border due to unrest in Poland) as a scare tactic. During this time, two Germans brutally tortured and murdered a few Polish immigrants; the Germans were sentenced to death for their crimes. Hitler decried that, and stated that if he were elected "never would a foreign life be put above a German" again. He made up bizarre stories to enrage and infuriate his party. He claimed that German children were being sold as sex slaves to foreign countries, and claimed that this was required by the Treaty of Versailles. (Pizza had not been invented yet, so no pizza places were involved.) His stated goal with this sort of disinformation was to "hollow out the middle" - remove the moderates and drive them to one of the two camps, so that he could frame his quest for power as a choice between only two options. Hitler regularly vowed to destroy democracy through democracy; he promised to use the mechanisms of democracy to destroy the right of the people to govern. He planned to give himself more power if he was appointed chancellor. He was very open about this, but the German people assumed he was just making speeches. "The soup is hotter during the cooking than during the eating" was a popular German phrase, indicating they thought that Hitler would calm down once he was in power. It is noteworthy that he almost didn't make it to the Chancellorship. Due to his profligate spending and his lack of respect for the law, he was often in court in the years leading up to his chancellorship. He didn't mind this; he used the courtroom as a pulpit, and one of his fellow Nazis once said that every time Hitler went to court he got another 1000 votes. The justice system was closing in on him, for his crimes, his unpaid debts and for his refusal to pay taxes. His only chance to avoid jail was to do what he did - become chancellor and suspend civil rights and the justice system. His campaign was based largely on vengeance - against the Treaty of Versailles, against the Communists, against Hindenberg and his other perceived enemies. Even his own people became enemies once they crossed him, or told him that maybe perhaps he was being a little racist. "Once I'm in power, heads will roll," he told several of his supporters. And roll they did. Hitler could not get any support with just the Nationalist party behind him, so he allied with the Socialists (and specifically with socialist leader Gregor Strasser) to get a larger percentage of the electorate. Even with that, the best he ever did was 37% of the vote. He publicly supported the Socialists but privately detested them. Strasser was a big socialist - an anti-capitalist polemic of his caused Hitler to repudiate him at the 1926 Bamberg Conference. He was briefly elected to the vice-chancellor position while Hitler was rising to power, but retired when he could no longer stomach the changing Nazi goals. Then, in 1934, Hitler had Strasser arrested and executed for being a socialist. He could not do this alone, of course. Maintaining his bizarre claims of sex slavery and victimhood required a media apparatus. And that came in the form of Alfred Hugenberg, a media mogul who had his sights on world domination as well. At first Hugenberg and Hitler couldn't stand each other, but once Hugenberg realized that Hitler was rising in power, he allied himself with him. At that point Hugenberg owned the Scherl publishing house, the news agency Telegraphen-Union, several newspapers and the Universum-Film-AG (Ufa), a major film producer. This let him churn out not only news about the evil Polish immigrants and the child sex slavery thing, but also publish glowing articles about "Hitler at home" "Hitler with children" and most importantly "Hitler as a victim of the evil Europeans." This went a long way towards steering public perception about Hitler. Hitler took every opportunity to "gum up the works" of government when he could through his position as one of the leaders of the Nazi party. The worst provisions of the Versailles Treaty were due to end in two years, and there was a movement to delay the passage of new laws until that time, so that they would be passed in a less reactionary environment. Hitler did everything he could to push as many new laws through as possible, often with conflicting goals that he could then use them to show how dysfunctional government was. The Nazi party, according to Ryback, thrived on political chaos and economic despair, and worked hard to provide that environment. The president at the time - Otto Hindenberg - was elderly, and Hitler's media apparatus spent quite a bit of time attacking him for being senile, doddering, and sleepy. Hitler could not attack him directly since he still needed his support. A month after he was appointed Chancellor, there was a fire at the Reichstag, the seat of government for Germany at the time. When police arrived, they found Marinus van der Lubbe, a Dutch council communist, leaving the building. The fire chief, however, saw Nazis fleeing the fire, and found evidence that they had in fact started the fire. The fire chief was then arrested and assassinated by the Gestapo. Hitler used this "attack by the Communists" to issue the Fire Decree which suspended civil liberties in Germany and allowed Hitler to start eliminating his political opposition. And of course there are the growing similarities in their speeches. Trump speaks of "poisoning the blood" of America with immigrants; Hitler spoke of "The rats that poison our body-politic gnaw from the hearts and memories of the broad masses" and that "this poison was allowed to enter the national bloodstream and infect public life without the Government taking any effectual measures to master the course of the disease." Trump talks about how "we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country" - and Hitler said he "the right to eliminate millions of an inferior race that multiplies like vermin." Trump: "The threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous and grave than the threat from within. Our threat is from within." Hitler: "Never in our history have we been conquered by the strength of our outside enemies but only through our own failings and the enemy in our own camp." Finally, in a speech in 1940, Hitler said that the various German political factions could be "blended into one strong new idea to carry new strength which would make Germany great again." It's not funny any more.
  16. 3 points
    It’d be nice if, instead of posting narrative videos which are worse than PowerPoints in eliminating all disagreeing data, y’all would take the actual information (with a little more detail than “liberal bad, conservative good”) and provide the relevant data. Wendy P.
  17. 3 points
    I am pretty tired of the Hilter comparisons on both sides. Spend some time on Truth Social and fairly intelligent people there will explain to you with specific examples about how Joe Biden is like Hitler. They are wrong of course, and comparing Trump to Hitler is a tiring exercise (and unnecessary). Trumps acts and his crimes are plenty of ammunition WITHOUT the need for other comparisons. He is truly a piece of shit, a crook and a conman, we now have the receipts to support those claims and I have yet to find anyone who supports him that can articulate an argument or reason to support him.... just "MAGA!!" or some such bullshit. The Nazi comparison is exhausting and I find it somewhat insulting to the people who ACTUALLY suffered under the Nazis.
  18. 3 points
    Late term abortions done for shits and giggles do not happen so going there is going nowhere. Nor is the decision made by a back room coin toss. I can hardly think of a more serious, weighty, and difficult decision to be made. As such, it must be made without any interference by any organization and only by the woman and her doctors. What that means is that I would always err on the side of the chance for abortions being made in error or owing to bad medical advice and not at all owing to some arbitrary point in time you and I agreed upon for what can only be seen as specious reasons.
  19. 3 points
    No. You keep wanting to define when the fetus is 'alive'. Well, the sperm cells are alive before fertilization and conception. I'll guess you don't want to go back that far. In ancient times, a baby was considered in various situations after 'quickening'. That is, once it started to move in the womb. There were legal ramifications after that. Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quickening That's typically around 20 weeks, roughly halfway. Ironically, modern medicine can keep a premature baby alive from about the same time. I'd be mostly comfortable with free access to abortion until the fetus is viable outside the womb. After that, for the health of the mother. Which, despite what all the self righteous morons claim, is how it's been. The idea that people are aborting viable fetuses for 'birth control' is ludicrous. And a lie.
  20. 3 points
    What really makes no sense is that so many people support a rapist/admitted sexual predator/adulterer/proven fraud over a decent, albeit rather boring, man. And that they are willing to believe the obvious lies (well, obvious to anyone who's been paying attention and has a modicum of critical thinking skill).
  21. 3 points
    Me, no. However, I do like it that you've modified an untenable standard. But the course of the life an individual, or their family, shouldn't be negotiated over like a rug in an Arab souk. That is none of you business and that is the point. Whatever belief system you rely on to make these judgements, even with evolving concessions, is bunk and imposing those views on anyone is wrong.
  22. 3 points
    Trump Blasts Kristi Noem For Not Paying Puppy $130,000 to Go Away Quietly -- Andy Borowitz
  23. 3 points
    I've been trying hard for a couple of days and could not sell any of my cast iron. Guess that's not for me either. Wait . . . you said OnlyFans. Damn, I was trying OnlyPans.
  24. 3 points
    “A man came up to me - big man, strong man - with tears in his eyes”…..
  25. 3 points
    No shit, Sherlock. That’s the problem not the potential or viability of renewables. By that logic why fight crime at home when Haiti is so ridden with theft, drugs, and murder?
  26. 3 points
    1) He didn't fart 2) OK he farted but there's this explanation that it's not like regular gross farting 3) Obama did it first.
  27. 3 points
    Skydiving first started at the Ovid Airport, D82, in August 1967. The original Parachute Jumping Center License from the New York State Department of Commerce Bureau of Aviation is hanging on the wall at manifest. The DZ moved to Seneca Falls, N.Y. in April 1972. I opened Finger Lakes Skydivers DZ in Ovid in May 1982 and operated until November 2015. The business was sold and new operators began in April 2016 under the name Skydive Finger Lakes. The business was sold again and the next operators took over in April 2018 and operated through October 2021. They sold their aircraft and moved out of the area. There was no skydiving business operation during the 2022 and 2023 skydiving season. There was occasional skydiving by invitation only for experienced jumpers during those summers. A completely new skydiving operation, Skydive Seneca Lake, skydivesenecalake.com, will begin on April 25, 2024 with a Cessna TU-206 and a C-182. They are in no way associated with any of the past operations. I purchased the Ovid Airport in 1989, it has a 2800 X 40 paved runway and 2200 X 60 turf runway, 20+ acres of landing area, heated and air conditioned clubhouse with kitchen, lounge, restrooms with showers, and indoor packing area. It is locate in the center of the Finger Lakes Region of New York State. You can see 7 of the finger lakes from jump altitude plus Lake Ontario and on a clear day you can see Canada. John King
  28. 3 points
    Keep in mind that someone, somewhere also calculated the percentage of those that would not comply with the mask mandates, so additional mandates were added. At that time, we did not know what we were facing, how bad it was going to be, if it was natural or manufactured, nor could anyone forecast the extent up to and including the end of human and/or animal life. I had no issue with every arrow in the quiver being used to defend against whatever this "was" to be, mask mandates, social distancing, accelerated vaccines, and lockdowns and will still maintain that the lockdown was a month too short. I am not a science guy, so for those with advanced degrees - we rely on them to guide us. Which they did. Were mistakes made; yes. But, we had to try anything and everything. And, to this day; I look around and think, "We made it through it." ~MINO
  29. 3 points
    New episode out now! DB Cooper and the JFK Assassination with my good friend John Limbach. https://thecoopervortex.podbean.com/e/db-cooper-and-the-jfk-assassination-john-limbach/ Enjoy!
  30. 3 points
    Our office was in the path of totality..big boss catered BBQ and we all went out and watched it together. Was a great show, but I'm in the same boat for lack of photos. I figured there'll be literally millions of pictures, many of them taken by better photographers than me. I'd prefer to watch it with my eyes rather than through my phone.
  31. 3 points
    Hi Keith, Re: I don't think either team has a good choice and am faced with not voting for a P at all. The best instructor I had in college was a math teacher. His position was that if had not tried your homework, you could not ask questions about it in class, later. My position is that anyone who does not vote for POTUS, should not comment on the outcome. Once I became eligible, I have never failed to vote in ANY election that I was allowed to do so. IMO it is our most important civic responsibility. Jerry Baumchen PS) I've voted for POTUS 15 times; IMO only 3-4 times were there good choices. C'est la vie.
  32. 2 points
  33. 2 points
    They just can not avoid thinking about it because their interest isn't moral it's prurient. Often it's as simple as anger over others doing openly what they either secretly desire or merely have very natural curiosities or occasional wonderings. Like reformed smokers they incessantly proselytize against the behaviors as a way to keep the ideas, and pictures, fresh in mind. By claiming their interest is faith based they can avoid uncomfortable questions about their strange concerns. Of course, if the urges become uncontrollable there are always a spare set or two of vestments to don for additional camouflage.
  34. 2 points
    Perhaps read his reply again, and see if you can figure out what rhetorical device he was using there.
  35. 2 points
    So, you're googlefu works to own the libs, but not for, "My iPad has stopped letting me copy and paste links." https://letmegooglethat.com/?q=My+iPad+has+stopped+letting+me+copy+and+paste+links
  36. 2 points
    Basically, there are a lot of assumptions in the Constitution that the majority of government actors are basically trying to do the right thing. Wendy P.
  37. 2 points
    Oh, no. They die. Then they get beaten some more. And more. And more. Brent never admits being wrong. Ever. Jakee never lets go. Ever. I'm usually good for a couple smartass comments. And eventually you have a 'horse smoothie'.
  38. 2 points
    Is that the one where you could put any name down and click the box that said you were a scientist? I heard Mr. Banana Rama's scientific accomplishments are very special. And, who isn't aware of the science behind the healing powers of Mongolian overtone singing? Do you not see the irony touting your scientific record and then hyping the validity of the Great Barrington Declaration based on the number of signatures?
  39. 2 points
    Yes, and we all thought that the Russian military was competent. We were wrong.
  40. 2 points
    That is an impressive enough resume I suppose. What is your opinion on the direction given to the public by the NIH? are they some sort of scammers? Is your posistion influenced by the politics around the pandemic, or is the rest of the scientific community just plain wrong and only you are correct? https://newsinhealth.nih.gov/2021/11/face-masks-covid-19 You may think that we don't already know about the Dunning-Kruger effect but you are wrong in making that assumption. The bottom like is that face masks can and do play a role in reducing the spread of droplets containing viral particles therefore reducing but not eliminating the spread of viral infection. At a time when the health system was overwhelmed with cases of covid leading to sever overtaxing of the system anything reducing the infection rate was very much welcomed and needed.
  41. 2 points
    Effectiveness of N95 Mask in Preventing COVID-19 Transmission Plus if both parties are wearing masks; the transmitter and the receiver protection is doubled?
  42. 2 points
    Such a terrible thing, especially because he was so very much certain. Does anyone know if he's still dead?
  43. 2 points
    That one's going up on the wall in the moderator's lair.
  44. 2 points
    How about for a second you resist your impulse to take cheap shots at them for being trans sex workers, and process the larger message of the story: climate change is going to have the biggest affect on those with the fewest resources. I can grumble that insurance raised our deductible for a roof replacement due to local hail damage, or comment on the road I rode the school bus on every day as a kid has washed out 3 times in the past year due to storms larger than anybody in the area ever remembers seeing...shit that inconveniences or concerns me, but doesn't do much more right now. People who have zero financial buffer and are living in particularly affected areas are going to be hit the hardest. That's going to include Thai trans sex workers and many others living hand to mouth. You could show a bit of empathy, or at minimum keep your mouth shut and count your blessings for having the sheer dumb luck of being born a white dude in North America....or, you could have a chuckle 'cause they wear dresses but were born with penises.
  45. 2 points
    As some of you know, I am now at a startup (Smartville) designing systems that let you use old EV batteries as energy storage for your house, business or grid. This is a way to: 1) Not have to throw out/recycle all those old EV batteries 2) Have a way to store energy from renewable (solar, wind) 3) Provide grid backup during times of high demand. A while back, none other than Scott Miller called me and asked me to do a podcast with him on what I'm doing with Smartville. It's up now at the link below. https://creatingacoolerworld.com/
  46. 2 points
    Yep. When you factually report on the trial that found that Trump sexually assaulted E Jean Carroll, it makes him sound like a rapist (since, objectively, he is one.) Then when you factually report on the sexual improprieties of Joe Biden, the report sounds . . . not that bad, since he has not sexually assaulted anyone. Conservatives demand that the media make both reports sound the same. Even if you report on the accusations, it makes Trump sound worse, since 13 women have accused him of sexual assault (one of which was proven) and he's admitted to sexual assault on TV. Then you report on the one woman who's accused Biden, and it makes it sound like Trump is much, much worse. Trump supporters demand enforced equality. If you spend 15 minutes listing all of Trump's accusers, you have to spend 15 minutes on Biden's one accuser. If you make it sound like Trump raped someone, you have to make it sound like Biden raped someone too. They want rapists made equal to non-rapists, criminals made equal to non-criminals, and people who pay to cover up their banging a porn star made equal to people who don't bang porn stars. This demand for equality in everything is, ironically, something they vociferously oppose when applied to the rest of society, and indeed regularly claim that people are NOT equal and should not be forced to be. Unless their last name is Biden. Then they should be made equal to Trump.
  47. 2 points
    These Countries Have the Most Income Equality Happiness rankings follow closely, as does health care rankings, longevity, general education, trust of government, peaceful society, functioning justice system, etc. Everything else, i.e. "freedom", guns, free speech, military power, foreign influence, is just b.s.
  48. 2 points
    When you roll a 401K into a Roth you have to pay taxes on the converted amount in the year of conversion.....
  49. 2 points
    Newsweek: Letitia James to Begin Claiming Donald Trump's Properties She's going to grab him by the properties; Because when you're Attorney General, they let you do that.
  50. 2 points
    Indiana provides an example of unintended consequences: ‘Severely decreased their sexual intimacy with their husbands’: Indiana appeals court uses Mike Pence’s religious liberty law to block abortion ban
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