DonkeyCigars

Well, if you look at society and humans living in society through the prism of Gartner’s hype cycle, we are in the trough of disillusionment. We will bounce back a bit to find some marginal net improvements. Glass a quarter full.

Had her money? What money? Wasn't she completely busted with the dissolution of the facade? Also, I think there is no way she walks unless somehow the jury buys her victim act as she throws her ex under the bus. That would entail her not talking like a weirdo and being a human and not wearing black, which would be an interesting to see because it's a tacit admission of her sociopathy.

Imagine having gone to UT and lived in Jester, a high rise full of insane, low-income, transitional people (and some with drug and booze addictions) and having barely survived the wild shenanigans as you cheated death...and then wanting to create a Jester but for adults with all these same issues, but times a billion. The building wouldn't survive a year.

Everyone should be happy that since Joe Rogan got his megadeal with Spotify he's apparently been sandboxed to that crappy podcast division of theirs and it has really chopped the legs out of his platform and influence as his views and following has plummeted. This is good if you think he's dangerous and/or stupid.

I think a lot of this is thoughtful and trends more to being "right" than any binary, blinders-on response like you see with David Dennison and his ilk. And that is why I think this stuff is messy, complex, tragic and just all around sad. There aren't good answers because despite spurts of heroism or honor or altruism, IMO our society is sick (as you also seem to suggest) and people are inherently wicked and everything that follows is in general concert with those anchors. 100% agree with you that pro-life is complicit. Everything about this law and the previous laws and abortion and keeping unwanted children and the disservice we do and all the political hand-wringing...it all sucks.

Science is a discipline and the Scientific method is a process. The findings of science at any point in time can be either rejected or accepted. The extrapolated “knowledge”— the theoretical and they hypothetical knowledge (read: not empirical) based upon accepted findings— is absolutely belief. That’s my point. Just like the idea that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic or whatever that famous quote is, once you get to the limit of human understanding and empirical knowledge, it’s all conjecture, faith and belief.

Sure. Everything we believe as a projection or an extrapolation can be said to be in faith based upon the varying veracity of input data, or otherwise stated, based upon mythology.

This sort of response, and the celebration of it, is part of the problem IMO and highlights exactly what I meant— what is mythology and what is principled belief and what is truth and where does those intersect and what role does science and faith, and that unique intersection, play? These are fundamentally apolitical questions and issues, which get abstracted and made into ugly, imperfect laws depending on the issue and where you stand.

Those are funny. What about this old chestnut: ”Government should demand and mandate people get vaccinations, people don’t get a choice about what goes in their body!” By people who are pro-abortion under the reasoning of choice of what to do with your own body? That seems comically inconsistent and something that would be a funny meme or Twitter screengrab. Got one of those on hand, too? Lol

The biggest issue is that we have a very root and fundamental disconnect and disagreement between people who believe abortion is not murder, but a minor operation to remove an unwanted growth in their body, and a people who believe that abortion is murder, killing a soul, something that has been in existence for all time, and manifested as a human blessing from a higher power. Not something to selfishly trifle about even if the facts are that most unwanted child births would make their communities and neighborhoods and adjacent societies better because outside of the rare feel good story, they are invariably not raised by people we would call good parents who should be responsible for bringing up a child. And the costs of welfare and crime and everything else would be reduced, so there are definitely selfish reasons that are compelling to all, regardless your belief. Once you get into spiritual and theoretical matters, you lose people who aren’t able to conceive or conceptualize beyond the literal demands in front of their nose and whose beliefs fail to launch beyond the very terrestrial limitations of observable scientific experimentations. It’s complicated and messy and difficult because to change means to change other people’s hearts and minds. It’s not efficient, for either side. So that leaves us very frustrated and sad, no matter which side we land on, and it divides us.

Huh?

I think you missed the joke.

The thing about the drone strikes too, is that it seems to open you up to disinformation, he said/she said, type allegations. You can have killed a dozen, grizzled old gray haired leaders and then have their Taliban PR team claim you killed 9 babies and 17 puppies and a crippled old lady. Much easier to verify and re-verify the truth versus lies, when you are in person, but then also, you aren’t putting an American life in peril, so 🤷‍♂️

Are you mad at me or Biden? I didn’t say anything. Lol

Your pragmatism is shocking and refreshing. I'm with you that good enough has to be good enough here. It's not a perfect world. I read this today: https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/bidens-chaotic-withdrawal-from-afghanistan-is-complete

To your point, and I ask because I've only heard it here in these pages, how veracious is Biden's insistence or importance of a 9/11 deadline for the eponymous photo op and PR and political pomp and circumstance? If it is true, then putting bare and obvious politics in front of something like this seems like a bad thing. If it's a figment of the opposition party's imagination, then maybe not malpractice as much as a miscarriage, if you are so inclined (and I am not). I am inclined to think that President Biden passed this test. I hope some stupid politics doesn't come out to taint that. And the last week and this thread has made me feel very liberal and kinda gross -- or maybe Biden's handling of all this has been very centrist which appeals to me deeply. I wish @bad_teammate would opine so I know where I stand on the litmus test.

I'm coming around on you! Good report.

Hate to say it, I'm with DD on this one. You can't make a gourmet meal when you have chicken poop. The best you can do is make chicken salad, which is more-or-less what we got here.

There is one a quarter mile from the house-- don't judge me! ☹️

Stat: 750,000 households in the US could be evicted by the end of 2021, Goldman Sachs wrote after the Supreme Court scrapped the CDC’s eviction moratorium. Up to 3.5 million households collectively owe landlords as much as $17 billion, Goldman calculated.

Not my proudest moment. I lost like 10 lbs since May (that was the worst offending month). When I am in my busy season there are costs we pay for convenience and speed/time; both in dollars and health. Funny tidbit; they’ve been pushing notifications trying to hook me back in (e.g. we miss you, here are free points/coupons, etc.). Like with Vegas trying to get their whale back to spending money.

I've been signature status for a while-- I don't have a lot of available points (425) because I use them for free food. 2021 points over 25,000. I pulled my paypal report (the app hits my paypal for payment), and there was one month I spent $1400 at CFA during the summer (A family of 6 who ate CFA for lunch daily). We started cooking more from home and I gave myself a raise.

I knew you were a conspiracy theorist!

Yea but if I can’t shave in the shower and am sacrificing convenience for whatever ridiculous alternative (buying a haircut bib, shaving outside or getting griped at by my wife) for a marginally better shave, that seems like a juice not worth the squeeze. I’m busy enough as it is and a good enough shave is good enough. I’ll brew my own beer and grow my own tomatoes and shave with a specialty razor when I’m retired.