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nbmishoid

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Posts posted by nbmishoid

  1. 17 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:

    I find this fascinating, and not unusual among my acquaintances.  I'm pretty sure that almost 60 years into my time on earth, I'm quite straight, but it's always interesting to learn of people's eyes being opened otherwise.

    No self-respecting gay man would want anything to do with me, anyway, so it doesn't really matter.

    JJ

    It is a large club, man.  First, the engineer thing….

    • Haha 1
  2. I’ve been to SQ countless times.  Yes, they execute drug offenders.  A few a year. 
     

    for us, that would be 10’s of thousands per year.  What a ghastly suggestion.  

    • Hook 'Em 2
    • Haha 1
  3. You are saying, perhaps without knowing, that violence and imprisonment statistics in the US differ from Norway due to,”demographics”, and you did not mean young vs old.  You high fived, but otherwise ignored the example of Norway and just how they reduce recidivism, which I mentioned and Brisket elaborated on and provided a link.  
    How are others supposed to react?  

    • Hook 'Em 3
  4. In the case of Norway, it is the rehabilitation based jail system.   Money invested in preventing recidivism.   One has to give a squirt of piss, it seems, to grant these favors on these awful humans

    • Hook 'Em 3
    • Like 2
  5. 5 minutes ago, fattyflattie said:

    I couldn’t give two squirts of piss about a junkie or their dealer. Sorry not sorry. 

    For fairness, you wouldn’t mind some shirts of piss on you, eh?  Have you checked into the substance abuse thread?   Your disdain for human life is galling.  Your day is successful.

    • Hook 'Em 7
  6. 18 hours ago, The Original Greaser Bob said:

    I noticed you left out "existence itself" and relationships to others.

    Science is a language used to explain the world, as is history and religion.  There is nothing remotely "anti-religioius" about science.  A religioius person understands science just like everyone else.  

    The scientist, who pushes religion away, is simply pushing a tool for understanding away, just like he would if he pushed history, or the classics, of the study of Western Civilization. 

    Existence itself?  Is that you, Sartre?  Hegel?  Plenty of bs about existence itself outside the Bible.  No, your typical religious person doesn’t understand science.  The typical religious person, say, republican, understands political power, and how to use it against their fellow citizens. 

  7. As a dick, I tend to the sciences, hard and otherwise, to understand my place in the world.  There are vast numbers of tomes  in many languages that also help the hard working student understand their place in the world.  Among all these the Bible is nothing special, except for it being fictional. 
     

    As for spiritual type religions, there are also a great many.  In the US, just about one for each person.  Nothing special about any particular one.  

  8. On 2/6/2023 at 3:40 PM, Felix said:

    Knew a guy like this.  One day I came to work and realized I hadn't seen him in a while.  Turns out he was just sentenced to 25 years for Tax Evasion.  Sole breadwinner for his family.  Wife and six kids.  Brilliant IT guy.  That was about ten years ago.  I think about that knucklehead sometimes and wonder if his family is ok.

    I wonder where you are tonight 

    I wonder if you are all right 

    I wonder if you think of me

    In my misery 

    There stands the glass

  9. 13 hours ago, Brisketexan said:


    Man….25 years ago I had an older work buddy explain to me that he called Target “the $100 store, because no matter what we go in for, we spend at least $100.” It’s a universal constant.

    Same time frame, living in Sumatra.  Every time the wife took the free company plane to Singapore, for a hair do, it ran $1500 or so for the total.  On an R&R in Perth and my then 10 yr old and I ware getting haircuts.  I relayed this little story to my barber, both were female.  They replied in unison in extreme Aussie accents “Let us marry you!”.

  10. And what does the judge know in favor of the FDA.  Medical wise. Literally thousands of these approvals by FDA have been fine, but now this judge has an better idea?  Help me, law dogs.  

    • Rage+1 1
  11. 1 hour ago, The Original Greaser Bob said:

    My wife's dad makes such a claim. They all became Congregationalist (although they did move out to western Mass. to conquer the Indians and invent insurance.)  And if being on the cutting edge of the abolutionist movement in America makes you an asshole, they are all right by me. 

    Apologies for any intended insult to you FIL.  None of the folks alive today had a single thing to do with the abolitionist movement, which, also,  came well after the puritan settlers had passed.  Applause to those who did do it.  Thanks for your point.  

  12. 18 hours ago, atomheartbevo said:

    Yeah, they weren't exactly here by choice.  I may have the two mixed up, but if I recall, the Pilgrims wanted to break with the Church of England, the Puritans wanted to change it, and neither group was popular.

    There is absolutely nothing special about having an ancestor who came over on the Mayflower.  Nothing.

    I gave a brief talk a few years back at a genealogy society's yearly shindig, and because it was the 400th anniversary of the Mayflower (COVID made it virtual, so it was 2020), there was another speaker who gave a talk poking fun at certain types of would-be genealogists.  He talked about how it was both annoying and amusing to have people showing up at our meetings claiming to have Mayflower passengers as ancestors, but they couldn't quite prove it, but they just knew it because of family stories. The Mayflower groupies - they always had this sense of inflated self importance that some ancestor came over on the Mayflower, and so they were special because they were related to Presidents, etc.

    He dug down into the stats, and used the statistics of the General Society of Mayflower Descendants (aka the Mayflower Society) which are well-documented/cited, to show that there is nothing special about it - tens of millions of living Americans are descended from at least one of the 50+ Mayflower passengers/crew who are known to have descendants, and worldwide there are probably 35-40 million living descendants (plenty of families came over who had left kids back in the Old World).

    If you're like "holy shit, 50 people have 35-40 million living descendants", take a break and do a little math - it's not that hard.  That's only 700,000 living descendants apiece of 50 people from 1620, except keep in mind that a lot of those first few generations intermarried, so the numbers get a little fuzzy, but nonetheless, those people were pumping out a lot of kids at times (or their kids/grandkids were pumping out a lot of kids as farms got big).  The early adulthood/childhood mortality rates come into play, otherwise we'd be easily talking 100 million+ having ancestors on the Mayflower.

    For reference, I was in a DNA study concerning a bunch of cousins of mine that were doing research on a pair of our common ancestors that were married and having kids in the late 1780s through early 1800s. This couple had a dozen kids, with 10 surviving and having their own kids (our research group covered lines down from 6 of those 10). Just with the 6 lines we fully documented over several  years, and extrapolating out (but still being conservative) for the others (which we knew there were living descendants of at least 3 of the 4), we found over 50,000 living descendants.

    So a couple born in the 1760s and having 10 kids had 50,000 living descendants.  Jump back 180 years for 50 people, with lots of kids in each generation, and it's not hard to get into tens of millions of living descendants.  It's 12-15 or so generations back to the Mayflower, so not that long ago, but  yet still more than long enough that half-a-dozen kids or more for most of those generations gets you into the millions fast.

    If anybody is curious, belonging to the Mayflower Society (and/or your state's society) gets you free admission to some museums in New England, extra access to some website stuff (profiles, etc), discounts on subscriptions to some other genealogy/heritage organizations, invitations to some events  in New England that they hold every now and then as well as your state society's events, and apparently your kids get some scholarship offers.  I have not participated in any of events or been to the museums in New England, (it's on our bucket list), but have done some of the Texas stuff.  Somehow I missed the get together this year, which was in McKinney a week or two ago, because going to McKinney is always such a treat. I kid, I kid, Texas has a strong contingent (well over a thousand members).

    I understand your mathematical point.  In the same vein everyone on earth can say they are descendants of Charlemagne.   My point was about real Bostonians, what they say, and how irritating and assholish it is.   Nothing to do with their veracity.  

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