TheVat

Spam ban thank you, man. Could there be a slightly more challenging registration test? Questions that weed out more bots and still let people from various cultures and education levels in? It's 753 MDT and there's a really thick cluster of spams from three hours ago. I can't scroll past them to find more legit overnight posts from all those nutty Limeys who get up so early.

Lozenge surplus transom comestible minstrel poodle.

Our basement has cats but no catacomb. Sometimes they make noises down there that will raise the dead - there is a constant struggle where I try to figure out how to secure all materials in the workbench area and storage area and they figure out how to dislodge them and knock them around, then hide them. Cats have 50% more cortical neurons than a dog, and they are all devoted to mischief. (And none to obedience, which is why I like them) Impressive. In this area, our house built in 1906 is considered quite old. The foundation is heavy fieldstone walls, two foot thick in some places, which is atypical of US basements.

I wasn't espousing the metaphysical conjecture of nonphysical reality, but showing how it conflicts with technological ambitions like interstellar travel. To use an analogy to clarify, if I could make rugs fly with my mind why invent airplanes?

Oh yes, I agree Europe is generally ahead on multiple aspects of infrastructure. Many places here grew quite rapidly, and there was a pressure to slap up developments quickly, and not build sturdy or storm/fire-proof. And now we have places where insurance companies just abandon a whole region because homes were not built to withstand hurricanes or flooding. Back in New York's rough years in the 70's, landlords would burn their properties in the Bronx for quick money because they were impossible to sell to anyone. Then the insurance companies pulled out, obviously. So no new projects could be built there. The whole country has major problems with zoning and insurance and other things that need to resolved if new better housing and infrastructure is wanted.

@Prajna - your philosophy seems in conflict with itself. If there is only consciousness, and there is no physical world, then what would be the point of science in studying what are only illusions or false appearance? Why should any species bother with interstellar travel when such travel is only an illusion? Would not we do better to develop a way for our consciousness to skip space/time and meet other sentient species directly?

Well I assume you would...dice them up first.

I would just say the US is fifty states with wildly differing qualities of infrastructure. Almost choked on my coffee, imagining parts of New Jersey as representative of the US as a whole. Someone from Salt Lake City or Eugene, Oregon or Minneapolis or Lincoln, Nebraska or Boulder, Colorado would feel like they'd gone to another country in New Jersey. I do think the number one aspect of infrastructure where we fall way short of Europe is in mass transit - the stubborn insistence on using a personal vehicle for almost all trips is a cultural thing which influences many elements of quality of life: air quality, noise levels, traffic congestion, massive parking lots displacing parks and other human spaces, obesity rates, etc. Note that US cities that often get ranked highest in quality of life are more "European" in being pedestrian friendly and having protected greenspace and reliable mass transit and safe bike lanes.

Also, don't many people already vote on global issues when they vote for presidents and national assembly representatives who must deal with issues of a global nature? Say I'm voting for a leader who promises to work with other countries on carbon neutral initiatives, or who favors economic sanctions rather than land wars against rogue nations. I try to vote for people with the best understanding of such issues and vote against them if they don't act on their understanding.

See post directly above yours. Such ethnically targeted attacks have been going on various places in the world for a very long time. The key point is that if others in your ethnic group become aware that you were assaulted for your ethnic identity, that contributes to public fear and diminishment of personal liberty for some people. Because usually it's not just one isolated incident - "we don't like your kind around here," is a message that can be spread through a pattern of assaults and/or vandalism and/or scrawled graffiti, etc.

Another option is Simple Wikipedia, which is exactly what it sounds like. Here's a sample page. https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass

A lot of what happens is in communities at the local level. And a lot of corruption and decay happen when people ignore local politics. Voting globally would, for most, involve voting from their ignorance while neglecting the pressing needs of their towns and cities. Also maybe worth noting that the leaders who we have the most access to are usually at the local level. And the leaders who best understand the needs of a city or state are those at those municipal and state levels of government. And given the gridlock of federal governance in the United States, it is often the local and state officials who actually get things done.

If someone beats you and says "We need your sort to leave our neighborhood," then you know the motivation and it compounds the crime. It creates a threat situation for your group that extends beyond you and it expands the threat of future assault on you. Or if, say, an immigration agent committed an unlawful search and seizure on a Latino person and it was known they profiled...then that would compound the Constitutional violation. Latino persons would experience a threat and suffer fear and stress in their daily lives. It's essentially hate crime at the federal government level. The US government: run by a felon, forcing its employees to become felons.

Even Ted Cruz chastised Turnip's FCC lapdog for the attack on Kimmel. In other news, the moon was blue and hell experienced a hard frost.

A trichinosis larva and a maggot walk into a bar. The maggot turns to the trichinosis larva and says "Hey Jeff, I heard you always order pork." Jeff says "Indeed, I encyst upon it."

It's disturbing the extent to which people like Jimmy Kimmel (just now cancelled by his corporate overlords) are being attacked by Turnip's attack dogs for things they did not say. A classic tactic of facists everywhere. Kimmel said nothing unkind about Charlie Kirk or the grief some are feeling - his comment was critcizing the Turnip administration and MAGAs for their shameful attempts to blame it on the Left and generally using Kirk's murder to leverage their political grudges.

Back to nerd humor for a moment: Yesterday was Pythagoras Day. 9-16-25.

Yeah, the US has always had that problem where promises made by one president are backpedaled or modified by another one. I guess it would have been worse if we hadn't written a formal Constitution. Fifty states, a dozen ideologies, many miscellaneous cults.... it's like herding cats. I think it's Ben Franklin with that quote, something like "A republic, if you can keep it."

Yep, the warheads are UK designed, which are mounted on US missiles. So there's some independence. You have to wonder how many people have sat out attacks in bomb shelters, grumbling over that decision. Everybody eventually learns the hard way that Russian promises don't mean anything.

And possibly a fan of "Jaws," going by your moniker? Welcome. Perhaps the next time we have someone hyperventilating over 31 Atlas, or some other interstellar interloper, you can talk them off their Alien Invasion ledge. I'm a life sciences guy, dabble in astronomy and cosmology a bit, as do several of us here, so having some expertise aboard couldn't do any harm. Which end of the telescope do you recommend looking through? 😀

Hint to DV giver: it's a pun on the word "one."

Baltics? But I still have doubts that there's a list of EU states he wants to poke with a stick. Russia has a small struggling economy, labor shortages, and their military machine is struggling to keep up with supplying munitions (and there's a shortage of TNT) and released criminals for cannon fodder.

See A Doctor.

I know where the trash files are. It wasn't hard to find. And I find the substitute of AI output for learning composition skills, along with grammar, syntax, and spelling, not at all funny. Educationally speaking, that is self harm. You should stop using AI to jerk off, and going back to doing it manually.

Glad we're keeping you amused. You mispelled "independent," btw.