TheVat

I've been using the duckduckgo browser, which does not have these problems and gives a high level of privacy. And it reduces ads so severely I've wondered how they stay in business. With Chrome you have to go to Settings and click to the advanced browser security settings which then allow you to delete saved passwords, as well as cookies, cache, and site settings. Just make sure you have the PW safely stored elsewhere.

You also get "I axe vile argument." A suitable action for moderator.

Spit-take! There needs to be a web initialism, SCOS. Spewed coffee on screen. I believe the early 20th century comic actor WC Fields might have been allergic to water.

The thing about xenophobia, politically, is that it always works with a segment of the population. If you sugarcoat it with "we are promoting safe streets, law and order, and plenty of jobs because foreigners aren't flooding in and stealing them," then you can soothe a lot of people who lean Right. The question is how long you can sell that, as the other side, the ugly side of xenophobia rears its head - hate crimes, brutal law enforcement, ghettoization, and cycles of poverty as immigrants are shut out from climbing the socioeconomic ladder. The people who fear too rapid change in their neighborhoods will be demonized as racists, the immigrants will be demonized as criminals, Islamic extremists, parasites....whatever label can be spun to fit a particular demographic. Nordic countries used to be protected from immigrant influxes by their winters, as well as by the lack of former colonial connections. When you have passive barriers, you don't have to think much about political barriers and you can maintain a "nice" demeanor. Now the winters are getting milder and the immigrants are more numerous, more desperate and less picky about ice and snow. It will be hard to balance humanitarian concern and the capacity to handle a suddenly accelerating rate of growth.

Who brings chocolate eggs that cause unconsciousness? The ether bunny.

Until reading of Australia's first kangaroo attack death since 1936, on Monday, I hadn't realized that male roos perceive our bipedalism as a challenge posture. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-62884861 I hope all our Australian members are well - @beecee , who has been quiet lately, and IIRC is the same age as the victim...well, if he wanted to give a shout? I realize I have possibly not created much fodder for discussion, beyond the obvious assertions that wild animals do not make good pets. But perhaps there are exceptions.

I've gravitated back to natural fibers and goose down, partly due to the plastic nanoparticles issue, and can report that's an expensive path. But comfortable on the skin when you replace poly blends with straight cotton. All I know about cotton is that it gets stronger and wrinkles less when mercerized (soaking in NaOH), which is useful for clothes but not for towels (unmercerized absorbs water better).

So many incisive posts! Will just add that, per Peterkin's mention of the negative effects of political parties especially on national assemblies, that the founders were much opposed to parties. Time has certainly buttressed their objections in many ways. Thomas Jefferson on the matter: George Washington also weighed in, in his Farewell Address, and held nothing back... I almost want a phrase stronger than "nailed it!" for President George. A crystal ball, that man had!

Is the glove analogy quite correct, though? The objects in the boxes have no definite handedness until you open them, right? If you open your box, you forced an ambidextrous glove to become a left-hand or RH glove by doing so. And you will never be able to make the box create a specific handedness. So no superluminal digital signal. (Disclaimer: I understand very little of QT) BTW, completely useless digression, but any glove can reverse handedness. (Hint: easier with unlined rubber gloves). Topologically, any glove contains its own enantiomorph.

Har! But wait, wouldn't Camilla be the bride of Chucky?

I think the argument that, in UK, the monarch provides a stabilizing force that stands outside the government, is not a bad one. An additional control rod, if you will, in the reactor of state. UK could probably do worse than to have a control rod right now, one who is quite green in his outlook. Not sure how many old movie or Alec Guinness fans be here, but I couldn't help but think of the Duke of Chalfont in "Kind Hearts and Coronets," whose mother was edged out of the succession to the dukedom (for marrying below her station - an Italian!!), and so he murders his way through the nine people now ahead of him. There's some line about how the first two was child's play, but the severe challenge of knocking off the next seven. So Richard, Duke of Gloucester (presently at number 30), has his work cut out for him. And he'd best avoid Bosworth Field. Offtopic, but I really loathe the American version, which chopped out six minutes of adultery, nonPC nursery rhymes, and tacked on a stupid ending that shat on the nice dark ambiguity of the original. The Hays movie code really treated Americans like children.

Well I hope Charles III fares better than the previous two Charleses. One beheaded, one died of mercury poisoning. Even if he is reduced in any monarchical role, I hope this offers him some platform to keep promoting green energy and ecological stewardship. It's good to be Green.

BALMORAL, Scotland, Sept 8 (Reuters) - Queen Elizabeth, Britain's longest-reigning monarch, the nation's figurehead and a towering presence on the world stage for seven decades, died peacefully at her home in Scotland on Thursday aged 96. "The death of my beloved Mother, Her Majesty The Queen, is a moment of the greatest sadness for me and all members of my family," the new king, her eldest son Charles, said. "We mourn profoundly the passing of a cherished Sovereign and a much-loved mother. I know her loss will be deeply felt throughout the country, the Realms and the Commonwealth, and by countless people around the world," the 73-year-old said in a statement. Very best of luck to Charles III. Was the longest serving Prince of Wales.

https://archive.ph/N5MCX (screenshot, paywall-free version of NY Times article) (you have to scroll past the "interactive" pictorial at the top, which doesn't transfer the pics to the screenshot, so there's just a bunch of isolated sentences on a field of green) (...) But today, as demand surges amid a Russian energy crunch, whole trees are being harvested for power. And evidence is mounting that Europe’s bet on wood to address climate change has not paid off. Forests in Finland and Estonia, for example, once seen as key assets for reducing carbon from the air, are now the source of so much logging that government scientists consider them carbon emitters. In Hungary, the government waived conservation rules last month to allow increased logging in old-growth forests. And while European nations can count wood power toward their clean-energy targets, the E.U. scientific research agency said last year that burning wood released more carbon dioxide than would have been emitted had that energy come from fossil fuels. “People buy wood pellets thinking they’re the sustainable choice, but in reality, they’re driving the destruction of Europe’s last wild forests,” said David Gehl of the Environmental Investigation Agency, a Washington-based advocacy group that has studied wood use in Central Europe.

I found this rant by Jonathan Pie. Gave a disturbing take on the backdrop behind all the mess over there. (Disclaimer: Not a Brit, not in any way conversant with the myriad of issues attending the labour situation over there, just concerned about what neoliberal conservatives are wreaking around the globe.)

Ribbit!

My bullshit detector has smoke pouring out of it. DeSantis is a Trump clone, playing to the Trump base. The rest of this post is somewhat redundant given what Phi just posted. I'll add it, anyway. CRT was an area of study at some colleges, it's not taught in primary schools. DeSantis concocted a bogeyman, in order to suppress intellectual freedom and muzzle teachers, and discourage covering darker aspects of our history. Learning real history, IOW. CRT does not teach anyone that a child is a loser or evil - do you have one shred of evidence such a thing happened in any public school? BLM demonstrations were mostly peaceful, included people of all ethnicities, and were legitimate First Amendment protests of police brutality, racial profiling and murder of unarmed suspects. Incidents of violence were often found to be false flag operations by outside provocateurs. The Don't Say Gay law was theater for homophobes and nervous RW evangelicals, purporting to fix another nonexistent problem. Are we quite sure, if an admin checks your IP address, it will be in Europe or overseas? I'll show you mine, if you show yours.

The 538 report I posted had detailed analysis of the polling leading up to the 2014 referendum. So your statement that you don't "know where you fish up such rubbish from, or why" would suggest you didn't even look at that report. Feel free to actually read the report which I posted. Nowhere did I say that it is not possible a majority of Crimeans prefer annexation by Russia. (only doubting that it was 97%) Again you haven't responded to the key points of that first posting on the matter, battening on to a side comment on an issue that is less interesting to me, and which dodges the larger picture which is Vlad the Invader attacking a sovereign nation, including its capital at the outset, which has no interest in being part of Russia. How bizarre that you think when a nation is constantly threatened by Russia for several years, and wants to join a military alliance to protect itself from Russia, that this is some kind of unconscionable aggression on the nation's part. Why aren't you firing up your outrage machine over Finland and Sweden now moving to join NATO? Is it possible that you have bought in to Putin's Empire philosophy, viz. that places like Ukraine aren't really separate sovereign nations that have any right to exist outside the Russian Empire? I am so ignorant of customs overseas. On what anatomical part do you sit in the UK?

In one former job, bleach was seen as the best broad spectrum germicide/fungicide, but that was clinic surfaces where we were just after bacteria. If there is a lot of organic material - fish poo, or whatever - on equipment surfaces, bleach can be somewhat reduced in power, so it is sometimes better to opt for alcohol (ethyl is better than isopropyl) in that case. If your equipment includes rubber, I would especially prefer ethanol, since bleach is a strong oxidizing agent that can hurt the rubber. In terms of speed, I am not sure which is better. Ethanol operates on cells by dehydrating them, so that might take a little time, too. If your research says bleach is slower, and you want something quick, then maybe you should go with that. If you don't mind really slow, vinegar is good, and will also eliminate any hard water deposits that may develop in equipment. You may want to research concentration, for that. When I kept fish, many years ago, I used vinegar, because it was considered safer than bleach and it was cheap. (bleach, you must leave zero residue when the fish go back in, which is probably obvious)

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/10/ukraine-invasion-civilian-volunteers-survival/671241/ Horizontal relations. Self-organization. Ukrainians are very good at these.

Sodium hypochlorite. AKA bleach.

LoL. He is reposting his OP from another website forum.

My main point was in the first two paragraphs which it seems you were reluctant to respond to. I can see why. When Putin's actions and own words don't fit your narrative it's best to ignore. As for Crimea, not sure when 98% has ever anywhere been a credible vote count. Really? It could well be a majority wanted to join Russia, but returns that go into the upper 90s suggest manipulation and intimidation. 538, at the time, had cited polls that found 41% of Crimeans wanting annexation. Hmm. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/many-signs-pointed-to-crimea-independence-vote-but-polls-didnt/

But it's doubtful they really address the big questions of eggs-istence. Abstraction requires a sophisticated scaffolding of language, especially a rich trove of nouns which do not refer only to physical objects. It is remarkable when cuckoos know they're on the clock.

I know Vlad's words and actions, which couldn't be clearer. He has openly stated he wants to be like Peter the Great and rebuild an empire. No Vulcan mind-meld needed. In Georgia, Putin invaded on the basis of false accusations of genocide and then sponsored ethnic cleansing of Georgians by South Ossetians and then engaged in what international observers described as grave human rights abuses. (Gosh that sounds familiar!) Crimea has been a hot mess that empires fight over since it was taken over by Kievan Rus in the mid 10th century. I can find no trustworthy polling on what current Crimeans want, but Russian state media has (surprise!) found overwhelming support for it being part of Russia.