Fezzik

Do you have a citation for voting by mail being demonstrable problematic? None of the things you describe are even true. We’ve been voting by mail in Oregon for decades and the demonstrated instances of voter fraud are effectively zero. The Heritage Foundation, which is opposed to vote by mail, has a great list here: https://electionfraud.heritage.org/search?state=OR.

I encourage you to click the ‘Read’ tab to see the actual circumstances resulting in the convictions as most are for trying to game ballot signatures and have nothing to do with votes being cast. It just doesn’t happen because the system is secure.

Never once has anyone, outside of their expansive imagination, proven that voting by mail is not secure and effective.

Sonicare Electric Toothbrush. My grandmother bought me my first one in the 90s. I’m on my third, and that’s only because I take them backpacking. It’s my 1 luxury item on the trail. I know much of it is genetics, but a morning and evening cleaning make my teeth feel amazing and have helped me stay cavity free.

Also related and worth a read, I think, is the Supreme Court case Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U.S. 579 (1952). The content of the dispute is different, as it involves the President seizing private property, but it is (one of?) the seminal cases regarding the scope of presidential powers. Justice Jackson’s concurring opinion is, at least for now, considered the best articulation of when the President may take unilateral action.

Though less critical to our lives, PE has ruined loads of retail and restaurant options as well - Sears, Toy ‘R’ Us, Red Lobster, and Shari’s come to mind.

The medical community realized early in the pandemic that blood clotting was an “extremely rare” side effect of Covid vaccines. Nobody tried to hide that. Also, monoclonal antibody treatments were limited because 99% of Covid infections were of the Omicron variant and it was clinically demonstrated that monoclonal antibodies were entirely ineffective against that variant.

https://healthcare.utah.edu/healthfeed/2022/09/blood-clottin...

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39354108/

Once you’re comfortable openly and actively disenfranchising voters, and you get away with it, it is a small step to start whining all the time about how the system is rigged against you to try to ramp up your efforts to further disenfranchise voters. Burning the system down doesn’t just happen overnight. It happens slowly and starts with ‘working within the system.’

I hate to be the one to point this out, but Republicans have been aggressively gerrymandering districts for multiple decades. While the goal of doing so may have not been to have a dictator, as it appears to be now, I can assure you that their intent in doing so was not to promote representative democracy.

One of my favorite classes, Honors Government, actually worked like this - at the beginning of the term we were assigned 15 short essay prompts that were “due” in batches of 3 at equal intervals during the term. But, if we completed the essays early, we got (something like) +5 points out of a 25 possible points on each of the essays. You could also turn the essays in late and would get -5 points. Then there was a final exam with a total possible 50 points. I did all the essays the first 2 weeks of school, scored well, and didn’t have to take the final.

I will note that this was not a common grading scheme when I was in high-school; I graduated in 2000.

> We have no business judging others`s beliefs when we have enough trouble keeping our own sane.

Assessing other peoples’ beliefs and ideas is, in my experience, one of the best ways to stay sane and learn. Ideas are ultimately independent of the people that hold them. I feel like it is people with unfounded ideas (religions, historically) that try mightily to stop other people from critically assessing them.

Liberals I know are very aware that political affiliation doesn’t change your sexual preferences. We are just amused and saddened that the side that is continuously attempting to overturn gay marriage and openly believes that anything other than heterosexual relationships are immoral and an affront to god has so many practitioners of beautiful, homosexual love.

Charlie Kirk was certainly a proponent of heterosexual-only marriages: https://m.youtube.com/shorts/e9HCz5wkDiY

Feels like the perfect thread to re-link to my favorite card-trick movie - Ricky Jay and His 52 Assistants. Not only is he a deft card manipulator, but he is a great story teller with a vast knowledge of magic history.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=z7InE1zXAY4&pp=ygUfcmlja3kgamF...

I think of ‘mass’ in the context of defining groups of things as just ‘a lot under the circumstances’. A mass gathering for an NFL game is 100,000 people; a mass crowd for a high-school JV basketball game is probably 100; a mass crowd for a 1 year old’s birthday is maybe 50. It’s relative to what is expected under normal circumstances. 4 people being shot or injured is a lot because nobody should be shot or injured.

I’d encourage you to do a bit more research. An entire state banned ghost guns and bump stocks following the CEO’s murder, just 9 days after it happened… and it was Democrats, as it always has been, that passed the law over majority Republican objection. You can find loads of articles about Democrats continuing to push for gun reform. https://bridgemi.com/michigan-government/gun-reforms-among-m...

MTGA uses a method called ‘smoothing’ for initial hand selection: https://mtgazone.com/mtg-arenas-opening-hand-algorithm-and-s...

I assume MTGO uses something similar and I swear I had a great analytical article bookmarked regarding MTGO shuffles but I can’t find it.

Those same bulletproof thermostats are still sold everywhere. And are dirt cheap. I blame the consumer more than the producer for the proliferation of these products. This is one area where your options were never limited and you’d have to be a dunce and/or been paying zero attention to how tech companies have operated for decades to think these devices were not going to be made useless at a regular rate.

Note one massive difference: nobody was trying to make a law that Dahl’s books be sanitized or running around to libraries and getting his books banned. That was a publisher taking unilateral action changing works they own (for better or worse). I see a massive difference between the two things.

Make knives that can only be used to kill people and solicit/provide the knives to bad actors who you know will use the knives for the purpose they were developed for?

For new cars I believe it is nearly 100% consumer demand. I’m a manual fanatic (currently shopping for my dream 93/94 Supra) but the tech for automatics is just too good now. Assistive cruise control doesn’t even work with manual transmissions and I don’t know anyone that wants to buy a new car that doesn’t have that technology. Also, the gas mileage is better, the wear-and-tear on the transmission is less and, as fun as shifting is, unless you’re a hobbyist with multiple cars the incentive of getting to shift just doesn’t outweigh the objective benefits of not having to. Heck, I clearly remember that even in the mid-90s when I was starting to drive manual transmissions were already falling out of style with kids my age buying their first cars.

I don’t know how this would work for CS, but in law school I had one professor that did final oral examinations as follows: there were about 15-20 cornerstone topics from the class that were possible exam questions and were announced a few weeks before finals. Then, during finals week(s), each student had a 30 minute block during which they would randomly select 3 of the 10 topics by pulling note cards and engaging in a conversation about the topic with the professor. If you knew the basics of the topic you were almost guaranteed a B or B+; if you demonstrated novel or expansive knowledge you got a higher grade… and you really had to not study to get a C+ or lower.

There are flaws in every method of measuring competency but I thought this was one of the better ones, and it is very difficult to cheat on. His exams were by far the least grumbled about and I don’t recall a single student that thought the method was unfair. And even though this required more upfront work from the professor he said it was ultimately less time consuming than grading written exams, and far more enjoyable.

What makes one ‘the most health-conscious?’ Certainly all the fittest people I know drink… everyone in the triathlon group I swim with three times a week at 5:30 am drinks beer or wine, and all the people I go with and meet ski-touring, mountain biking, and backpacking drink. In fact, the city I live in, is regularly noted as one of the booziest towns in the states but if you walk around town there are few people who are not fit as can be. I can’t find good age stats for Bend, Oregon, but I drink and play cribbage a few times a month with some pretty healthy octogenarians. Obviously my sample size is limited.

I am genuinely curious - the goofy language is to mask the (possibly misdirected) immense concern. If I am wrong, and all these goons I perceive as sinners are in fact saints, I would truly love to hear the recitation of facts that expels me of my delusion.

Can anyone who voted for this clown car help me understand what the appeal is? Everything the administration is doing was either expressly said or undeniably telegraphed and, from my perspective, it is all moronic. What the heck am I missing???

5 marriages… 100% Christian. No way to say it better.

A better title: CPR is successful, just not as successful as people think it is.

Whoever thinks a 1/10 (or nearly 1/5!) shot at not dying otherwise is bad odds clearly doesn’t value their own life. I’ll take all my ribs being broken + being alive for even a week vs being dead and no broken ribs any day of the week. I’d also traumatize myself if I knew I was giving someone a 1/10 (or nearly 1/5!) shot at being alive and not dead. Absolutely none of the “downsides” they cite outweigh fucking dying.

I highly recommend 4K Download. A lifetime license is less than $30 and it is dead-simple to use. I’ve been using it to download old concert footage and debates because I’ve noticed them disappearing.

- a very happy customer.

Edit, to add: https://www.4kdownload.com/desktop-youtube-downloader

Huh?

Fortunately, for those of that are lazy, the last page has everything you need to know in giant, bold letters:

1. Vitamins do NOT prevent measles. 2. Giving high doses of vitamins may be dangerous. 3. The best way to prevent measles is vaccination.

Wait, what? Scanning every recent year for individual model and/or company total sales Tesla doesn’t even crack the top 10 in any given year. How does Tesla make the best selling car? What am I missing…

Edit: I didn’t scan close enough… in 2024 the Y was around the 4th best selling Model.

Funny seeing this here - I practice regularly in this Courthouse. We often darkly joke that Frontier Law is still practiced out there.

If he’s using it he probably just has a prescription or a doctor that provides it to him. Ketamine isn’t all that hard to get prescribed and it is, frankly, a pretty mellow drug.