My i5 processor is not worthy.

Is it too soon to be an early adopter or too late?

My god that is perfection. Of course he didn't try to sing the "Darliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing" line, but he has so effectively carried the raw emotion from his song.

Compare to a live performance by Juice Newton who's been performing the song for 30 years (to that point):



Literally all my hairs are standing on end after listening to Chip sing his song.

Murder On The ISS. 

 

Well fuck off then!

But seriously is it not time to splash the space station, what purpose does the thing serve. But then what purpose has it ever served? Apart from some cleaver crystallography, but as far as I can see that's a big so fucking what, nothing has come of it.

Other than that there is very little to comment on.
To date the thing has cost $150 billion, plus ~4 billion a year to maintain it. For a fraction of that we could have machines sniffing and poking around those fissures on Europa.

And remember the shuttle* program cost ~$200 billion, why?
Well we needed the shuttle to build the space station and we needed the space station to justify the shuttle.
A self licking ice cream. Wiki

Some lovely snark here from Steven Weinberg

Quote:The International Space Station is an orbital turkey, no important science has come out of it. I could almost say no science has come out of it. And I would go beyond that and say that the whole manned spaceflight program, which is so enormously expensive, has produced nothing of scientific value.

Human beings don't serve any useful function in space. They radiate heat, they're very expensive to keep alive and unlike robotic missions, they have a natural desire to come back, so that anything involving human beings is enormously expensive.

Show ContentSpoiler:

   What is an atheist to do when facing death or the death of a loved one or the death of someone else's loved one when the faithful are in the mix?

Personally, I would never bring up my atheism in the face of someone else's grief. Being able to quell anxieties about the finality of death is one of the benefits of belief in the afterlife. Denial is a powerful buffer that I am not willing to mess with during someone else's acute pain.  Boundaries and priorities are more important than me on a soapbox.

Unfortunately, the religious do not seem to follow the same stance.  In the face of a loved one's death within the world of the atheist, Xtians seem to want to now challenge beliefs. This is the opportunity for a deathbed conversion. 

This is not a time for a debate. Accept what you know - I am an atheist, and support me as an atheist. Do not pretend I am a theist all of a sudden. Do not try to change my mind to ease my pain.  Do not be talking about how you would feel if you were an atheist when your loved one died. Do not get mad at me for believing my loved one as well as yours no longer exists.

I was searching on the Internet for ideas about living the best life we can, and I found this:

Let's give them an "A" for effort

Quote:These 24 people were trying to do their best. Why can't the universe give them an E for Effort? It's not like they weren't just sitting back and hoping for good things to happen. Sure, they made some mistakes. Maybe they got a little messy. But they made a real, solid effort to improve their life or someone else's life. The results did not happen as planned (but they sure are hilarious).

Jesus H. Christ!!!

Over on Raw Story there was a bit about justice Alito whining that the supreme court is not "political."  In a comment I mentioned about 3 glaring fuck ups that were made right at the beginning..

1.  Non proportional representation in the US Senate.

2.  Life time appointments to the supreme court.

3.  Slavery.


Anyone want to add additional fuck ups or discuss those three?

Inside ‘reality shifting,’ the trend where TikTokers claim they can enter the world of Harry Potter

Quote: For most Harry Potter fans, the only way to stroll through Diagon Alley is to visit the reproduction in Orlando’s The Wizarding World of Harry Potter Theme Park. Kristin Dattoo wouldn’t need to make the trip from her native Ontario, however. Instead, the 19-year-old would just shift her consciousness.

Wait, what?

You read that correctly.

“Any reality you can possibly think of exists somewhere out there in the universe,” Dattoo said. “So, by reality shifting, we’re just shifting our awareness so we can live in those realities.”

In other words, the theory goes, if you wanted to see what your life would be like if you had made different choices, or if you wanted to live in the Harry Potter world or visit the planet Tatooine in the Star Wars universe, all you have to do is “reality shift” — switch your consciousness to the right parallel universe.

It’s become an increasingly popular trend on TikTok, hitting a fever pitch earlier this year when TikTokers began supposedly shifting to the Harry Potter universe to visit Draco Malfoy en masse. The hashtag #dracomalfoy, which includes many videos related to reality shifting, reached 24.4 billion views. Meanwhile, #shiftingrealities has more than 1.7 billion views. Dattoo’s YouTube video titled “How to Shift Realities 101” has amassed more than 1.3 million views.

Many of the more popular videos feature an influencer detailing how to move between universes, though some find shifters describing what happened on their latest adventures. This ranges from fighting in the Clone Wars to becoming romantically, erm, engaged with Draco Malfoy — why Draco of all people is part of an ongoing Internet discussion. According to practitioners of reality shifting, you can reasonably spend as long as you’d like in any given world. Just try not to die there, because you won’t be able to revisit it.

After three years of the forum's existence, I think it's time to rework the welcome message
on our landing page, and I'd be interested in hearing what other members might think about it.

Maybe something similar (or not?) to this...

Parents are taking to the microphone with very wild and exaggerated concerns AND then get some national attention.  Complaining about masks and vaccines is big.  Its also an opportunity to hyperventilate about human sexuality.  Here is a mother who amplifies the sexual content in a critically acclaimed book, The Lawn Boy:

https://djhjmedia.com/steven/mother-read...others-ds/

At first I thought the book was in a grade school where she would have had a point, but the book is in a high school library and is not a mandatory part of the curriculum.

Any thoughts?