Obviously a fake post. Syntax too clear and not all caps.
Retired NIH scientist. Caltech grad. Sci-fi author. Hiker: especially Nepal and the American Southwest. Happily married. Out of the blue DMs better be damn impressive.
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Obviously a fake post. Syntax too clear and not all caps.
We are in a masterclass whose lesson is "Power is EVERYTHING".
The cruelty is the point. It appeals to the MAGA base.
Ted Cruz is widely accepted to be (a) very bright, and (b) an extremely unpleasant power hungry vile human being.
Your analysis is spot on. Just weird coincidences.
Giving up power is very difficult. Historically it is rare. "No matter how bad we are, THEY are worse."
Be more assertive!
Probably he has an old roof and should replace it before the panels go on, since doing it later is more expensive. But $30K seems like a lot.
The US Govt must have already spent a couple million on trying to get rid of KAG. What a vendetta!
greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item...
An aside: interviews shortly after close combat in WW2 found that only about 20% of soldiers fired their weapons at the enemy. They wouldn't do it, but instead helped comrades, carried ammunition, etc.
The Trumpettes are in some ways more advanced than the Nazis in 1933. They ginned up crises (Reichstag fire) and then declared emergencies. Now, the new way is to just declare an emergency that the media doesn't dare denounce - because doing so would be "partisan", and dangerous.
So if Nat Guard is sent to Chicago, Mayor, Council, & Supt of Police should prohibit any cooperation. Ticket/tow illegally parked vehicles. Arrest drivers who run lights for with reckless driving (potential jail time). Step into a street - jaywalking ticket.
This is exactly true. Cities and states need to be ready for attempted military takeovers. Including security plans for governors and mayors against being "arrested" for some vaguely define "crimes". talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/citie...
Maybe a little closer - where the govt just tells the companies what to do - and rakes off a percentage to make the top guys rich.
Somehow I recall the time when Republicans were AGAINST Communism. I must be old.
And if they want to hav "fun" they can tear everything apart, furniture etc, and leave the house in ruins while they "search". Then the owner can sue in Federal court. Three to five years later might get reimbursed.
1) the Supreme Court ruled that Trump IS above the law, and 2) everyone else is paralyzed by the speed of the law breaking
This is very clear when walking in a wooded park on a hot day.
People (like me) moan about how Trump's team is damaging the nation. Of course, that is the point of their actions. They've said so. Break the American nation, induce fear with paralysis, establish a new and vicious order. So what if the nation is lesser and weaker? But it will be THEIR nation.
One "problem" the govt has is that rural animist clans will convert to Islam because they get better govt benefits. But then the clans don't practice Islam. So now there's a club trying to beat it into them.
The Robert's point of view is that the Constitution had no problem with Jim Crow and one party rule back in the day, so why should it not be cool with Trumpism now?
How about that island near Australia inhabited only by penguins?
To be fair, newborns are kind of blobby. Cute blobs after a little while, of course.
I think he (really, the people behind him) is adopting Stalinist methods to conservative white nationalist ideology. The worst of all worlds!
The US economy is vast. It takes a while for drastic changes at the top levels to change things at the personal scale. That's starting to happen now and will go on getting worser as the months pass.
Is it just me, or are they sneaking up on us?
I feel sorry for all the Nigerian princes who have lost their livelihoods to AI generated scams.
Yes. And still the most capable member of the cabinet, which is a bitter commentary on this moment in history.
To be clear, none of them are mentally ill. All are short term thinkers only and can't understand why life is so hard and unfair. All had kind of strange childhood relationships with parents.
It just struck me that among my limited acquaintance, I know 3 people supporting deadbeat kids. Not 20-somethings who still haven't figure life out. 40-somethings where the odds of figuring life out have dropped to the negligible level. THREE! How common is this, anyway?
Today's crop of brow figs. Lots of eating to do. 4-1/4 pounds = 1.9 kg
One stop shop.
What we need is AI controlled anti mosquito laser beams for my porch. That would be a lot more useful to me than any LLM chat bot.
Kindness, as preached by Jesus, is not part of this "dispensation" from God. Cruelty is okay now. Only after Jesus returns to Earth to rule as dictator-king is kindness part of the way. In other words, "Jesus has nothing to do with Christianity"
It's a good plan. Teenage boys are selfish sociopaths, largely speaking. (I used to be a teenage boy, and recall it with embarrassment.) The ideal demographic for ICE!
2 minutes!? That's eternity these days. Now now now!!!
An excellent idea. Trump can bill ICE directly for their room and board. Everyone profits!
Mostly the "right" people, of course.
Capacity of DeSantis Dachau is 4000. That means about 100 buses to evacuate. Unless they start a few days ahead of disaster (fire, hurricane) it won't happen. And they won't start early.
ICE spokes-entity: “as with any facility, ICE has plans in case of emergency, including a hurricane plan.” It's really an easy to understand plan: "Let them die." www.nytimes.com/interactive/...
Maybe the files just had a million lines of text saying "Trump is innocent" scattered all around? Takes a while to find all those, right?
And they've discovered that there is no downside (for them) to breaking the law, lying to judges, and so forth. It's all drowned in the flood of sh*t.
DeSantis Dachau
Marks for creativity?
Some plant that I liked.
*so* MAGA can rule.
This article makes clear that MAGA’s goal is a totalizing state where there is no expertise allowed - that would be an independent source of truth. Medicine, science - must die MAGA can rule. www.theatlantic.com/science/arch...
It's a hell of a hike. 20 miles from start to first guaranteed H2O. Planning to walk out 7 miles a week early, carrying little but water and snacks, cache the H2O, and walk back. Do other stuff, before we return to meet our fate on "the most difficult of the established south side hikes".
"Thanks" to the Dragon Bravo fire devastating the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, our backpacking trip there (3 nights) has been canceled. Now we have backpacking reservations for the South Rim Royal Arch loop (6 nights), for mid-October.
Maybe the GOPPP Grand Old Pedophile Protection Party?
Looking up estate management terms. I found a new word: Ademption: When a specific gift named in the will is no longer part of the testator's estate at the time of their death, perhaps because it was sold or destroyed. What a great word! I'll find a lot of use for it in everyday persiflage.
Remarkable. In the sense that it’s so amazingly ignorant that remarking is required.
I've decided that volume 2 "Quantum Ignition: Powering Up" is DONE. Ran it through spell/grammar check, made 3 changes. No more!! On to editing and slightly reordering volume 3 "QI: War of the Anas". Must bitch-slap myself into doing the labor.
I’d pick lettuce for $20000 a head. One a day would be my quota.
I think the administration is more Stalinist than Maoist but I respect your opinion.
Unlike many of the new NIH initiatives, this one actually sounds reasonable. When I was at NIH I chafed at burning my budget on this kind of thing.
Opening a mine in the USA is an expensive long-term operation. And even if the current admin says "go ahead, cut all the corners, screw safety and the environment", a mining company has to worry the next admin might shut them down abruptly. Uncertainty makes it hard to raise the capital.
Someone accidentally turned the Nazi-level knob to 11. They are turning it down to about 8 today and will test that out later.
There were a lot of problems with John McCain. But he had a streak of honor and duty -- which has been totally purged from the Republican party. "You over there, stop being honorable! Get back into the evildoing line!"
In a self-organized chorus, someone is going to sing off-key now and then. So he has to be whipped back into singing the number of the day.
That was my exact reaction when I read those words. All of them were traitors (by the strict definition in the Constitution). Some of them were total pieces of s**t -- Braxton Bragg, for example, was hated by his troops for his harsh discipline. And he sucked at being a General.
This non-political article is well worth reading - a "tornado" of bats every night. www.texasstandard.org/stories/brac...
And regular PSA tests.
Like the "able-bodied" people in wheelchairs? Their productivity might be kind of low. www.theatlantic.com/health/archi...
Principles, ethics, and morality can only be applied to Democrats. In particular, it is monstrous to apply them to President Trump. "It's OK if you are a Republican" has morphed into "It's GREAT if you are Donald Trump" -- no matter how vile or stupid "It" might be.
It's very possible we are crazy. Earlier, we got bookings for 4 nights below the South Rim at the Grand Canyon. NOW -- we have 3 more nights below the North Rim -- just 4 days after coming up from the first hike. North Bass trail. It's isolated. www.nps.gov/grca/planyou...
I don't know what to do about the situation. Personally, preparing for the unknown disaster is difficult to plan. Nationally, it's not much easier. Blue state governments need to become more resilient and readier to deal with political unrest. Assassinations, coups, disobedience by security forces.
How does it end? The fever break? Only with a national scale catastrophe. What form that will take, I can't predict. How long it will take, I can't predict. But it will come. Biden was the attempt to return to business as usual. And his attempt failed, even before he personally failed.
I partially disagree. ChatGPT shortened the project. Checking is faster than originating. I agree that AI translation can’t be trusted fully and won’t preserve emotional nuance - critical elements for fiction. And it had trouble with differences in Dutch language usage between the 1940s and now.
Not for a personal project. And the AI wasn’t 100% nonsense but needed tweaking. Which took a fair amount of time. Of course, this wasn’t a literary project, where emotional nuance is critical. The diary is mostly very matter of fact.
Shouldn't the Trump standing in for Barrett have longer hair?
This, of course, was not fiction. And the translation is for the benefit of non-Dutch speaking descendants.
You can use AI for translation, but then it has to be vetted by a bilingual person. I have a friend whose grandfather (in the Netherlands) kept a daily diary during the German WW2 occupation. He used ChatGPT to translate it to English. But he had to read it all and correct the usage. Took a while.
A sort of fireworks pic from yesterday. Processed a lot.
Today my wife turns 35, for the Nth time, where I’m legally not allowed to disclose the value of N.
My father, who was a conservative Republican, would be f**king outraged. He hated Nixon for being a liar. And Nixon was an exemplar of truth compared to the modern R party.
Actually, they are hard working - if you count fund raising for the next election as work. That’s what they need to hold onto their jobs so that’s what they do. No one likes it, them or us. But if they don’t raise money we vote them out.
Some flower pictures my wife took in the last few days. www.coxklosek.com/Photos/Calla...
www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...
The rest of the list sounds good to me. I lost 40 pounds over a couple of years by cutting “junk” way back and walking a LOT more.
Peculiarly, ice cream promotes weight loss in many people. Not well understood and very counterintuitive. www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...
England in 1349: "Black Death's been going around. How bad can it be, really?"
So what if those coolant pipes aren't actually connected to a source? What could go wrong?
Email opens with a job offer from a French company. Start date "will be the next Monday". Googling the company name, it's a ticket selling outfit. I don't think I'll accept this offer. For some vague reason, this doesn't smell quite right. Perhaps it's the stench of rotting spam filling the room.
Last night I dreamed I was cuddling with a baby elephant up against me. It was very pleasant.
Nonsense. A comprehensive list of his positive qualities: 1) He likes Diet Coke. End of list.
And remember that many of the lynched people were burned while hanging from the tree, so the picnics had a nice ambience and aroma to enhance the “pleasure”.
Oh, c’mon. The Mitchster has been even more malign. Don’t overinflate Susie’s evil.
I’ve finished major rewrites of the two parts of my third novel. And merged them into one file, along with a timeline of the events across the trilogy (spanning about 400 years). 130,000 words. Feel like I’m making progress. Still a lot of editing to do. At least two passes through.
You are right. It’s a complete mystery.
Charlie Stross had something like this on one of his novels, where a whole alien civilization was reduced to AIs Ponzi-scheming and defrauding each other.
Trump stopped maturing in about 8th grade. He (and his followers) believe that swagger and loud pronouncements of supremacy are adulting.
Also see www.programmablemutter.com/p/flexibilit...
The people/nation that starts a war are VERY often appalled by the path the war takes and how it ends. They somehow forget that the opposing side is not made up of cartoon villains (however bad they are) and it has agency and options.
My 2¢ comments on the Trump Iran bombings: 1) The President has no legal authority to attack another country under anything resembling these circumstances. 2) We have no significant interests in the region that justify in any sense (practical, moral, or legal) this action. 3) It's fracking stoopid.
They have several acres of grassland for the sheep to graze upon. A small backyard isn’t enough.
Some young babydoll sheep acquired by friends. Too cute for words.
Okay. I finally finished the 5th major rewrite of the first half of “The War of the Anas”. The second half is already first-drafted. Next up - edit the second half to fit with the first and incorporate ideas I’ve had recently.
Excellent point.