Damn, our local fort is monstrous in size, but it all but utterly abandoned. There are people working there and tours, but it’s almost nothing but brick and concrete. In other news, been there 8 times and just now realized it’s the classic star shape!

Well, congrats on having a sweet fort. I guess.

The global-average build time is 6-8 years.

I know, I know, this legally means jack shit. But it does signal the world saying, “We’re sick of your shit Israel.”

From a nation-state, world-wide thing, this is significant. Diplomacy is all about, “Please stop killing each other, don’t care who started it, just fucking STOP.”

Diplomats, UN included of course, speak in words you and I don’t use when talking amongst ourselves. Even if you are defender of Israel, this takes your cover. Most welcome. Fucking finally.

Wish Avasarala was running this fucking show. “I will run your balls over a cheese grater of you fire another fucking missile! Have a nice evening.”

Great thoughts! Especially about the ability to move. My only counter would be to say Russia is testing the EU’s coordination and willpower. Guess that was what I should have said.

Empires take time to rise and fall.

Wow! Nailed it! I had thought that as a young Christian, didn’t know there was a verse for it. Lost my religion long ago BTW.

If you squint real hard, Genesis is a tale of stellar and planetary formation. Then comes evolution. Give the first bits a read! Yeah, evolution is mixed up a little, still surprisingly on point for a bunch of Bronze Age sheep herders.

Then there’s a second tale, in the same short book. What a clusterfuck. But I can still see some real history in it. If I squint real hard.

What’s weird is the young Earth thing is relatively new. Before the 1850s or so, you would be laughed out of the room. As ignorant as we were, naturalists were having a hard time trying to figure a world that was millions, or 10s of millions, of years old. Churches, of any stripe, sure as hell wasn’t preaching it.

And here we are, with the flat Earth idea being even newer.

Easy to say, but I’d argue it’s baked in.

“Fifty thousand years ago there were these three guys spread out across the plain and they each heard something rustling in the grass. The first one thought it was a tiger, and he ran like hell, and it was a tiger but the guy got away. The second one thought the rustling was a tiger and he ran like hell, but it was only the wind and his friends all laughed at him for being such a chickenshit. But the third guy thought it was only the wind, so he shrugged it off and the tiger had him for dinner. And the same thing happened a million times across ten thousand generations - and after a while everyone was seeing tigers in the grass even when there were`t any tigers, because even chickenshits have more kids than corpses do. And from those humble beginnings we learn to see faces in the clouds and portents in the stars, to see agency in randomness, because natural selection favours the paranoid. Even here in the 21st century we can make people more honest just by scribbling a pair of eyes on the wall with a Sharpie. Even now we are wired to believe that unseen things are watching us.”

― Peter Watts, Echopraxia

Kinda surprised we eradicated smallpox, yet polio still exists.

Racism will never die as we evolved to be tribal. Best we can do as a society is make it unacceptable. Which was happening when I grew up in 70s/80s America. Now we’ve backtracked and gone all-in with dog whistles.

This was an obvious in-your-face test. I’m not sure the strategic response should be open defense, STFU and lay low instead.

Say someone is hunting me in the woods and pops a few off, no real danger to me. If I shoot back, they know where I’m at, or at least discern how I will react. Why would I do anything but lay low and draw them in? Does that make sense?

And this is why I’m not involved in foreign affairs decision making. Well, that and barely at “bright normal” IQ. :)

Though always skeptical, I believe this 96.73%. If the government was going to scratch up some fake shells, they could make that “evidence” hella more inflammatory.

My name is exactly that common. There were 5 of us in my high school.

I know you’re trying to fuck up AI, but you’re just fucking up us humans. If you’re so worried about AI scraping your comments, don’t comment.

Right?! Electronics would straight rust, quickly. Remember having to take your watch off to wash your hands? Now I have a collection of Casios and would be shocked if any so much as got foggy. LOL, now you can pull the battery and put your motherboard in the dish washer.

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Wrong post.

Right?! Electronics would straight rust, quickly. Remember having to take your watch off to wash your hands? Now I have a collection of Casios and would be shocked if any so much as got foggy. LOL, now you can pull the battery and put your motherboard in the dish washer.

He seems an adept shooter. I’d bet he was aiming for center mass like a good little sniper. But one can hardly ask the local range if he can practice from their sloping roof out to 250 yards.

Same country that has many state bans on boycotting Israel. This same country wants the mechahitler from an actual Nazi in charge?