Larry of the Lawn

"viable" doing a lot of work here. What does viable mean in this context?

I'd be absolutely fine never hearing another Florida man / Florida joke for the rest of my life, because this thread specifically has ruined my ability to appreciate it by oversaturation and the need to shoehorn any tangential reference to Florida into lazy and unoriginal jokes. It'd be one thing if the jokes were good, but they're not even funny. Eta: C'mon board, you can all do better. Wait for the right opportunity or for some real inspiration. One good joke is better than 500 shitty ones.

do you have a citation that supports the idea that felons voted for Trump at a higher rate than your average Floridian?

Gas stoves and ovens can also leak benzene, which can cause leukemia. Houses today are not necessarily better ventilated than they were 25 or 40 years ago. Often modern construction is so airtight due to spray in insulation that houses don't "breathe" at all. A good portion of my job involves dealing with pressure issues in new construction homes. Electricity is cleaner than burning gas on site. Because it's not all generated from hydrocarbons. There may be local exceptions if you live near a coal plant. There is plenty of food out there. Some people think any regulation to keep poisons out of it or the water used to grow it are onerous. Solar and wind need to be coupled with fission or fossil fuels to reduce emissions. We should have dumped a ton of money into fission 50 years ago. We should have done it yesterday. But being pro-fission on its own doesn't mean that your some tree hugger. Show me some conservative gneerated legislation to stop pollution or deforestation or stop the privatizing of publicly owned resources. Show me any real legislation from the right to protect our natural resources. The right has been gutting the EPA and complaining about business not being able to pollute since the EPA was created. The American right doesn't give a fuck about the environment. Dems corporate donors aren't about to let them make major changes to help either, but at least they aren't marching gungho towards an apocalyptic wasteland where the only animals are in zoos and every river and lake is owned by some corporation, or where there is no guarantee your water isnt polluted with industrial waste. You talk about nutrition while the GOP creates school lunch debt and wants to keep food stamps from being used on fresh produce: https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/07/31/politics/wic-benefits-cut-culture-war

I guess you could say she used your porn theater counting method, eh?

That 200 number is almost certainly wrong, possibly by an order of magnitude. No one is sure exactly how many illegal dispensaries are operating, but if you count smoke shops selling THC products the high end estimates are 8000. https://council.nyc.gov/press/2023/08/14/2454/ Even if it's half that you're still wrong. Eta: some quick googling will tell you that there are illegal shops on almost every block in Hell's Kitchen, for example. It's easy, just use Google Maps.

You know it's pretty easy to say "huh, guess I was wrong"

I don't think z lives in Times Square lol

You do realize that switching from gas to electric ranges is a health issue? There's quite a bit of data on this. I actually agree that the uber-focus by liberals on emissions has relegated discussion of other environmental pollutants and destructive behavior to the back burner, but I've yet to meet a conservative or maga type who gives a shit about the environment. They might shed some crocodile tears over batteries and rare-earth mining, but they don't give a fuck about deforestation, anthropogenic extinctions, over-fishing, water pollution, changing out lead lines, or conservation unless it affects a trophy species. How the hell is the left coming for your nutrition?

NY's weed roll out has been pretty lousy, but it's still better than how it was when it was criminalized. Pretty wild that they didn't just do it how Mass did. They had a great model right next door. In a state where you have people dying in pretrial detention I'll take some losers hanging outside the illegal dispensaries over just one more thing to lock people up for. And the problems in NY are because it's been done (the legalization rollout) poorly.

And then there are the false accusations of false accusations. Well my girlfriend had her children taken away from her and given to their father because one of the kids reported him for abuse. There was a "good touch/bad touch" unit at school, and the child told a teacher that she was being touched inappropriately. My girlfriend sued to modify the custody arrangement to limit him to supervised visits only and mandatory therapy. In the meantime, child protective services interviewed the child, who wouldn't talk to a stranger about this. The report came back "unfounded" and he got a hotshot lawyer to say that my gf spent the last ten years subtly brainwashing the kids into falsely believing they'd been abused. There is zero evidence of this other than the father's repeated assertions. Plenty of evidence from other parties that he has engaged in similar behavior before. But this backwards-ass county family Court system loved the narrative of a woman falsely accusing an ex. So the kids are now with their potential abuser. My gf only gets to see them during supervised visits. It's been hell for her.

That was one of the most memorable and beautiful things I've ever experienced. It got noticeably colder, was able to see Venus and Jupiter. Wonderful.

Clear skies here in Burlington right now, but I see a pretty thick cloud banknoff to the west and heading this way. Fingers crossed!

Let's not make a big deal out of Little Mikey Mars nocturnal sojourns to his neighbors dairy stalls, wherein he became obsessed with the ritual of pressing his lips to the bloating udder, pausing between mouthfuls to jam a spoonful of cocoa powder and sugar into his mouth in a fit of mania devoted to that glycemic lactic thrill. Years later he'd distill it into the candy bar that gave you the stars in your own youth. Let's not make a big deal out of it.

I can't remember which one of these threads is the right one to bash Elon Musk in, apologies if this is off topic. Twitter restored the original model of blue check marks this week and got rid of the Musk scheme where you just buy it instead: https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/05/media/elon-musk-blue-checkmarks-x-reversal/index.html Pretty amazing watching the purported genius get told his idea sucks, have him do it anyway, watch his decisions and management tank the platform, and then see him scramble to fix shit after it's too late. Why couldn't you just leave it the fuck alone?

We're still looking at an incredibly small percentage of what's out there though, and only across the blink of an eye. Even a massive artifact like a Dyson sphere -- that's something we could have already "seen" dozens of times but written off as a planet or exoplanet.

RIP John Barth. Loved Lost in the Fun House when I had to read it on college, and recently grabbed The Sotweed Factor at goodwill. I read about 20 pages waiting for my gf to pick me up and loved it, looking forward to picking it back up when I finish a couple other things.

I've heard speculation that Trump is incredibly afraid of nuclear war, like it's an actual fear that he articulates pretty frequently. Something along the lines of his biggest concerns in life are golfing, being afraid of dying (specifically by nuclear war), and attending Andrew Lloyd Webber productions.

I mean for all we know the MAGA people are hard at work to bring about false vacuum decay. We're in that sweet spot today between the recent lunar and incipient solar eclipse, but this is even beyond Lunar Kal Ender speculation.

RawMilkMike has gotta be lurking on this thread like a flu-infected vulture circling the carcass pit behind a dairy.

And 8/9 studied at either Harvard or Yale at some point.

Welcome back. So Catholics have been 5/6 this century for presidential picks? Papal polling ftw

Just wanted to say that this sounds really positive, and I think you're onto something that is both healthy and going to be rewarding for you, probably with some pain and suffering too, but sounds like you've become pretty competent at handling that. Next part is something that worked for me in what sounds like a similar situation, take it with a grain of salt. When you mention"disassociating my vulnerable, self-conscious, self-hating self", my totally non-professional advice would be sure, do that in the moment if that's what works for you. And maybe later, or before hand, just acknowledge those feelings, and maybe think of that as your childhood self, or your little Toth, and tell him that it's ok, that he's safe, that he's a good and kind person, and that he deserves to be treated well, and then show him that by following up on this new revelation. Hang in there, and good work!

My girlfriend's temple not only recognizes the bulk of the Hindu pantheon, but also actively has prayers to specific deities. But from what understand, they refer to themselves as Buddhists and consider these deities to all be aspects of a larger god (I'm almost, but not quite embarrassed to admit that most of my discussion with her about this have been related to seeing how similar it is to Bakker's ontology in Second Apocalypse.). I think she practices a form of Mahayana Buddhism. And a Buddhist temple I visited in college for a religion class had shrines of Shiva and Vishnu and a couple other Hindu gods. I'm sure that what you describe is also true, but there are definitely Buddhists who recognize various deities. Whether or not that makes them theists or their practice of Buddhism theistic vs atheistic I couldn't really say. I suppose it would depend on a few different things.

That's not so simple either. Some sects do recognize a bunch of deities.