LOGIC💣

I knew that the marshmallow plant was used medicinally and perhaps as a sweet for thousands of years, but I wondered whether there was anything like a fluffy marshmallow during Vlad the Impaler’s time. It appears probably no. The marshmallow plant’s sap does not appear to have been whipped up like a modern marshmallow until the 19th century, whereas Vlad lived in the 15th century.

They did have marshmallow plants in Europe, though, so it’s possible that he tasted it, just not fluffed up. That being said, I’m also not clear about whether the marshmallow plant actually tastes like a modern marshmallow, which doesn’t contain any part of the marshmallow plant.

Greta Thunberg said that the Israelis bound her and placed her next to an Israeli flag, and then kicked her whenever the flag touched her. So, they even mildly tortured an internationally famous person who was not Palestinian, and who they knew would be released and would share the story.

So, if they’re not afraid of doing that to Thunberg when they know it will be exposed, then nothing would surprise me about what they’re doing when they don’t think they’ll get caught.

I’m sure Randall Munroe knows this better than most, but Einstein’s insight more derailed physics than overturned it. What I mean is that the path it seemed like physics was on at the time was torn out from under the establishment. But it’s not like the work done to that point was discarded.

Bad people can also be victims. They are not mutually exclusive ideas. In fact, it’s quite likely that bad people are disproportionately victims. They do something horrible to somebody else, and those people do something back. Sometimes, it’s simple justice or comeuppance, and other times, it’s escalating violence between two groups of detestable people.

Yeah, I have no problems if you honestly give something a try and don’t like it. But the people who judge without trying are acting like small children. I’m not sure why anybody gives their uninformed opinions the time of day.

Regardless of what you think about Palestinians, it’s trivial to see that the Israelis are bad guys in this conflict.

Usually, the world is shades of gray, like with Palestinians, so it’s sort of a relief when you can just point to somebody and say, “Well, those guys are clearly the bad guys, and anybody who supports their actions is also bad.”

“What do you think of my costume?”

“Your KISS makeup seems to have started running.”

O say does that star spangled banner yet wave,
O’er the land of the free,
And the home of the brave?

The answer is now emphatically, “No.”

“Most recently,” Johnson went on, “the most threatening thing I’ve seen yet was the naked bicyclers in Portland who were protesting ICE down there. I mean, it’s getting really ugly.”

Though the people behind him appeared to stifle a smile, it does not seem that he was joking, because he went on to say that protesters have attacked officers and people have been arrested.

The phrase “the most threatening thing I’ve seen yet was the naked bicyclers in Portland who were protesting ICE down there,” cannot logically be anything except a defense of Portland. There is no other logical interpretation. It logically means that Portland has nothing more threatening than peaceful naked bicyclers. They can’t even carry a concealed weapon.

But since Johnson is apparently disconnected from reality and basic logic, he can say something that defends Portland and pretend like it is a criticism of Portland. Is it even possible that he’s so delusional that he believes what he’s saying? No, I think it’s very unlikely.

Even though the article says “it does not seem that he was joking,” I still have trouble believing it. I have to convince myself that Mike Johnson wouldn’t publicly defend Portland as being safe in order to believe that he wasn’t joking.

But then, what am I left with? No human being over, say, 15, with reasonable intelligence, could think about that statement that Johnson said and believe he was telling the truth.

So, the explanation is that Mike Johnson is so used to getting away with lying that he’ll just say anything. And meanwhile, his audience are so used to not thinking that they don’t even call him on it.

Fascism seems to require an “other” to work. Once you’ve destroyed all of the existing “others”, the only thing left to do is to look inward and see whether those people who seemed like they were on your side were actually “others” all along.

Yeah, it was also given to Rush Limbaugh, albeit just before he died. At this point, they could rename it to the Trump/Goebbels medal of fascist propaganda.

It’s so ironic that conservatives idolize some of history’s biggest losers, because had those losers won, there’s a chance that people today wouldn’t even be allowed to form their own opinions.

If she has reception, get her a radio player and program in a bunch of local stations. Talk radio, several stations with different music genres she likes, something with interesting shows like NPR might be nice.

The benefits are that any nurse can operate a radio. It never pauses playback to see if the person responds. It doesn’t require an internet connection or expensive electronics, only a plug and reception.

If she’s not already using her phone, there might be a reason. For example, she may not be allowed electronics, or there might be a lot of petty theft in the facility.

You could argue that cryptography is nothing but a type of obfuscation. I was trying to explain things so that the very average person could understand it.

People don’t stop doing things just because you make it illegal. You even know this because you mentioned India. However people actually do stop when you make it nearly impossible.

Businesses are a separate use case. Phone companies already handle separate use cases, where they use very short memorable numbers for specific purposes. They just need something similar, whether it’s keeping phone numbers, or using something slightly different. Probably some sort of simple alias.

It’s the phone companies that need to innovate, and the solution isn’t very hard.

I intentionally was vague because there are many possible existing ways to accomplish each thing I said, and it is up to the phone company to innovate.

The simplest way to keep people from guessing phone numbers is to make them very long and sparse. If an autodialer had to dial 1000 invalid numbers before finding a valid number, it would make the endeavor that much harder. This is just a convenient example because the cryptography equivalent is harder to explain, but you could make contact info so hard to guess that it would be basically impossible.

Probably the easiest way to explain how to keep people from passing contact info is to imagine a two step process like facebook has. If I pass your facebook username to someone else, they don’t automatically become your friend. The cryptographic equivalent would involve a chain of trust, but again, harder to explain.

That’s not true. RFK Jr recently said it was from circumcisions.

It’s really the phone companies’ fault for stagnating instead of innovating.

There is no reason at this point for most people to have phone numbers at all. We have the technology today to throw the whole concept out the window.

Replace it with something where a stranger couldn’t guess how to contact a random person. Replace it with something where third parties can’t easily share your contact info.

You could even have both technologies at the same time to help transition. And we do, as users, but we still need phone numbers because our carriers don’t give us multiple options directly.

Phone numbers are based on requirements for a system that’s almost 150 years old now. Back when the numbers really meant locations and before people realized how easy it could be exploited to steal old people’s retirement money.

Since I live in a place where driving is necessary (Texas), I drive a smaller electric car.

From my perspective, even small SUVs are far too big. If I’m behind them at a light, I can’t see when the light changes.

I was recently surprised to learn that in other countries, they have popular versions of pickup trucks that are smaller than almost anything you can find here in the states.

Anybody who buys a vehicle that size in OP’s picture would have to be a sociopath. They do not consider how other people are affected by their selfish actions.

Alternatively, you can go fuck off instead. People who downvote and then reply to the comment as if they want to have a discussion are a fucking cancer.