Living in Idaho is EXACTLY like being in the movie Napoleon Dynamite. Without the fabulous interracial wedding at the end.

You don’t need a degree or a certification to be a journalist. You are taking a flimsy norm that is on shaky ground anyway and elevating it to some higher status.

Journalists can use definitive language and protect themselves with adjectives like ‘alleged’.

Choosing ‘controversial gesture’ instead of ‘alleged nazi salute’ is an intentional choice and a cowardly one.

All religions that do not use abusive child rearing and punitive social controls are dwindling in numbers of adherents.

A religion that does not use them will not last. Thus it is a feature of the phenomenon we call religion, it is as essential as reproduction to a biological species.

There is quite a lot wrong with religion. It is inherently stultifying to follow it, regardless of flavor.

The purpose of a system is what it does. Religious systems make people easy to control and that control is used by charlatans, swindlers and perverts for personal enrichment.

They, all of them, use abusive child rearing techniques and punitive social controls to reduce the chances a person will break away later in life. There is nothing good about this. A few adherents may keep some independent moral judgment but that can be allowed as long as the mass is kept under control.

But they only think of themselves as decent. Religious thought stunts one’s ability to make moral decisions in changing circumstances.

Sure, my pa is ‘decent’ and considered very kind by most, but he uses his religion to keep from having to learn to deal with his gay and trans offspring in a humane manner. His religion is explicitly harmful on those subjects even though he is otherwise mild mannered and ‘nice’.

Religion makes followers into lesser, less-flexible versions of themselves. This is not a good outcome.

You certainly didn’t see an amoeba brain. They are single cells. I wonder if you heard about the efforts to do the same thing with a nematode?

https://www.usgs.gov/media/images/watershed-map-north-america

This is a watershed map of North America that expresses your point visually. Every colored area is drained by a different major river system. The Central Valley and urban centers of socal draw heavily from the Colorado watershed which would otherwise drain naturally into the sea of cortez in Baja Mexico.

It’s a sticky wicket once you think these things through.

And I have! It will result in snapping the USA nearly in half.

If this movement has any ground game, they may send a volunteer to your home at a time of your choosing to collect your signatures. Let’s say you had a small gathering of like minded friends? They would be there before the Domino’s guy.

Serious petition movements have a volunteer system set up where they mobilize passionate people with flexible schedules (i.e. usually adorable old ladies or the funemployed). They have to have a website with contact info.

I think it would be a very interesting national debate if this got traction, perhaps even a productive one.

Sorry California, you will have to negotiate with Colorado and Arizona for your water. So basically you have to take us with you.

Capitalism has never been healthier. This IS Capitalism, not an anomaly.

The Sacklers need an attitude adjustment.

Unfortunately I think it is now necessary to think of such things if only to inoculate ourselves against the numbness that follows horror. They escalate in shocking steps as an intentional strategy to stun healthy people into inaction.

At least for me personally, I have chosen not to spend the next 4 years in a state of emotional shock. I get it, they are callous monsters. I won’t let them distract me from working with every remaining sane person in my life to destroy them.

That is far from ‘how it works’ with capital equipment of this cost. It’s like steering the titanic to change a major piece of diagnostic equipment. These types of devices are integrated into the health records databases, they require gas supply of various sorts, you might need to knock out a wall to remove it, which shuts down other critical lab functions.

All in all, in my experience installing lab automation, it took over two years from the moment the decision is made to buy a 6-7 figure system to getting the first real patient data from that system. It involves architects, contractors, medical and lab directors, training, hand holding, lawsuits.

So it’s a type of vendor lock-in far worse than anything else I have encountered.

I think I get you. You can’t really play around with a new concept in your head until it has a name.

I hate AI slop, but one research trick they are good at is identifying the existing vocabulary others have developed. You can describe the phenomenon in pretty shaky terms and it will spit out the magic words to connect you to the research of others on that topic.

I have found that it accelerates my research significantly because I spend less time in the weeds trying it on my own. It is thus easier to find the edges of our collective knowledge and move research efforts to more unexplored areas.

She’s alive in Cuba, just holding on! Her biography is a wild ride. What a family to be raised in.

Because the pouring spout is to the right. Tip it, you’ll see. It works better if you are staring closely at the spout from below when you do so.

Peter Funke? The famous anal-rapist?

So you admit to just making up your stance then and prioritizing your vague feeling as some sort of evidence?

What a garbage take.

I think you could get a five episode miniseries with an epic arc where Ronald, God of Fire takes humanoid form and finally accepts his sexuality.

Right, it’s not just the poor lobby that cares about snap. The farmers rely on it a a form of price support. Large landowners have better lobbyists than the poors.