Is not potato man, is secret police. Such is life.

It’s been a long time and I’m not sure of it’s current state, but some friends and I used to have a blast play Artemis Spaceship Bridge Simulator (I think there’s a couple other games out there now that are similar)

You kind of need the right setup for it to work well, a big TV or projector you can hook up to a computer and everyone needs their own laptop, etc.

The basic idea is- picture the bridge of the enterprise (or your starship of choice) you’ve got a bunch of people with their own consoles responsible for different aspects of the ships operation, the helm, engineering, weapons, etc. That’s what you’re doing.

I think at some point they added support for support fighters and such to accompany the main starship so if you have more people they have something to do.

We also made up a couple extra positions, like a captain who didn’t really have his own console, he just got his own chair front and center and a fancy hat and gave out orders.

I’m not anti gun by any means, and I also do think that most people under 21 are not responsible enough to be carrying firearms around most of the time in their daily life.

That said, I also don’t like how we sort of have different levels of adulthood.

At 18 you’re old enough to vote, get drafted, serve on a jury, be legally responsible for your actions and are considered an adult with all of the responsibilities and privileges that comes with that

Unless you want to buy alcohol, tobacco, carry a firearm, run for certain offices, etc. then you’re not adult enough.

And put mildly, that rubs me the wrong way.

I don’t necessarily disagree with the ages we set those restrictions at, overall I think they’re fairly reasonable.

But I do think that it means that if they’re not getting all of the rights and privileges as an older adult, they shouldn’t be saddled with the same responsibilities.

I think younger adults need to be compensated in some way for the rights and privileges they don’t get to enjoy. Lower taxes at least, maybe exemption from selective service (though I’d really like to abolish it entirely) until they’re old enough to carry a firearm any other time, if they’re not old enough to run for a particular office maybe their votes should count extra for those positions to ensure their voices are being heard, etc.

For what it’s worth, many, maybe most (sorry, can’t be bothered to look up the stats right now) nuclear plants in the US are already owned by some publicly traded company beholden to its shareholders who expect it to turn an ever increasing profit for them.

Not that it gives me the warm-fuzzies that that’s the case, but it’s not quite as big of a departure from the current situation as you’re making it out to be.

If you’re fucking around with your radio equipment doing something you shouldn’t and end up causing interference on, for example, aircraft frequencies or emergency service radio systems, you could be a contributing factor to an airliner crashing or an ambulance not being dispatched in a timely manner and a patient dying because they didn’t get to the hospital in time.

You didn’t directly kill anyone, but you set up the circumstances that resulted in someone dying.

I think you underestimate how many Americans just want a cup of Joe with cream and sugar. A whole lot of us are out there drinking gas station/convenience store coffee or brewing a cup or pot every day of store brand pre-ground.

And the ongoing joke about people getting frustrated with just wanting a “large coffee” and being confused by starbucks calling it a “venti” and spouting off about how they don’t want any fru-fru mocha-chino late bullshit even though no one asked.

I think the bigger issue is that of how Americans get around and how available real estate is.

Japan has a lot more people who can/will walk, take the train, etc. that’s a lot more opportunities for them to walk by a vending machine.

Americans tend to get around in our cars, so if you want to sell them a coffee, snacks, hot meal, etc. they need to be able to park somewhere.

And vending machine food isn’t exactly a huge draw, people probably aren’t going to go to your parking lot with a row of vending machines just to grab something to eat, so you kind of need something else to draw them in, some bathrooms, gas pumps, or at least convenient parking to other stuff they need to get to, so you might as well stick a gas station there, and since you’re going to need a cashier you might as well move that vending inside and you can get more and more variety of merchandise on shelves that you can cram into some vending machines so it might as well just be a convenience store.

Sounds like you’re describing a maglite

Maglites are perfectly fine flashlights for most people, maybe a little heavy but sometimes that’s kind of the point (a lot of cops and security guards and such took to carrying them when their agencies started prohibiting nightsticks and batons, especially the bigger 4 or 6 cell models) for a long time they were basically the default flashlight, you had maglites, you had the big spotlight looking things that took a 6v battery, you had cheap plastic flashlights, and you had various small penlights and such (which were often mini maglites) and that was like 90% of what you’d ever encounter.

There’s a good chance if you go rooting around in your dad or grandfather’s car trunk, garage, basement, workshop, toolbox, etc. you’ll find a maglite or 3 kicking around somewhere. I know I keep one in my car for emergencies and I’ll probably inherit a half dozen more from my parents someday.

They still make them, pretty sure they switched over to LEDs (one of their selling points used to be they had a spare bulb stored in the tail cap) and I’m sure they’re still perfectly reliable and rugged, you can probably still find them at most of the places you’d think to go buy a flashlight, and a standard 2 D cell maglite still costs in the neighborhood of $20-$30.

But there are a bunch of flashlight nerds out there these days, who want really specific form factors, battery types, features, led color temperatures, etc. and they’d probably pooh-pooh the humble maglite.

I get it to an extent, I have flashlights I like better, but I’m not about to nerd out about them, and if you someone sent me out with instructions to buy them a flashlight with no other requirements listed, I’d probably buy a maglite and feel pretty confident that it’s going to be an acceptable flashlight.

My dog likes to steal things when we’re out of the house and leave them on the stairs or on our bed.

She’s not a breed that’s known for having a particularly soft mouth, their claim to fame is probably the opposite if anything (malinois) so it’s kind of impressive when I find an avocado or a martini glass somewhere unexpected without even the slightest bruise.

We joke that they’re her “emotional support objects.”

Thank you, I think the whole situation around the falklands/malvinas is pretty interesting.

A few years back I remember stumbling into a conversation on Reddit about them and realized I didn’t really know much about them, not a topic that’s covered in much detail if at all in American schools. Pretty much all of my knowledge of it was from a few passing references from British media, and nothing in depth at that, just that such and such person/character had been in the war and that’s about it. So I decided to do a little research on the matter.

I figure there’s probably more than a few people who are similar boat as me who could use a quick primer on the situation, so I try to spread that knowledge when I can.

So here’s a little brief history of the falklands that I’ve posted before that people seem to usually enjoy. I’m no historian or anything of the sort, so take my thoughts on this for what it’s worth (and I am certainly biased being an American, don’t exactly get a whole lot of Argentinian history books to study, and most of the Spanish I know is food-related, so if someone wants to enlighten me more on the Argentinian side of things, I welcome the education.) I’m aiming as much to keep this fun and light-hearted as I am for historical accuracy.

In general my understanding is that the British were the first people to land there, didn’t really do much with it at that time, and pretty much just said “finders keepers” then left.

Maybe worth noting, there were no indigenous inhabitants there, so that’s probably about as ethical as colonization can get.

Then France showed up and set up shop since the British weren’t doing anything with it. Britain came back and also set up shop, and it’s not totally clear if either of them even knew the other was there. France eventually decided to fuck off, and let Spain have their bit of the Falklands.

Spain and Britain coexisted for a while, had some scuffles, but more or less worked things out. Eventually Britain pulled out to focus on other things but still considered their “finders keepers” claim to be valid.

Spain eventually pulled out as well, so for a little while no one was really doing much of anything with it officially.

Argentina (technically Buenos Aires at the time if we want to split hairs, I’m going to just use Argentina and Britain to keep the sides easy to follow) comes along, and decides it’s theirs, since they split off from Spain they figure they get the falklands as part of the package since Spain was claiming ownership at the time, although Brittain was still holding to their “finders keeps” claim, Spain and later Argentina basically just countered with “losers weepers” and this is basically the root of the whole conflict.

Put a little more professionally, basically Britain’s claim is they were there first and that claim has always been valid whether they were doing anything with the Islands or not. Argentina’s claim is that Brittain pulled out they left the islands up for grabs, and since Spain was the last country trying to do anything with them, it belongs to them since they’re laying claim to Spain’s former holdings in the region.

Argentina gave some German dude permission to set up a colony for them there to fish and hunt feral cows. Eventually he gets into a fight with an American navy captain over fishing and hunting rights, Captain America kicks their ass a bit and declares the colonial government disolved, and pretty much continues on his merry way. Argentina tries to get things there started back up again but never quite gets their shit back together in the Falklands. A little while later the Brits come back around, still claiming finders keepers, and take charge of everything again, and this time the colonies stick and continue to grow. Argentina spends the next hundred years or so muttering “this is bullshit” to themselves.

Around the 1960s, Britain starts talking about decolonizing, it was kind of all the rage among the European colonial powers at the time, and Argentina gets excited thinking they’re going to finally get the Falklands. Britain even quietly floats the idea of giving them the islands, figuring the Islanders would just kind of accept that decision if it was made, and running these islands from halfway around the world was getting kind of expensive. Turns out though that pretty much everyone on the Falklands is pretty damn happy to be British subjects (sort of a novel experience for Britain, historically not many British colonies have been happy to be British colonies, hell, half of Brittain proper sometimes isn’t too happy to be part of Britain) and don’t really want to be part of Argentina, which made things a bit complicated, and Britain needed some time to figure things out.

Argentina gets kind of impatient with all of this, and eventually decided “fuck it, we’ll just take them ourselves.” Britain cannot abide Argentina’s inability to wait patiently in the queue and was starting to really wrap their heads around the idea that the Falklands would rather stay part of Britain, and so we get the Falklands war.

Britain wins, Argentina goes back to muttering to themselves, and that pretty much brings us up to the present day.

The price point is way off, but strangely enough I’ve personally been champing at the bit for something with pretty much exactly those specs,just at about half the price.

Currently, I daily drive an SUV and do get good use out of it. I have to commute in the snow (essential employee,) I have outdoorsy hobbies that require hauling people and camping gear around, I tow some small trailers, I use it pretty frequently to move furniture, pick up lumber and other bulky stuff from the hardware store, etc. and while I don’t go off-roading in the sense that I don’t purposely go looking for rocks to climb and mud to drive through for fun, I do sometimes drive onto a beach to fish or drive onto fields for various reasons, and find myself on some really shitty dirt roads where some ground clearance and 4wd are necessary. I’m doing those things usually a few times a month.

But most of my daily driving adds up to 20 miles a day or less, on paved roads, rarely going over 45mph. I also have a wonky schedule where I rarely have to work more than 3 days in a row, and it’s usually just me and occasionally my wife or my dog (rarely both at the same time)

I can’t quite afford 2 cars, but something like this at the right price point would probably tip the scales in my favor. I could daily drive the small cheap electric car and save my SUV (or maybe a small truck) for my days off when I’m doing stuff that it’s needed for while the small car charges.

You need to do yourself a favor and go get yourself a proper frying pan/skillet. It doesn’t need to be an expensive or nice one, but if you don’t have one that can fit a few hot dogs, your kitchen is way under equipped.

In addition to higher pay and Medicare coverage, I’d also like to see some tighter regulations on training. What’s required varies by state, but usually it’s not too stringent, often something like a 2 week course and a background check.

I work in 911 dispatch, people who have home health aides obviously have a lot of medical emergencies, and it’s often those aides calling me when they do. Often they’re completely clueless about the patients medical history, unable to answer basic questions like their age, often don’t even know the address, and often are uncooperative with me and sometimes refuse to do things like perform CPR when I need them to.

Some are great, most aren’t.

Anvil firing

You get 2 anvils, stack them on top of each other, the bottom one upside down, pack some gunpowder between them, light it, run, and the top one shoots off into the air and eventually comes back down.

I’m sure it’s a blast (literally) but I’m not trying to looney tunes myself.

I think “cave diving” is generally understood to refer to the underwater variety.

If you’re referring to general cave exploration, that would generally be called “spelunking”

Historically hell has often been depicted as a rather cold place, away from the warmth of god’s love or what have you.

Anecdotally, 20 or so years ago, that’s what I remember being taught in CCD class when my parents were still making me go.

Dante’s Inferno (c. 1321) for example, depicts the 9th and deepest circle of hell as a large frozen lake. And many of the damned he encountered throughout the different circles are at least somewhat sympathetic, especially at the first level of where the inhabitants are by and large good people who just to not be Christians. (And to be clear, Dante often found himself at odds with the church, so his works don’t necessarily reflect official doctrine and were absolutely written to reflect his own agenda, that said a lot of our modern ideas about hell owe a lot to Dante’s depiction, and any actual mention of hell in the Bible is scarce to non-existent depending on how you interpret certain passages, so his version is just as valid as any other in my opinion)

It looks like the district has 6 schools, not sure how many of these bathrooms are in each school, but I’m going to assume they’re probably only adding one of each gender identity bathroom per school, or 2 each, 3 if we count the unisex bathrooms.

I have no real frame of reference for what kind of windows they’re installing, so I’m not sure how much they cost, and of course windows can get as expensive as you care to spend. But after perusing home Depots website, let’s just say $500 a pop for materials.

Depending on how competent their district maintenance personnel are, they may be able to install it themselves and not need to bring in contractors, pay for overtime, etc so esentially free installation.

6 schools × 3 bathrooms × $500 per window does come out too $9000 on the dot.

Don’t know how accurate my estimates and assumptions are, but it’s potentially within the realm of possibility

So ignoring the technical problem of how it could actually be done, let’s assume we somehow did it, cut every cable, and somehow blocked every cell tower and satellite from somehow connecting to North Korea to the rest of the world.

For the average north korean citizen, probably nothing much changes, most of them don’t have much access to the internet to begin with.

For those who do, the elites, people in university, those government, military, etc. it will probably worry a bit.

For the elites who get to enjoy the internet as a luxury, probably not too much changes. I doubt that except for maybe the very top echelons of DPRK society, the Kim family for example (and maybe not even some of them,) anyone is getting totally unrestricted access to the global Internet. They’re probably limited to mostly a bunch of north korean-hosted websites, and unless they’re relying on data centers and such abroad (and they very well might be,) there’s not really much we can do to take them down unless we really want to go in and attack all of the internal Internet infrastructure.

It’s going to hamper their universities and such, sucks for them, probably no great loss for the world, the next big scientific break through probably wasn’t coming from the hermit kingdom anyway.

It will definitely hurt their ability to conduct espionage, cyber attacks and such, that goes both ways though and it also makes it harder for other countries to spy on them.

They will do their usual sabre-rattling in response, maybe even going a bit above and beyond their usual mostly empty gestures, but probably nothing that’s going to lead to any actual escalation p

I think you have some faulty assumptions here.

Israel is very reliant on US support to be sure, but not totally reliant on us. They have their own military industrial complex and could ramp that up if needed, they have their own nuclear program, they would certainly have to scale back in some aspects, but I don’t think there’s much that we can do that would stop the war in its tracks. They’d change tactics, and Israel can be very creative, look at the recent pager bomb thing.

That’s not saying that we should continue supporting them and sending them supplies. I just don’t think it would be the quick end you’re thinking it would be.

If they knew the US wasn’t going to step in, we might see other countries, Iran perhaps, step up their involvement. If Israel starts getting desperate they might do some incredibly stupid things, like using those nukes, their mindset seems to very much that if they think they’re going down they’re going to take as many people with them as possible.

There is basically no chance you’re going to be able to land that boat at any port in Israel/Gaza and let 10k people loose. You’ll be stopped at the port if not even sooner, I’d honestly be a little amazed if you even be allowed to set sail in the first place.

While hamas is overall arguably on the right side of this conflict, don’t mistake that for meaning that they are an overall good organization. 10k Americans would make for some damn good human shields and hostages and they’d snatch every one of you up that they can. It’s not going to be as simple as just chilling in Gaza clogging up streets so Israel can’t get through (assuming Israel doesn’t just decide that your enemy combatants too and wow you down) you’re probably just as likely to end up as a Hamas prisoner and spend months or years in some pretty terrible conditions hoping for rescue.

And the idea that you’re going to get 10k to sign on is pretty laughable, I’d be amazed if you could get 100.

I’m just scraping the surface with a few thoughts off the top of my heads.

I’d probably push it back to a little over 100 years to include WWI, the fall of the Ottoman Empire, and the British Mandate for Palestine, since that all set the stage for Israel being founded pretty directly, and there had already been a pretty substantial movement for Jews to immigrate to the region by about the '30s (known as the “Fifth Aliyah”) so a bit outside of your 80 year range.

But of course, none of these events happen in a vacuum, if you want to get really nitpicky, you can start talking about the events that led to world war 1, trace them way back, through the crusades, the birth of Muhammad, Christianity, the Roman empire, all the way back to the bronze age, and maybe even further if you were able to somehow find decent historical records going that far back.

Trying to point to one single event as the one that kicked off a certain conflict is tough, because there was always something that led up to that event too, and when you try to unravel it, before too long you might come to a very Douglass Adams-y conclusion that it all started when our first ape ancestors decided to come down from the trees, only for someone else to say that the trees had been a mistake in the first place and that we never should have left the oceans.