New countries typically don’t start without a significant percentage of their population dying in conflict. Certainly a place that has as many guns as the US does not have a good chance for a peaceful transition.

Not that I actually believe a new country is even remotely possible. There will be decades if not centuries of decline.

There was a time, not that long ago, when cremation was not an option for Catholics. At some point, the church changed its mind. Maybe in the seventies or eighties?

There were guardrails, but most of them are just litter on the side of the road now. The supreme Court has essentially justified any action he takes, Congress will not dare to oppose anything he wants, and he is appointing toadies and lickspittles to the highest offices of the land. Oh, and he is reclassifying all the major bureaucrats as political appointees so they can be fired at will.

It really is as bad as it seems.

You are talking as if the US is ever going to hold elections again.

As I understand it, some of the parents of the children who were murdered have agreed to drop part of their claim, in exchange for Infowars being sold to The Onion. It’s not like they were going to collect the entire 1.5 billion dollars anyway.

They actually still do bloodletting, and even use leeches to do it.

For me, I don’t try to deaden the hunger pangs. I think I need to retrain my brain that being hungry is not necessarily a bad thing. At first, it was very distracting, but I think I’m getting used to the idea that I don’t have to eat every time I feel hungry.

I’m usually only noticing it for the last two or three hours before my meal.

I can understand being frustrated and angry with the Democrats for essentially being a status quo party that favors their corporate benefactors.

What boggles my mind is thinking that voting Republican would make any of that better, when in fact it seems pretty clear that it is going to make everything much, much worse.

The problem is that nowhere is safe now. I’m Canadian, and I wish I had somewhere to go. And just imagine how the poor sods in Palestine, Ukraine, and so many other suffering countries, are feeling right now.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Vladimir Putin’s armies weren’t occupying large swaths of Eastern Europe by the end of this term.

But given infinite time, could OP spell “infinity” correctly?

Back when the X-Files was ruling the airwaves, in the 90s, there was a companion show called Millennium. The first season was a bit weak, focusing on serial killers and gore. Second season went completely off the rails in the best way possible. The third season was a lackluster attempt to regain a wider audience.

I would recommend watching the second season for sure. It has religious satire (you will know exactly who they are skewering when you see it), the occult, end of days, mixed in with humor and solid human drama. The season finale, when they thought that they weren’t going to be renewed, is extraordinary.

I have done pair programming with a junior partner, and I found it extremely beneficial. Taking the time to talk out my ideas and logic invariably helped make them clearer in my mind and realize pitfalls much sooner than I otherwise would have.

I had to explain things clearly and logically, and he was bright enough to ask good questions and point out typos as I was coding.

One of the teachers at my high school was a Catholic priest. He had been accused of molesting a young boy when he was in a parish so the bishop, in his wisdom, moved him to an all boys boarding school.

He was later found guilty of molesting the original boy and the parish, as well as a boy at my school. From what I know now, he was definitely grooming one of my classmates, so there were probably many more victims.

He was given 3 years probation, and died a year or two ago, more than 40 years since I had him as a teacher.

In Ontario, any organization that receives provincial money must reach a certain accessibility level on its website, or risk having its funding removed.

Even as a 13-year-old, I could see gaping holes in the plot and inconsistencies. The aliens were hardly alien.

Even more so, I could see that the writing was clumsy and the dialogue was stilted. I could see how the writer was developing the story, and so I was not pulled into it at all. I was actually thinking to myself that I could write something like this. And I was 13!

I haven’t seen the movie, but from the sounds of it many of the problems with the book are also on screen.

The database app in LibreOffice, based on the Firebird database engine, can do all that.

I don’t know if this counts, but when I was about 13I was very excited to find an enormous book in my favorite genre at the time, Battlefield Earth by L. Ron Hubbard.

It was the first book I ever put down in disgust without finishing. In the almost half-century since then, there are under a dozen that I haven’t finished. Shows you just how bad it is.

He certainly should have won for his role as Carson Clay in Mr Bean’s Holiday.

Carson Clay stars in a Carson Clay production. Written by Carson Clay. Directed by Carson Clay…

I started with a book too. But it was 1996, and the distro was Yggdrasil, and the book was a printout of all the man pages. I used it for a Prolog programming course, so that I didn’t have to go to the university and use their computers. Of course, then I discovered the joys of different flavors of Prolog.

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