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And Pete Hegseth, our Secretary of War, wants to put all the US military on testosterone injections. That's really gender-affirming care.

There's also the revised version of that poem that explains that while Casey was at the bat, his uncle Arnold was in the stands taking bets ...

The most common way to install the NEMA 5-15 outlets is vertically, with the two slots above and the round ground pin below. However, in the building where I live, while most outlets are installed that way, the outlets that are controlled by a wall switch are installed "upside-down", with the ground pin at the top which makes it easier to tell which are switched and which are not.

Also, I have noticed that at the (very large) medical center where all my doctors are, all outlets are installed "upside-down". These are the regular outlets where things like PCs are plugged in, and is true both in new and in very old buildings. Anyone have any idea why they would do that?

The more rational distinction between a dictator and a non-dictator is not how they came to power but how they can be removed from power.

The only requirement to join the world's leading association of genocide scholars is paying a $30 membership fee. No expertise required. This makes it trivial to manipulate the association for propaganda purposes. Its declaration that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza was approved by less than 20% of its members. The remaining 80% were never even asked or never voted on it. An acquaintance of mine has been a member since 2013 and is a real scholar with genuine expertise on the Rwandan Genocide. She was not made aware that this resolution was being proposed and learned of its adoption in the press.

But I bet she drives a Recreational Vehicle instead of an Recreational Vehicle.

Dictámelo? Does it take dictation only if you have an Argentinian accent? :-)

> Because she stood little chance of winning even the state party didn't investigate her background either.

I guess they never heard of a certain George Santos either.

Yes. My ISP will rent me a single IPv4 address for $10 per month. Or I can use DHCP, where my IPv4 address can change at their whim.

A move that will draw gasps of admiration in every kindergarten in America.

A move that will draw gasps of admiration in every kindergarten in America.

It's not the foreign producer who must raise her prices to pay for the tax. It's the local importer. The net effect on the consumer is that the price of imported goods goes up so then, as you say, the local producers can raise their prices and increase their profits.

I don't understand how independent health professionals can avoid using self-hosted email. Think of your neighborhood psychologist: any email she sends to or receives from a patient or potential patient should be completely confidential, down to the email address of the correspondents. It's no secret that Google and Microsoft "read" the emails they send and receive and mine them for information.

And yet, a quick search of "psychologists near me" in Google Maps gives me a list of professionals most of whose email addresses have MX records pointing to Google servers.

If you are going to change pi, make it 3. That way maybe some people in the Government can also understand it.

> teachers usually remain on payroll throughout the summer.

That is not exactly accurate. When I was teaching, my salary was for 9 months only. I was paid in 12 monthly installments to smooth out my income, but technically I was not on the University's payroll during the summer months. That allowed me to seek full-time employment elsewhere (e.g. consulting) during the summer which was not allowed during the other 9 months.

I'm not rich, but I give a lot of money every year to charity, to try to help those who need help. The United States is the richest country in the world. It was also giving to charity to help those who badly needed help. It was a small amount compared to its budget, and we called it USAID. To protect the money from being scammed by those running the countries we were helping, the US itself administered those programs as much as possible. We know how much Trump donates to charity: bupkis (read about the Donald J. Trump Foundation) and I have a pretty good inkling that Musk donates even less.

National Review has been a critic of Trump since before he was elected for his first term in 2016.

There's also the wifely we, meaning "you", as in "we need to take out the trash."

In the 1980s a company called Quotron developed a contactless keyboard. The main circuit board contained a bunch of LEDs and some sort of photo diodes or photo cells, all arranged in a grid. The keys were simply plungers that when pressed down interrupted the light beams shining into some of the receivers. The firmware then decided which key had been pressed and generated the appropriate code. The keyboard itself was huge. Us software people used to joke that, in a pinch, it could be used as a surfboard.

One of the advantages was that you could pour a cup of coffee into the keyboard and it would just keep working.

Wouldn't it make sense to assume that as the size of the population decreases, perhaps for external factors such as climate change, you are going to see more and more inbreeding?

1.- My apologies for the terminology - I took one overview class on the subject in Spanish, and haven't looked at it in the last 60 years. 2.- Agreed - that's why rebar on horizontal beams (and slabs) sometimes goes on the top edge and shifts to the bottom edge. 3.- By beams I do mean horizontal beams. This also applies to horizontal slabs. However, vertical columns also need rebar, especially in earthquake-prone areas. If the ground moves horizontally in an earthquake, the (vertical) columns have to transmit the motion to the upper parts of the structure. This create huge tension stresses on one side of the columns so they need vertical rebar rods on their perimeter.

As I understand it, concrete has excellent resistance to compression but fails easily on traction, while steel bars are exactly the opposite. That is why you put rebar in concrete: the steel handles the traction loads and the concrete handles the compression. This works well because both materials have similar coefficients of thermal expansion, so as the temperature changes they both expand and contract at the same rate. I suppose you can engineer fiberglass to have the same thermal expansion coefficient and use it to replace steel (assuming it is just as strong on traction). But how would you "build without rebar even"? Wouldn't your beams start cracking at the bottom, where they are subject to traction?

> I'm not opposed to making voting mandatory, but making election day a national holiday should come first.

How about having elections on Sundays instead of on Tuesdays?

Something similar happened in 1975 in Uruguay. The brit that saved the penguin wrote a book, which was made into a movie, "The Penguin Lessons", currently on Netflix.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Penguin_Lessons_(book)

Just out of curiosity: what happens to you if you don't vote? Can you get a medical excuse? What if you are traveling?l

I can understand your not liking Harris, Biden, Clinton et. al. But I can't understand how you selected a person like Trump as your candidate for President. One time, maybe. But three times in a row?

RBG passed away while Trump was president. Obama did pick a replacement for Antonin Scalia though: Merrick Garland. Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to even give Garland a hearing arguing it was "too close to the presidential election", even though Obama's term had about one year to go.

Frightening thought: Alito and Thomas resign now, giving Trump two seats to fill with younger Justices of their "textualist" persuation who will be there for a very long time.

It's very simple: if the terms are satisfactory and against an agreed upon collateral (e.g. shares) banks will give you a loan that does not require periodic payments. The interest on the loan does accumulate of course, and is just added to the principal that the borrower owes. The bank is happy as long as the value of the collateral is higher than the current outstanding loan. If the loan is in danger of going "under water" the bank can either liquidate the collateral to pay itself, or the borrower can renegotiate the loan and deposit additional shares.

It's similar to a reverse mortgage. Say Fred and Wilma own a house worth $4MM with no mortgage on it. With a reverse mortgage a bank will lend them $2MM. Fred and Wilma make no payments and continue to live in their house, spending the $2MM while the interest on that loan just increases the amount they owe the bank. After both Fred and Wilma have passed away the house is sold and the proceeds are used to pay back the outstanding loan. If there's still money left over, it goes to their heirs. If the sale comes up short, the bank loses money, which is why these reverse mortgages are typically less than 50% of the value of the house and they typically have higher interest rates than conventional mortgages. From Fred and Wilma's point of view, they can use the value of their house now, while continuing to live in it. They essentially spend their children's inheritance.