Barry

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• Commented on Pass or Fail
  From regency romances, tall, dark, mid-30's, who is sexually experienced but have never been in love with a woman....
• Commented on Pass or Fail
  "But even so in the US in all of those brownstones and row houses in the northeastern cities that have been around 100-150 years there is an odd thing. Many of them have the plumbing exposed. " Presumably this was...
• Commented on Read an Excerpt from Season of Skulls
  "Isn't that why those states often have a square grid of counties of that size, so people could ride to the county seat?" In one US state (Georgia?) the law was that the borders of a county could be no...
• Commented on Read an Excerpt from Season of Skulls
  "Yet, for no obvious reason, a vowel shift took off within a part of the USA. The resulting dialect is called Inland Northern American English. I moved from New England to Western New York in 1969, and it was immediately...
• Commented on An AI app walks into a writers room
  "Anyway, apparently a lot of Trump supporters think he's president now. Which means he's in his second term. Therefore can't run again... so how can they support his current campaign to be the Republican candidate? Assuming they're American Patriots like...
• Commented on WTF
  "Gambling winnings is one way to do it but it would take time to convert, say, a million quid in used twenties into half a million in the bank clean as a whistle assuming I visited several betting shops in...
• Commented on WTF
  "https://jonathanturley.org/2011/01/10/gao-u-s-has-fired-250000-rounds-for-every-insurgent-killed/" As always, Turley is ... not a reliable source. There was supposedly a phrase from the Napoleonic Wars, 'It takes a man's weight in lead to kill him.'. The idea of this being somehow special is in itself special...
• Commented on WTF
  About previous comments on a couple leaving Texas due to their children entering school. The Texas government is going through public records looking for transgender people: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/12/14/texas-transgender-data-paxton/ I can't imagine a good reason for such a list, compiled by such...
• Commented on WTF
  "I struck up a conversation with the dad and found out that their daughter was had left a high paying tech job and her social networks in Austin Texas (I believe that is in the USA?) because... one of her...
• Commented on WTF
  "In other local news here in North Carolina: Emu on the loose in Person County Not fodder for horror, but weird." I live in southeastern Michigan, and have seen an emu/ostrich running around on a farm, in February. I didn't...
• Commented on Decision Fatigue
  Charlie: "I wonder how the anti-vaxxers -- who are often also pro-forced-birth (i.e. anti-abortion) -- will square this magic circle ..." Robert Prior: "I suspect they will continue to do what they do now: criminalize miscarriage and make it entirely...
• Commented on Decision Fatigue
  "The responding police officer listened to the other driver's protest, looked over at the Big Orange Van, and asked, "You didn't see that?!?"" You would be surprised at the angular width blocked out by the driver's side front pillar....
• Commented on Strong and Stable!
  "Release the Dogs Of The AntiGrowth Coalition!" Yes, as opposed to the current system, which generates so much growth that the UK had to leave the EU and get physically towed to the middle of the North Atlantic....
• Commented on Strong and Stable!
  Poul Henning-Kamp: "But I wouldn't be surprised if he installs a bland C-Team, tells them to not rock the boat and not loose too much money, and for the rest of his life, changes the subject whenever somebody brings up...
• Commented on Strong and Stable!
  "If there was any contamination at all you were risking all sorts of very nasty bacterial toxins. " If he had a home nuclear reactor, then he could sterilize them, and provide his own heat and electricity (and hot water!)....
• Commented on Strong and Stable!
  "Ha ha nope: even the most Tory bits of Englandshire are, by US standards, middle-of-the-road Democrat. (What you think would be "liberal" would actually be considerably far to the left of Bernie Sanders.)" Note that the Tories have gone bonkers-crazy...
• Commented on Strong and Stable!
  (re: 'unelected' prime ministers') "I keep seeing people say stuff like this, with the clear implication of "this is illegitimate," and speaking as an American this baffles me." I think that this is now justified; you guys are now on...
• Commented on Strong and Stable!
  "The thing most people mention about MRIs is the noise. " It is a bizarre set of sounds. Electronica this, buzzing/pinging that....
• Commented on Strong and Stable!
  "Stress what you want to do to the surgeon - e.g. digging the allotment. You will be restricted in what you can do for 3-4 months as you rebuild your muscles and ligaments." My experience with a partial hip replacement...
• Commented on Strong and Stable!
  "Gosh, you make it sound so attractive! (Think I'll pass.)" But wait! It gets worse! For the next few decades the US court system will be dominated by a 100% off the leash Federalist Society, 'people'. The worse of White...
• Commented on Strong and Stable!
  "As I said, this will take years, during which England will become a blue collar utopia for an American manufacturing industry shipping goods to the EU market." I think that the EU will have something to say about that....
• Commented on Strong and Stable!
  ""Treason" is far too strong a word for it, but "reprehensible" fits perfectly well: calls for a spell in the stocks with free time-expired fruit and veg for passers-by, rather than a ride on the three-legged mare." Working with foreign...
• Commented on Strong and Stable!
  "Who on the pro-Brexit side (if anyone) is better off today than they were pre-Brexit? If there have been any benefits, how were they distributed?" Well, Putin did and likely does. Most of the World's Oligarchs did....
• Commented on Upcoming blog outage
  Seconding that - I hope that you recover quickly, Charlie!...
• Commented on I can't even
  "Really, both parties are really grifts pretending to be political parties..." We really need less 'Nach Hitler, uns' and other 'both sides' sh*t....
• Commented on I can't even
  "This will discredit low tax, destroy the state ideologies for ever in the eyes of the British public. " If there's one thing that we've learned (yet again) is that destruction does not hurt the right. They can both flourish...
• Commented on Books I will not write: BIGGLES!!
  I'm right outside of Detroit, MI. it was around 12-13 degrees C this morning. It should have been 21 (July is when we get the really warm and sticky nights). We've had possibly the coldest summer I can remember here....
• Commented on Books I will not write: BIGGLES!!
  "Nor are they likely to be - they'd be competing with rats and urban foxes, and I'd be betting on the rats." They seem to thrive in urban areas in the continental USA and Canada; the UK will hold no...
• Commented on Roe v Wade v Sanity
  "how many women of childbearing age are going to stay in the restrictive states?" Mississippi is setting up a law to ban women from leaving the state for an abortion. In Iowa, the state public health head guys was compiling...
• Commented on Roe v Wade v Sanity
  "i realize the insurrection/coup stuff still offers some hope of derailing trump 2.0 and i don't want to take that away from anyone, but it still looks to me like a protest that got out of hand" The last time...