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Commented on Announcement time!
These casting suggestions really reveal the age of the group. All of the actors are TOO OLD for the parts....
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Commented on A Wonky Experience
There apparently are concrete "dolphins" protecting the bridge towers front and back, but the ship lost steering and the tide combined with the existing headway pulled it into the pier at an angle, around the dolphin....
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Commented on Same bullshit, new tin
In other news, the Pentagon has released a comprehensive report categorically denying "that the [U.S. government] — or a secretive organization within it — recovered several off-world spacecraft and extraterrestrial biological remains … and that it has conspired since the...
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Commented on A Wonky Experience
The way I heard it, the more commonly known acronym expansion (Generalized Markup Language) was produced as a back-formation after the Goldfarb-Mosher-Lorie project had already yielded GML. Not sure it's the truth, but a marginally more interesting story. XML was...
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Commented on A Wonky Experience
IIRC, SGML was "designed" by a lawyer, Charles Goldfarb, who became fascinated by computers and started selling IBM machines as a sideline. Standardized Goldfarb-Mosher-Lorie (the other two guys who helped him). The syntax and grammar are so complex they don't...
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Commented on A message from our sponsors: New Book coming!
You need to read Kage Baker's books about "The Company" before you do that Netflix pitch....
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Commented on Same bullshit, new tin
"If television and radio are to be used to entertain all of the people all of the time, then we have come perilously close to discovering the real opiate of the people." -- Edward R. Murrow, American television journalist, 1957...
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Commented on Same bullshit, new tin
to me this all looks like oxytocin all the way down. ... that's always going to lead us back to oxytocin ... And oxytocin, of course, but that almost goes without saying. Apparently not. 😂...
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Commented on Same bullshit, new tin
along with "Trustworthy, Loyal, Helpful, Friendly, Curteous, Kind, Obedient, Cheerful, Thrifty, Brave, Clean and Reverent" The BSA Scout Law? More English ideals from Baden-Powell. Among others: According to the original U.S. handbook, which elaborated on the British version, the founders...
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Commented on Same bullshit, new tin
If I understand you correctly (and I may well not), to you "American exceptionalism" means that Americans should try to be more like Captain America (minus the tights), even if they know they won't get all the way there. You...
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Commented on Same bullshit, new tin
that we're talking past each other. We're definitely talking past each other. I've explained the concept and where it comes from. But if you want to know more, you'd better talk to Mr. Winthrop, Esq. Through a medium, I guess....
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Commented on Same bullshit, new tin
Talk about thinking in binaries! We keep explaining the idea you asked about, and instead of thanking us for the explanation, you keep complaining that the Americans you know aren't living up to it! We know that! Ideals are like...
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Commented on Same bullshit, new tin
In other words: British values, but with something of the modest self-consciousness of a colonial imitator in acknowledgement of being a parochial variation against the cosmopolitan imperial centre. OK, maybe, sure (although we, in our parochial way, say "center"). Not...
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Commented on Same bullshit, new tin
So American exceptionalism is essentially American superiority? But in a nice way. 😁 Steve Rogers is a modest champion; a leader willing to sacrifice all for others. Capable of pulling the sword from the stone, or lifting Thor's worthiness-enchanted hammer....
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Commented on Same bullshit, new tin
what it actually means Have you seen any of the Marvel movies featuring "Captain America"? A living albeit fictional embodiment of the ideal of American exceptionalism. Bigger, better, humbler, kinder, faster, stronger, more caring, more capable, more right....
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Commented on Same bullshit, new tin
Nature abhors a vacuum....
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Commented on Same bullshit, new tin
I always wonder if the American craziness (see Table 10) is at least partly due to our lack of a official religion. (Thank God!) So many oddball sects in the U.S.! But again, American exceptionalism is an ideal, stemming I...
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Commented on Same bullshit, new tin
It's an aspirational/Puritan thing. The U.S. is exceptionally gifted -- natural resources, English law and property rights (and the amazingly adaptable English language), vibrant immigrant culture, temperate climate, access to two oceans, protection from European craziness -- and should reflect...
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Commented on Same bullshit, new tin
Check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colbert_Super_PAC...
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Commented on Same bullshit, new tin
Sure. But mainly, there seems to be no accountability for money raised as contributions to a political campaign. Whatsoever....
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Commented on Same bullshit, new tin
Getting the money out of his organization in 30 days will be hard. He probably does have half a billion at hand. He's been converting property to more liquid assets for some time. But it's not a big deal....
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Commented on Same bullshit, new tin
*The people I had in mind (that I encountered personally) are all as white as I am (fishbelly-pale English). * Well, exactly. Generalizing from a non-diverse population sample. You didn't say, "Some of the people I know..."...
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Commented on Worldcon in the news
To add, for others not up-to-speed on this one ... Currently, in Florida, all & any performances of any British/English PANTOMIME would be immediately banned/illegal & the performers & produces criminally prosecuted. Yes, it's that bad. Well, I'm not...
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Commented on Same bullshit, new tin
In the US, this is usually a reference to the Brooklyn Bridge in New York....
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Commented on Same bullshit, new tin
Someone at the Washington Post is reading this blog. They just published an article, "How Americans define a middle-class lifestyle — and why they can’t reach it". It reports on a poll about what Americans believe to be middle-class. Six...
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Commented on Same bullshit, new tin
Reliable diagnostics for the major anti-social personality disorders. Two words: religious exemptions. Why not just propose faerie dust?...
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Commented on Same bullshit, new tin
Didn't John Ringo in the Troy Rising series just melt the asteroids with giant space mirrors? Once they're sufficiently pliable you set off a charge in the center to blow up a huge rock habitat bubble....
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Commented on Same bullshit, new tin
I remember reading Sherlock Holmes stories where Holmes would say, "Watson, you'd better bring along your life-preserver." I always thought that was a reference to a pistol, but it turns out the Victorian life-preserver was a kind of sap or...
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Commented on Same bullshit, new tin
Wikipedia says (for what that's worth): In Caetano v. Massachusetts (2016), the Supreme Court reiterated its earlier rulings that "the Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at...
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Commented on Same bullshit, new tin
Just to add some actual facts: it's two very good teams, the effete Left Coast San Francisco 49ers playing the Midwest heartland Kansas City Chiefs, in a new stadium in the glitz capital of the country. Could be an excellent...