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General Discussion

A place to talk about whatever you want

37.7k Topics 340.3k Posts
  • Dumb things dumb people say

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    taiwan_girlT
    @Klaus
  • Hammering in Hackberry

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  • Consumer Reports on Tesla Self-Driving Capability

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    HoraceH
    Tesla has been charging customers for FSD for years.
  • NPR interviews author of book who says "Looting is OK."

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    HoraceH
    Yes I like how he puts "ideas" in quotes. As I've often said, all our culture's dumbest ideas are around race, and for exactly the reason he states. Because everybody is terrified of pointing out the stupidity.
  • From the Fringe

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  • Is it over?

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  • Haircuts for me, but not for thee

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    George KG
    [image: sca7becyb5l51.jpg?w=640&ssl=1] [image: Screen-Shot-2020-09-03-at-8.22.26-PM.png?w=1182&ssl=1]
  • It ain't easy being green

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    jon-nycJ
    That’s the amount of garbage we now produce in 24 days. And it buys us CO2 reduction measured in gigatonnes annually. Pretty good deal.
  • It's almost Labor Day Weekend...whatcha gonna do?

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    brendaB
    Mik, I am sorry to hear that your kitty is so ill. That's mighty hard to go through for all of you. It's good you had the last years together. Horace, best wishes to your dad for a successful surgery and a speedy recovery. Glad you can be with him.
  • Colorado Woman Assaulted 12-Year-Old Boy over Trump Yard Sign

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    taiwan_girlT
    @George-K Agree. i think he will have to show that they are only against him. If other people continue to wear political clothes with no problem, I think we will have a case.
  • The Two Tiered Health System

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    taiwan_girlT
    Taiwan has a single payer healthcare. Seems to work pretty well. I have not had to use too much, but I know growing up as a poor family, it helped us and continues to help my mother. (NOTE: I know taiwan is very different from the US. Population (25 million vs. 300 million, cultural differences, etc.) Some points on Taiwan healthcare the government spends only one percent of its health care budget on administration. In US, insurers spend 12 percent of their revenue on administration. And, administrative costs account for 25 percent of hospitals’ budgets. Patients’ medical records are all on one system. Taiwan uses a national electronic health records database. health insurance premium payments take the form of payroll contributions (5.17 percent of income) Progressive income taxes and additional taxes on lottery tickets and tobacco also help fund the Taiwanese health care system. And, the Taiwanese government imposes a copay of about $12 whenever people use the medical system, unless they are low-income. Taiwanese with greater incomes can buy private insurance to pay for services their public system does not pay for. Taiwan spends six percent of GDP on health care, as compared to 17.7 percent in the US.
  • The Giggle Factor

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  • Air Force One to be supersonic?

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    George KG
    Rocketman...
  • Barr urges antitrust filing against Google

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    George KG
    @xenon said in Barr urges antitrust filing against Google: Google and AWS don’t have access to the information running on those resources. That's what they want you to think, Padawan.
  • It is easy to lose control

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    MikM
  • HBO - Perry Mason

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    CopperC
    Brings a Ray of darkness into your life.
  • The Insane Engineering of the P-47

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    CopperC
    That water injection is really a cool idea. I learned about that from a KC-135 (Air Force tanker - looks like a 707) pilot. She told me they user the water injection during takeoff for extra power and it creates an ugly black exhaust. That is why you see the black exhaust coming out of some older jets from back in the 50s and 60s. I don't think they do it anymore.
  • Does 🍎 speak sooth?

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    AxtremusA
    These parts here ... One major privacy feature in iOS 14 is the need for apps to actively ask for permission before tracking you across services. Apple will allow you to choose between “Allow Tracking” or “Ask App Not To Track.” This has caused quite a stir, with Facebook saying it will no longer be able to collect iPhone identifiers for advertisers (IDFA) from users, hugely impacting the business model of itself and its advertisers. Just disallow cross-site/cross-service tracking from the get do would be fine. Just don’t even have anything like IDFA to begin with would be fine. First Apple Inc. built stuff that compromised your privacy, now they bill letting you undo some of that damage as new features.
  • The bradykinin hypothesis

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    jon-nycJ
    A most curious etymology. From la wik: Bradykinin was discovered in 1948 by three Brazilian physiologists and pharmacologists working at the Biochemistry and Pharmacology department of the Faculdade de Medicina de Ribeirão Preto da Universidade de São Paulo, in Ribeirão Preto, São Paulo, Brazil, led by Dr. Maurício Rocha e Silva. Together with colleagues Wilson Teixeira Beraldo and Gastão Rosenfeld, they discovered the powerful hypotensive effects of bradykinin in animal preparations. Bradykinin was detected in the blood plasma of animals after the addition of venom extracted from the Bothrops jararaca (Brazilian lancehead snake), brought by Rosenfeld from the Butantan Institute. The discovery was part of a continuing study on circulatory shock and proteolytic enzymes related to the toxicology of snake bites, started by Rocha e Silva as early as 1939. Bradykinin was to prove a new autopharmacological principle, i.e., a substance that is released in the body by a metabolic modification from precursors, which are pharmacologically active. According to B.J. Hagwood, Rocha e Silva's biographer, "The discovery of bradykinin has led to a new understanding of many physiological and pathological phenomena including circulatory shock induced by venoms and toxins." Etymology: brady [Gk] slow, kinin [Gk ] kīn(eîn) to move, set in motion, ? from the effect of snake venom on intestinal smooth muscle, which was noted to slowly contract.[25]
  • And Andrew Sullivan is leaving NY Mag

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    jon-nycJ
    Well to be fair you didn’t know the full cost there either because the government picked up most of it.