I'm afraid I can't bring myself to get over-excited about this. Magazines have been playing games with gender and sexuality for ages. The recent Loki on TV where he fell in love with a female version of himself was hilarious. Obviously, it's never occurred to anybody ever that Batman could be a little bi.....

@doctor-phibes said in Volunteers fired: @axtremus said in Volunteers fired: Pfffttt ... to think that you folks are generally more enthusiastic about defunding the National Endowment for the Arts that I am. It turns out that the best way to get conservatives to fight for the arts is to lay-off a bunch of unpaid white people. Okay, sick burn.

You GO, Abbott. Funny thing . . . the Fox piece failed to mention what if any counter protest there was at MIT to protest his lecture cancellation. It certainly can't be that MIT -- the Mass Institute of Technology -- booed the professor 100% and Princeton showed that "thousands have already registered" to hear his talk. Probably an innocent oversight.

That might be ok if the dogs are the same size. My daughter's 11-year-old little dog comes over and jumps on me when I arrive, no problem he is little and weighs nothing. But then she got a big dog last year and he wants the same treatment. He is big enough to knock me over but wants the same jumping privilege as the little dog.

@doctor-phibes said in Again, I ask: Why the helmet?: @aqua-letifer said in Again, I ask: Why the helmet?: That's because you're British AF. Anyway, vengeance was mine. We came to a hill, and he clearly wasn't quite as big an expert as he'd thought, I actually passed his $2500 road-bike on my $500 Schwinn. That's really the best thing.

I think it's a narrow window. Brady has defied all odds by being as good as he is, as old as he is. He took a page out of his New England playbook, and took a hometown discount for the Bucs, then demanded the franchise go out and get the best talent they could afford. Much of that talent is older and will be gone in two years. Maybe less. Some of the talent is longer lasting...Devon White is a generational linebacker. But Tampa Bay, which had been drafting early in the rounds, will now be drafting late. That makes a difference, long term, unless the front office is very, very good. But for now, they have talent. Secondly, Brady is one of the few QB's that could tell Coach Bruce Ariens to go get screwed. His "no-risk-it-no-biscuit" offense darn near ruined Jameis Winston. (Winston this year has 12TD's/3INT, his QB rating is 20 points higher and his TD% has doubled, under Sean Payton) Brady imported his old offense from New England last year during the season and the Buc's offense took off. It's a very good team. Not perfect, but very good.

@catseye3 said in Things that make you LOL: Here's his pic: [image: 1634054426890-d7b510bf-ac84-4173-989a-8baacf7c383b-image.png] It's true, a picture really is worth a thousand words. You can tell just by looking at him what a kind-hearted softie he is -- with a soul-deep encompassing love in his heart for all living things. You really can’t tell anything, but some combination of photo selection and preconceived notions can work magic. Just ask every biased media outlet ever.

Love Texas red chili.

I just knew this would be fun.

And we were energy independent.

Interesting. Further down in the thread...Most of us with a lick of common sense figured out COVID was transmissible by droplet and aerosol a long time ago.

@axtremus said in We have a new letter to add to the LGBTQXYZ acronym!: @doctor-phibes said in We have a new letter to add to the LGBTQXYZ acronym!: Personally, I have zero clue what happens after I die. ... And neither does anybody else. Eternal supply of good beer and great sex in the afterlife. I hate to break it to you, but if you can't get laid while you're alive, you're not going to suddenly start getting laid when you're dead.

What he could do, is do the plot outline and then hire a decent writer to "co-write" the books.

The "luxury beliefs" idea is a brilliant way to think about high status leftist culture. Speaking of Chicago, I bet those fired museum volunteers were chock full of these sorts of beliefs. Probably still are.

Various Opinions: "The taste-good factor of MREs is inversely proportional to how hungry you are which itself is a function of how long you’ve been in the field." "I’ve eaten more cold MRE’s than hot, by a factor of 3. The army has destroyed my sense of taste. It’s just fuel. (It also destroyed my love of architecture and landscape. It’s just terrain.)" "One man’s crap is another man’s feast. We always run a ‘goodie box’. A collection of stuff that guys don’t want. After a day, I can live off the goodie box. One of the bonding experiences is eating. Guys are always giving up their pudding for chocolate bars, or peaches for sliced apples (Who am I kidding? NOBODY gives up peaches.)" "A MRE is freaking huge, and typically on missions you only get to use what you physically carry with you. When packing for your mission, you want to make sure all the items you need to bring with you will actually fit in your pack; you don't need your food taking up a lot of space. "What you do is strip the MRE down and take out all the useless packaging, utensils and accesories including the chemical heater. You won't be using that heater on a mission, it produces visible steam and that is a big no-no if you don't want to be seen. "Meals Ready to Eat are pretty sweet for missions because you can stick the small vacuum sealed baggies of food in mag pouches or pockets, rip the corner open and suck it down while you are on the move." "Do soldiers eat MREs every day? Oh god no! If it was only MREs we would all never take a shit again. MREs have a tendency to constipate the bowels like nothing else." "Some are better than others. The good ones are about equivalent to other types/brands of camping food. I intentionally planned some MRE meals for my family on a camping trip, nobody complained. They even had some nice features like a little candy and a tiny bottle of Tabasco sauce." [image: 1634001840611-7be7daf5-c1ec-47c4-b464-bd74504e00f7-image.png]

I am not sure where @mark got the picture, but there is a small town in Illinois, that has been trying to get tourists and improve business by have the "largest" of things. EDIT: It is Casey, Illinois.