@Mik said in Fredo leaves the basement:

No, but West Texans would spin him up some manners right quick.

In a New York minute...

Lunch resembles breakfast. Every breakfast has always included strawberries, raspberries, bananas, some mini pound cake croutons and a dab of French Vanilla yogurt. Yesterday, for the first time ever...we tried frozen strawberries and raspberries. Guess what? They're great - maybe even better than fresh as sometimes fresh strawberries are pretty weak.

We have oatmeal and some kind of protein - a touch of beef or turkey bacon - and we're there.

If my coworkers looked like that I'd probably make the effort to go in.

@Larry I don' want to make it seem like I do not see your point, because I do. I just happen to disagree with just about everything that Trump says, stands for, or does. Period. Just about. I do agree with his 2nd amendment stance.

I freely admit that I have right leaning tendencies and left leaning tendencies. In my perfect world people would not denigrate, or be filled with hate, for others, or do violence against others for not living or believing as they do. Sadly, that world has never existed and I am 99.99999% sure it never will exist.

In my much younger days, yes, back even before we all met each other, my mindset was a lot different than it is today mainly because I found out, rather brutally that the world that I wanted to exist, did in fact, not exist. That our government with all of it's good and bad components, was here, was our reality, and was not going to ever go away.

After being forced to surrender almost $100,000 or the entirety of my retirement savings to that point, by the IRS, I was done with my attitude that I wanted nothing to do with it or that I wanted nothing from them. Up to that point, I was absolutely convinced that I would reject Social Security or Medicare when my time came to collect. That is how far I had fallen down a hole of despair in regard to the government. Everything that I felt so strongly about began to wane.

As my three daughters got older, my attitude about women's issues, and other issues that are typically championed by the left, basically took a 180. At some point I had a real "FUCK THAT!" moment. I wanted them to be on control of their own destiny, and their bodies. I did not want men to tell them how to live their lives. I now wanted something for what they make me pay for the privilege of being a citizen of this country. I want more than perpetual war, and wasting so much of our national treasure on it. I want my taxes to go to helping my fellow humans as well as myself, and I started to get really pissed when the healthcare industry decided to try to start bankrupting me year after a year. It just got worse, year after year as my health insurance premiums kept climbing and the deductibles followed suite. This was a long time before, the ACA was even a gleam in anyone's eye.

Yes, I used to be a far more right leaning person, anti-abortion, anti-tax, and my anti-everything leanings then lead me down the path of a very libertarian mind set, where my stance on many topics started to evolve. That didn't sit well with you and some others on our forums either at the time, because it was then that I realized that both political parties wanted basically the same thing. It was power for power's sake and to be able to control the people as they saw fit. I dug in deeper to libertarian thinking. But I also started climbing out of that pit at the same time, and it was on the left side of the pit that I crawled. I went through many changes in my spiritual thinking, I tried to reconnect with a faith that I had long ago rejected, for various reasons. I tried for many years to rekindle a belief in something outside this reality, but I could never quite reconcile it with what I knew to be real. When I saw the reasons why I left it in the first place resurface, I left it once again. This time for good. I simply cannot betray my own thoughts on it and still be honest with myself.

So that was my beginning of tilting to the left because it seemed that only the left wanted to address these issues that I felt were important for everyone, and not just the country club sect. The right just dismisses them out of hand, calls them evil, and shouts down anyone who doesn't agree with them. I quickly grew tired of all the shouting. I know the shouting on the left is just as bad in some instances, it is even worse. I do not have any illusions that the left is the answer for everything just as I have no illusion that the right is either. I still have strong 2nd amendment defending leanings but, I also feel as strong for every other amendment (except the 16th lol) Even my feeling on the 16th have wavered to a point that I know it will never go away so I WANT SOMETING FOR IT! I get nothing for it right now except the worlds biggest military budget and a wasteful government full of corruption. And it is my opinion that the current occupant of the oval office is only making it worse. I know you all think that it is necessary for us to waste so much our tax dollars on the military, but I know we could do just as well, with far less.

I do keep up with current events I just don't get my information from the news networks. Any of them. Mainly because I feel they have all become corrupted by their owner's political leanings. I started to become a much calmer person, especially when I stopped digesting the 24 news cycle, and stopped watching all of the biased news channels and started to seek the truth in other ways.

I still love each and everyone of you here and on the other forums. We are like a huge and somewhat dysfunctional family, but I do consider you all as family. We celebrate when things go well for each other, and we hurt, when someone is hurting.

We all have different ideas of what our "perfect world" would be. Problem is, the world will never be perfect for any of us.

At the end of the day, there isn't anyone on any of our forums that I would now want to sit down with, and have drink or meal, or just sit and talk in person.

So, we argue and words fly and we get angry. That is one of the very definitions of family.

"For every 1,000 residents in Rhode Island, there are 3.8 guns."

I'd take that statistic with a pinch of salt. Those eejits don't even know what an Island is, never mind a gun. Plus, they don't know how to spell 'Road'. They're probably confusing hand-gun with hand-job.

@Klaus said in The mystery bottle:

I noticed that you sent me what must have been the cheapest plastic kazoo on the market 😆

It's seasoned for application applicant.

I know squat about virology. But I don’t think the small genetic mutations mean anything because a vaccine is usually targeted at vital proteins without which The virus can’t proliferate and so these small point mutations which don’t change the inherent viral biology are probably meaningless.

However on the bright side, usually most mutations tend to be less virulent as the virus always trends darwinianly to one which keeps the host alive and thus better chances to propagate.

@jon-nyc said in The stats I would like to see:

@George-K said in The stats I would like to see:

@jon-nyc said in The stats I would like to see:

wonder how people view him as 'strong' or masculine in any way.

I know there are many genders these days, but assuming there are only 2.

That guy is not feminine.

He may have have his problems but his gender is established.

Which means the worst is yet to come.

@Klaus said in What will happen to world GDP?:

@Doctor-Phibes said in What will happen to world GDP?:

I've been to a couple of Siemens facilities, and they're like small cities.

I've worked in this Siemens "city" for two years:

alt text

The whole area is connected by a huge network of underground tunnels. You could do a Marathon run underground and not probably visit any tunnel twice.

Legoland.

@jon-nyc said in Hey Cats! Your AOC post of the day!:

I'm not sure I see the outrageous bit here. I mean, her GND is stupid and all but there's something else you guys seem to be keying off of that I'm not seeing. The cough?

First of all, the thought that the economy, if based on the Green Nude Eel, would have been more resilient is laughable.

And, yeah, the cough.

Forget Skype, FaceTime, Hangouts. They are dead.

Zoom is pretty decent. I'm using it for meetings with 30 people on a regular basis and use it for lectures with 100+ students.

Bluejeans is also pretty reliable.

@Axtremus said in ZomDef and Covid-19 Safety Measures:

Hey @Aqua-Letifer , you researched ZomDef quite extensively in the past, right? Just curious how much of it do you find transferable to protecting yourself against Covid-19.

Probably about half.

How bad has it gotten, Improv?

OTOH...

Maybe Dr. Phil is available.

@Horace said in 1800:

Seems that all the info coming in lately points to most carriers being asymptomatic.

@Horace said in 1800:

Seems that all the info coming in lately points to most carriers being asymptomatic.

Kind of a mixed bag. Potentially very good news in terms of the death rate, potentially devastating news in terms of the R0 and total death count.

Why don't people realize when they become their own worst enemy?

Idiots.

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Back when it was just a shack in Madison Park we would eat there for lunch sometimes. It was so busy they had a webcam installed so you could see the line. We'd check it at random times and go when it was short.

It was literally a shack, like a concession stand.

Then they grew. Still a damn good burger IMO.