So, maybe the conspiracies are real. I'll believe it when I see the Chinese border guards on the moon.

@Ivorythumper said in It’s fireworks season again. Let’s be careful out there: That needs to be set to the 1812 Overture. Do y'all remember Jeff Foxworthy? "If you store your box of fireworks under the gas tank to keep them out of the sun, you might be a redneck."

Well, the one guy with the funny hat almost made it through. LOL

Sho' 'nuff. Madigan has been the most powerful politician in Illinois for decades. It is not even a well-kept, unspoken secret. People say it out loud, and they have forever. I find it interesting for two reasons. First of all, why has everyone been silent about this for all these years? Is it because he knows where the bodies are buried? My guess - yeah, he knows. Secondly, perhaps that knowledge is now irrelevant, and his power is ebbing. So, knives out, man. A perhaps unrelated aside: His daughter Lisa was AG for Illinois 2003-2019. Unrelated...nah.

So perfect. Give him a sock.

Rhode Island is a funny place. "We" are thinking of moving there, as it happens. I'm not at all sure I want to.

@Doctor-Phibes said in Funny response contest: @Horace said in Funny response contest: @LuFins-Dad said in Funny response contest: As an aside, the email server couldn’t filter out all the Karens and just email them? There was one reply- all from a woman with a Chinese name. Said it wasn’t for her, and signed the email Karen. I am wondering if the shipment was a prank. We weren’t told the contents. I'd report the Chinese woman to management, and cc all. Ah, that's perfect.

Not to worry. It’s at the top of the hill. Pyramid Hill, y’know?

@Horace said in Enunciating your Ts: This "T" pronunciation is called a glottal T. Common in words like button or cotton. But there are degrees, and it hits me in my ears lately when I listen to some people talk. Subculture thing.

Kind of unrelated, but one of the things I really hate in life is when then the murders began.

@Jolly said in "Fuck Clarence Thomas!": Idiot. Please use Gender-neutral insults.

@jon-nyc said in The Mouse goes public: Sweet. I too want to live in a country where companies that show fealty to the party in power get rewarded, and punished if they don’t. Sweet, a few months ago you were lamenting that so many companies and businesses were engaging in partisan politics, further dividing the country. And I'm still surprised that you don't see the fundamental difference between punishing a company and choosing not to reward with special considerations. They aren't removing copyright protections they are choosing to not renew protections...

@Klaus yeah, I got that. I've seen many ruptured AAAs. THe mortality is, of course, high. None of these people looked "peaceful" or "painless." And death is not in a matter of seconds. Usually many minutes, if not an hour. The aorta is (this gets geeky here) a retroperitoneal structure. Free rupture into the abdominal cavity is not the most common presentation. Usually it's a rupture into the retroperitoneal space, with blood tracking cephalad and caudad along the muscle planes. This is why it frequently presents with back pain. If I had to choose? I would have a massive stroke - while asleep - for the way to go.

@Doctor-Phibes said in Monday afternoon snarky caption contest: Tuck in your shirt edition.: Elons, that is, not the Pope's. I'm glad you resolved the ambiguity.

@Klaus said in A podcast on Obesity.: Has anyone actually listened to the podcast or are we going to discuss this based on the title only? Not the whole thing, but parts of it. The real tl;dr version is "We don't know what the hell is going on," They say that losing weight is (relatively) easy, and keeping it off is (really) hard, but we knew that. There are so many theories, so many models. You can't blame it all, they say, on genetics, because, as a species, we have pretty much the same genes we had 100 years ago. Others, like Jason Fung (Insulin resistance theory proponent) attribute it to diet, almost exclusively, pointing to the rise of obesity in China where a rice-heavy diet for centuries didn't lead to obesity. Now, it's endemic in China. “Asians tend to eat rice, whereas Western societies tend to take their carbohydrate as refined wheat and corn products. It is also possible that changes in Western obesity rates are related to changes in the variety of wheat we are eating.”

@Renauda That is funny! I will try that!!