Thank you. Venturing into space starts with flying through the gaseous atmosphere. Which starts with standing at the bottom of that atmosphere, staring up at the stars, and wishing you could fly. You can't even see stars from underwater.

I might be imagination challenged, but I just don't see a progressive species with opposable thumbs and language developing underwater.

I'm with you. I'll bet a dollar that there are no hydrothermal shrimp on Europa; our freak shrimp are descended from regular shrimp who got away from hungry fish, and if there is so much as bacteria on Europa, I'll be shocked.

But we do have here, in these little blind shrimp, a candidate species with which to seed Europa's ocean. I assume they taste as good as regular shrimp.

As long as we don't mind them arriving in stores freeze dried and already irradiated ...

Brain fog. Your brain needs glucose to function properly. Your muscles need glucose to sustain an active lifestyle, which you need to sustain to not collect a whole host of chronic diseases caused primarily by lack of physical activity and poor cardiovascular health.

Because, that's what SPAM is intended to do, only a fraction of a percentage of the people have to give them money (even if it's as a joke, opposite research or any reason whatsoever) for them to be profitable.

These sites are literally auto-generated for any field you can think of (I work in association with physicists, biologists and neurologists, they have at least a dozen journals across these fields). I get daily spams from at least 5 of them. The websites are identical (replacing the $field), the journals look identical and they're auto-generated. It is potentially a one-person operation having these half-wit professors publishing close to $3000/month/journal + advertising pages for what is an entirely electronic "journal".

There are similar sites offering help writing your papers, offering help getting NIH/NSF/whatever funding. A small team could easily lift close to $1M/month in a self-enclosed, self-propagating ecosystem of 'products and services'; everything from the creation to the publishing of an entire study.

The problem is not necessarily that these people are doing that (after all, it's a great idea to create an entirely fake ecosystem), the problem is that our public resources (in the form of government and tuition sourced grant money) are being used to publish these professors in fake, non-peer reviewed journals. Universities and government institutions actually accept these fake journals as 'credentials' because being published in a number of official-sounding journals trumps quality research for the beancounters.

That's what I've always done, grown each business slowly, organically. I've since learned that there are two types of companies that work well - tiny ones that basically provide the owner with a job, and larger ones run by a management team.

    What I did for far too long was deal with payroll, unemployment taxes, health insurance, sick leave, etc for two employees. That was a mistake. I should have chosen to either stick with just me and a part time helper, or make the jump to six or eight employees. That jump requires a leap of faith, some investment and a marketing campaign. Not making that leap meant that the business was dependent on one or two long -term employees who occasionally get sick, leave the company, etc.

Be tiny for a while until you figure out what you're doing. That may mean doing your business and a day job for a little while until the business provides you with a full-time income. Once it pays you $60,000 / year, then decide to either stay at that level or increase revenue by 500% quickly. Especially after the changes in the last six years, being an employer takes a lot of time and effort. Make it worthwhile. Do a POC by working it by yourself first, though.

Obviously, GP had consumed too many carbs.

Fair question but unfortunately the answer is:

• We wouldn't make a profit. We might make slightly more than selling it for scrap, but it's not like battle-worn Humvees fetch anywhere near what they cost us... that's why the military is (inappropriately) giving them away to the cops in the US.
• Ukraine is not exactly swimming in money to buy these things. Their economy has suffered 10% contraction in the past year and they can't even afford to subsidize the natural gas needed to keep their citizens alive this winter, now that Russia has jacked up the rates.
• Selling arms to Ukraine (or fast tracking its entry into NATO) would be a major provocation to Russia and would set the stage for a potential full-on NATO vs. Russia regional conflict. Putin has enough crazy in him that he can't be trusted not to do something extremely stupid that would hurt him more in the long run, but would be painful enough to both sides that there would be no "winner." That's a hornet's nest you don't want to poke until you have exhausted every other conceivable alternative.

But here, you smuggle your answer in inside of your assumption. You are assuming what you are trying to prove.

All of this has been studied in great detail in the area of sports nutrition. All those athletes whose physiques we all admire eat a lot of food, and they do also eat a lot of carbs. The key to weight loss is two fold:

1. Maintain a _moderate_ caloric deficit given your level of physical activity. Moderate means no more than 300-500 calories deficit per day. You go over that (or go on a diet for too long) and your metabolism adapts to the new calorie intake. Life starts to suck, you have no energy, you get sick more easily.
2. Eat a balanced diet. That includes carbs. If you're physically active, eat 40% of your daily carb intake immediately after you exercise.

Easy right? Nope. #1 requires counting calories. Both #1 and #2 require you to consume meals you've pre-cooked yourself and carried with you, you can't just eyeball the balance of nutrients or calorie contents in a restaurant. That's mostly how athletes get their physiques (the other 40% of it being hard-ass training routine and genetics). Anyone can do it, very few people bother. It's much easier to yo-yo diet on a diet du jour, even though it doesn't help.

Well, and by the same law that has created an independent Ukraine in 1991, Crimea should have been an independent country

Which "same law" is that? There were no provisions in the Soviet Constitution for any entity other than one of the main 15 Republics to declare independence.

given that they have declared their sovereignty almost a year earlier but were basically forced to remain in Ukraine by the military threat.

Have you read your own link? The referendum of 1991 turned Crimea into an "autonomous republic" within Ukraine — no "military threats" involved — certainly not from Ukraine, which had no military of its own until after the 1992 split-up of the USSR.

Crimea retained its "autonomous republic" status until 2014 — it had its own Parliament and ran many of its own affairs. It was never sovereign, however.

just a little history lesson

You fail your history. Have your parents acknowledge your "F" by next week.

Immigrants generally flock to first world countries like the US in order to work hard and lead a better life

How would you know that, if the government deliberately does not maintain such statistics and explicitly tells applicants, they don't need to disclose their immigration status? They are poor (and I don't blame them) and they apply for the help, which is paid for with monies collected at gun-point (taxes). I would not have minded, if they weren't entitled to any government help — I would've even donated some money to a private charity (of the kind that helped my family 22 years ago). But I rather resent being forced to do it...

Yes, I do think it is self-evident, that a Man has a right to live anywhere he can afford and work for anyone, who'd pay him. As long as I don't have to subsidize neither his housing, nor his children's education should his choices of locale or employment be in error.

Those of us who feel we are entitled to jobs because we are the best person to do the job generally have nothing to fear from immigrants

We do, unfortunately. Arriving in too large a number, they will not dissolve in America's famous "melting pot" — as the Irish, Italian, German, or Ukrainian immigrant-waves did before them in the 20th century — but turn the rest of America to a side. Being from the poor countries, where the government is the primary source of wealth, and the Church (Catholic) — a very respected authority, they see nothing wrong with it being such here, thus pushing ever further from the small-government ideals we started with.

It's because you literally sound like you're on the cusp of quitting bathing and spending the rest of your life pushing a shopping cart around downtown with a cardboard sign hung around your neck that equates Obama with the antichrist.

Well, if that were really true, you would've shrugged and walked by. So, no, you don't really believe I am "on the cusp" of doing it. You chose to add your own insult to the already posted one.

And that, once again, demonstrates the reliability of my Illiberal-detection method.

Is it not possible to like America while being dissatisfied by some aspects of it?

Being dissatisfied merely with "some aspects" would not call for a fundamental change, would it?

Words, as he said himself elsewhere, have consequences. For a man, whose primary selling point was and remains his smooth-talking, using a word without meaning to would be a rather surprising gaffe. No, mean it he did...