Yeah, but with RFK and "Doctor" Oz running the nation's health care, how can we even actually trust vaccines in the US at all anymore? If I'm going to get stuck with the needle, I want it to have an actual medication or vaccine in there; NOT colloidal silver or green coffee bean extract or essential oils or lysol or whatever other quackery has their attention at that moment in time.

Fortunately, I'm traveling overseas next spring. One of the things I'm going to get from my doctor at my next physical is a list of any boosters that are coming due any time soon. So I *WILL* be fully vaccinated because I will be getting my shots in a country with real medical leadership who practice and promote real science and medicine.

Stockton Rush is a rare example of a tech bro who didn't get to walk away from his monumental fuckup and leave the rest of us to clean up his mess. Fortunately for us, his collapsible submarine only murdered a few people, along with the "genius" himself. We're just lucky Rush didn't decide he liked reactors more than submarines. No doubt that deficiency in America's tech bro-volution will soon be rectified.

If I weren't an atheist, I'd say, "God help us all".

And there's the rub...the very idea of an art class is anathema to a lot of people who call the shots at all levels of education.

At first blush, this bill looks like just another Republican attempt to appeal to the base while at the same time distracting people from the real reasons why the US education system doesn't stack up well internationally. This is probably true, but there's something far more important at stake. Teaching children cursive writing at a young age develops fine motor skills, and that's something that can pay big benefits down the road.

No doubt you're right, but it would be lovely to see the people who squawk about subsidies for renewable energy held to the same standard they demand of everybody else, even just for a little while.

There's a much easier way. Cut all fossil fuel subsidies, direct and indirect, to zero. End corporate welfare. Let people pay the actual, unsubsidized price, and you'll see things change pretty quickly.

I love this idea! I've got friends and relatives of all ages who love board games, quizzes, murder mysteries and stuff like that. I can see these games, especially the Knives Out one, providing some really fun get-togethers.

Ummm... it's Ryanair. And the EU has been forcing US tech companies in general, and particularly Apple and Google, to demolish their security models, strip protections from mobile (and desktop and server) OSs, and give every fly-by-night outfit in the world unrestricted access to (In gates-speak) ring 0 or (to the rest of the world) the kernel. I mention microsoft and ring 0 in this context because it's another fine and recently notorious example of the EU's overreach screwing over people by demanding lax security. But "permissions" and "require"? Come on... this is Ryanair! They absolutely will harvest and sell every single byte that can get their filthy mitts on. I mean... google the name and read any site but their own. They really are just the worst.

And... again... it's Ryanair. So you KNOW their app won't be available on the legitimate App Store or Play Store. It will be on the EU-mandated Cydia Mark 2; which will inevitably degenerate into the same morass of spyware, malware, spamware, and all-around crapware that the original Cydia did back in the jailbreaking days. And with no app reviews, no sandboxing, no security checks, no memory or kernel protections? Damn skippy an outfit like Ryanair will trawl through you entire phone, and any account it is connected or logged in to, in order to spy on you and sell your data for every red cent they can extract from it.

Heh... I put off getting dear leader's dumbass "real ID" too. I mean... I have my passport, passport card, and global entry card, all of which actually benefit me. So why should I waste my time jumping through stupid and unnecessary hoops to appease dear leader?

In my neck of the woods though, the DMV simply forced the issue by no longer allowing online renewals; and now I have to actually go in to and renew my license in-person. So as long as I had to go through the hassle of the stupid and unnecessary hoops for my ID itself, I may as well jump through a couple more stupid and unnecessary hoops while I'm already stuck at the benighted place. And my California drivers license is now tainted with that mark of MAGA. Gross. Fuck MAGA. Fuck trump. Fuck ICE. And fuck realID.

The same thing will probably happen to you.

I was going to go into all the alternate uses of hydrocarbons. It took away from the main point, which is that mostly we're just burning them to get around and heat our homes (About 63 million US houses use natural gas heating and 5 million still use heating oil). I counted on people here being bright enough to know there are far better things to do with hydrocarbons than simply burning them.

Have you figured out yet that a major shift toward electric vehicles and electric heating would put a huge load on a grid that can't handle it?

Thanks for understanding the subtext, which the guy you're correcting clearly didn't. I was going to explicitly mention all the uses for hydrocarbons that don't involve just burning them, but it turned into a major digression, so I cut it out. I count on people here mostly being pretty well informed. Some are not.

This is what happens when you give savages an infinite supply of money from the fossil fuel subsidies our corporate-owned governments have provided for decades in order to secure access to Middle East oil. And that's not counting the cost in blood and treasure of military support for a bunch of Middle East client states that hate our guts, but love our money.

If we had spent even a small fraction of those hard-earned taxpayer dollars spent on developing solar, wind, tidal and even next-gen nuclear power, we could have just walked away and left the whole godforsaken lot of them to engage in the war of mutual extermination they've craved for millennia. And there's the added benefit of not leaving an environmental mess for our kids and grandkids to clean up.

Should I assume you need to eat the whole breakfast in order to figure out that the eggs are rotten?

I'm certainly capable of that, but I've learned when not to waste my time. Your statement is pretentious nonsense, and I treated it as such.

> On the other hand, if your card got refused at that
> grocery line - would you go back? Likely not.

Oh, I would absolutely go back. And after I unload my entire cart, including meat, dairy, and frozen foods; if they reject my card, I will just say "Oh? Okay. Never mind then." and I will walk right out... repeatedly... until they knock off the shenanigans.