Belay that, I do know. Some memories are quicker than others.

If you had said Bits and Chips, or maybe BoredAtWork I think I would have understood. I'm afraid I don't understand Duckpins...

Hopefully I can get away with making it an exercise in appreciating beauty, and not get high centered trying to push the cart one way or the other. Not that Spitzer is, but it is something I'm personally worried about.

It is good to see you too. I wasn't expecting anyone to be around.

I hope you are doing well, friend.

I was remembering all the fun we had in the book of Genesis as I'm pondering making a YT video with this premise .... Is Genesis 1 useful for teaching kindergarteners about the big bang? Kindergarteners being a good modern approximation of stone / bronze age people and what they would have thought if they had a view of the history of the universe.

The answer is surprising, it is more useful in giving a picture of the early universe up through the Eocene than it was when I was growing up. Strikingly so, even.

For instance, light wasn't just a spark at the beginning, but it filled the universe for hundreds of thousands of years until the great inflation cooled things down enough. Then it would have looked something like a vast twilight that we can still see in the cosmic microwave background radiation. And that is just the morning and the evening of the first day. It actually seems to play pretty smoothly through the rest of the days as well.

Thanks for commenting. It is good to hear from you again.

Better solution is to refuse to answer phone numbers not in my contact, rather than "silence unknown callers" setting. No voicemail, I block the number. Voicemail from robocall or scammer, I block the number. Voicemail from legitimate caller such as home repair, I return the call and don't block it.

As you may know, Netflix released an Exploding Kittens game, as they have a contract with the guy to make an Exploding Kittens show. The game was flaky as hell, and I figured out an easy way to steal another player's Defuse card. Between those factors and the cheap graphics, I deleted it and went back to the o.g. Exploding Kittens game, which is stuff fun.

I've been on /. long enough to remember when most people here leaned libertarian. Ian Freeman would've been celebrated as a hero. I'm shocked at the current unquestioning acceptance of whatever the Establishment media says. Sad.

Here's a different take on this story and a deep dive into Ian Freeman.

the laws of physics and the guidelines of materials engineering give no thought to wealth or personal influence.

Neither did the Grim Reaper.

I've seen this pattern many times over the years. Lay off a large group of expendable employees, then offer their jobs back not as direct employees but as contractors at reduced pay and no benefits. That is a poor offer, an insult to the former employee, and I refuse to submit to that.

Covid killed my job in 2020 along with a few hundred others. As soon as my resume was on LinkedIn, I get a barrage of emails and phone/text calls from recruiters offering contract positions at my former employer at reduced pay six month duration zero health insurance zero benefits. One opening spelled out my previous position with every task/skill spelled out to a "T", but required a candidate with one year of experience.

That told me all I needed to know so I abandoned my previous employer and started looking for openings out of my state. Being close to retirement (but not in a financial position to retire early), I wanted a job in a state that was favorable to retirement (IE lower cost of living). I was collecting a severance so I socked almost all of it into savings. I was in the ideal position of relocating and buying a house as I did not own property, I lived alone and had no family ties to leave behind, I had no debt or outstanding loan for a year, I had built my credit score up over the years; the end result made me the ideal candidate for a mortgage. Most people would spend their severance on extravagant things like vacation, new car, etc but I was no fool and the severance that I socked away in savings became the down payment for my house in my new job. And that was right before the mortgage interest rates started rising.

I am now very happy in my new job new home, and am well on the path to a nice retirement.

Nice. Is there a Flatpak for it?

I was a Windows user starting with WFW311 circa 1993. Windows had been getting progressively worse through the versions. WIN2K wasn't bad but for some reason my peripherals gradually stopped working. BlackIce was a really good firewall but IBM didn't update it after WIN2K, could not install it on later versions. I had to take my WINXP netbook off the internet after one too many malware downloads thanks to a Microsoft firewall that doesn't.

By the time Vista came out it required replacing your computer and ALL your peripherals. Since I had to spend that much, I dumped Microsoft forever and jumped ship to macOS starting with the Mac Pro mid 2012 tower. Both macOS and the Mac Pro are excellent products, and I have since added a Macbook Pro and iMac. The AppStore sells apps to import/edit Office documents (Word, Excel, PPT), that made the transition really easy.

I still have to use Microsoft at work, but I will not allow ANY Microsoft application on any macOS machine I own, period. Using Win10 at work now and Microsoft products are still junk.

Another major problem is the life-destroying consequences of a divorce. Raising kids works best in a two-parent household (despite the propaganda from certain extreme political groups), so the whole getting-married thing is optimal for child-rearing. BUT in modern societies getting divorced is not just easy, but destructive. If one member of this union makes the majority of the money, then a divorce means that person loses the majority of their money AND a retirement-destroying percentage of their future income. They go from head-of-household to indentured servant just like that. It is a financial risk that NO rational person would ever take. There are, of course, reasons why people think this situation is necessary; well those reasons aren't worth arguing because they do not change the fact that this situation scares people away from marriage which further harms the population growth rate. No amount of moralizing, philosophizing, or politicizing will change this fact. It's too basic. The financial risk of marriage makes it fail a risk-to-benefit analysis, and that's that. So, make marriage financially safe or it won't happen.

My divorce from an entitlement princess was so awful (thank God I did not have kids with her) that I no longer saw marriage as attractive. She didn't marry for the relationship, she married for the entitlements. I stayed out of the dating pool because I saw too many sharks who reminded me of my ex. Why should anyone procreate through marriage when divorce law is too easily exploited to rob you of your livelihood?

If you want to reverse the declining birth rate, then reform divorce law.

This is the elephant in the room that no one wants to acknowledge. Predictably feminists will b!tch about their gains being eroded, but these are the same people who complain they can't find good men anymore.

"Briefing"