For those keeping score at home, 8500 hours is just over 354 days.

When you look at all of Europe, it's more like a weekly thing, and sometimes a daily thing. The ones that make the news are the bigger bombs like the thousand-pound bomb mentioned in TFS or the rare ones that cannot be made safe and have to be detonated in place, which can mean a lot of new business for window installers even with dampening.

You can't be the "baddest kick ass person on the block" without having an effective ability to fight. That means weapons, and it means training on how to use them most effectively. When going up against the Soviet Union, that means a nuclear arsenal. We made plenty of mistakes along the way, but we also helped ensure through deterrence that the Soviets never moved on Western Europe, and we helped ensure through diplomacy that World War III never broke out.

I still have my very first credit card. It's 20+ years old, sits in a lockbox, and has a thousand dollar limit, by far the lowest of my cards. It costs me $10 a year to maintain. It's there entirely because it anchors the oldest account ranking for me.

Well, this is direction not to buy certain hardware components in order to favor domestic manufacturers. The Tiktok case was direction to divest a social media supplier to avoid secret, illegal foreign influence campaigns or transfers of personal data.

I'm just an engineer, but the two seem pretty different to me.

Oregon isn't a red state overall. Almost all states, whether red, blue, or purple, allow felons to vote at some point.

I think she was a character in Airplane! (the movie).

If it happens that often, Shirley you can provide some evidence to support your claim.

The Google Street View pictures of Equatorial Guinea's embassy in Washington DC do not show any protesters outside, so it's obviously not literally all the time, but I'm willing to accept some other form of evidence that the "freedom and democracy" crowd (who often turn that into "freedumbs and dumbocracy" when they don't like the results of elections) protest it regularly.

Post hoc ergo propter hoc. It's what's for breakfast, kids.

Once upon a time, journalists learned not to fall for that kind of fallacy, and took pride in not perpetrating it. Now, it's an indispensable part of writing clickbait.

If you are worried about adverse effects of dihydrogen monoxide (it is strongly associated with drowning deaths), you could replace some of it with hydrogen hydroxide. You could even use hydric acid, although that's nicknamed "the universal solvent", so who knows what would happen if you drink beer containing it....

Democrats sure don't. They want them to vote and everything.

The following red states allow felons to vote after completing their sentences (carceral sentences in some cases, or complete sentences and fines in others):

Alaska, Arkansas, Florida (1), Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa (2), Kansas, Kentucky (3), Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and West Virginia.

That's the overwhelming majority of them. A couple of them have exceptions for certain crimes like rape and murder, but for the rest, if you can finish your sentence, you can probably vote.

(1) Sort of -- the state government has intentionally made a mess of the initiative that passed 65-35.

(2) While the Iowa constitution bars felons from voting unless they have applied to the governor to have voting rights reinstated, Gov. Reynolds (a Republican) has a standing executive order automatically reinstating voting rights of felons upon completing their sentences unless they were convicted of murder.

(3) Similar to (2), except that Gov. Beshear's executive order applies only to those convicted of non-violent offenses.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/a... says 2G and 3G base stations needed about 2.5 kW per sector -- but that could be done more efficiently with today's hardware that with 15- to 25-year-old gear. Wikipedia says that 2023 balloon could generate about 10 kW, so what's the problem?

My old Pixel 6 XL supported a physical SIM plus an eSIM. I could choose which to use for voice and SMS, and which to use for data, which is really nice because it meant I had flexibility for roaming data while still using my regular number for texts and calls.

My new Pixel 10 Pro XL (Super Mega Gemini AI Compumegadyne Edition ) supports dual active eSIMs, and like the iPhone mentioned above, at least eight total. It was eerie how easy it was to convert my old physical SIM to an eSIM: it all happened from my chair, and I only had to go to my carrier's web site to turn off the SIM lock.

Automatic salary increases have been part of federal law since 1989, as your linked article mentions. They haven't happened since 2009. The bill that the link mentions didn't pass, and the replacement bill didn't change the prior block, so no pay raises are possible until the new session in 2027.

I get that members of Congress are unpopular. But if we want regular people in Congress, people not coming in wealthy, they're going to face extra expenses that aren't covered from their office budgets, and they should be paid enough to not end up poor for doing their service. Maintaining a separate residence -- even sharing in renting an apartment -- in or around DC is expensive. Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-FL) was unable to rent an apartment in DC when he was elected last year because even with a guaranteed Congressional salary, he didn't make enough to overcome a poor credit rating coming in and the apartment complex rejected him. I'm all for the stock trading bans for them and their family. I'm fine with them participating in Social Security and the federal employee pension fund. I'm happy with them getting their health insurance off the DC ACA exchange. But at some point, the pay should increase so that we can send people who aren't already rich or who won't have extra temptation to bend or break the rules because they're about to go broke.

Like, isn't it already, like, totally clear from that quote? Just use "like" as an interjection a few more times.