Are you referring to the president who humiliated himself and the US at Helsinki? The president who had a negotiation regarding the Ukraine war without including Ukraine? The president who admires Putin? That president?

OK, I'm coming out of cryogenic storage to tell you to shut up. You opened this subthread with *bizarrely ignorant claptrap*, and should have shut up when the first reply called you out on your lies. But now you're doubling down.

Lincoln could not be the "trigger that started the Civil War" when he was elected *after the war started*, after the majority of the Confederate states had already seceded, the last 4 were already proceeding with secession, and the Confederacy had already started shooting at the Union. Which should have been enough facts to shut you up, but I suppose you enjoy the kind of BS sometimes known as "from the South's perspective": any lie to deny the truth, however bizarrely ignorant.

Lincoln wasn't a "two-bit" lawyer prior to his political career, he was an extremely well accomplished lawyer. And he didn't have "zero experience", he had represented Illinois prominently in the US House of Representatives, and served in the Illinois House of Representatives for 8 years prior to that.

Lincoln was of course recognized as a good leader while destroying the Confederacy, being reelected to do so. That is the very definition of "recognized as good leader": reelected wartime Commander in Chief of the USA. Yes, the US press and many factions are always highly critical of any president; "universally recognized as a good leader" doesn't even belong to FDR.

Oh, how about your BS about Lincoln's "razor close" first election? Lincoln: 1,866,452; Douglas: 1,376,957; Breckinridge: 849,781; Bell: 588,789. That 489,495 margin over #2 was a *landslide* 10.4%, . What the hell are you talking about? You also said something deranged like "but if the South had been voting in the second election". What about "but if the South had freed its slaves instead of seceding"? Because they're equally nonsensical hypotheticals. And your Electoral College split 4 ways because *there were 4 candidates*, no reflection on Lincoln's leadership. But Lincoln's 180 EVs to the combined total of the other 3 at 123 EVs was an even bigger landslide than the popular vote. The words "razor close" don't describe any aspect of Lincoln's *landslide victory* over a full field, representing a new party in a large war-divided country.

And how does maintaining his commitment to Emancipation, even in face of a resigning Cabinet member (showing Lincoln's commitment to including even those who disagreed in his Cabinet, more committed than they were to staying), show anything but deeply effective leadership - as the government didn't suffer, but instead the nation was kept together even despite the war?

Your spin on all that crazy talk is that Lincoln turned out to be a leader who rose to the occasion, despite no reason to expect it. But in fact Lincoln gave all indications of being an exemplary leader from start to finish of his presidency.

Were you perhaps educated about Lincoln out of some "ex" Confederate state textbook? In any case, who taught you that when you're totally wrong you should ignore being proven wrong and double down with even more wrong?

Why? Why the fuck should kids be familiar with real guns? I think you grew up in the wrong neighborhood.

I hope some day the only familiarity kids will have with guns will be in visits to a museum, where they will also see steam engines and whalebone corsets.

Due to the fact that the post I replied to was modded "insightful" and the fact that you even exist I am done with Slashdot.

"I like objective truth and objective reality"

Yep, those are nice. And they're very helpful for about 1% of life. The other 99% is messy and emotional but still worth figuring out, because it's the 99% part that gives us the most trouble.

And why would you ignore the semantics of my sentence except to be obtuse? Quite likely my meaning was understood by everyone but you.

You and your hair-splitting ilk are what take the fun out of online interaction.

"It's not her fault she likes fucking"

It's also not her fault that if she even would be willing to admit that she'd be labeled a "slut."

Yep. From the article:

"And while no galaxy has literally disappeared to the point where it's invisible, 97% of them have disappeared in the sense that they're unreachable to us, and that the light they're emitting today will never reach us. The galaxies are still visible, but only due to their old light."

They're not disappearing from THE universe, they're disappearing from OUR universe.

"Let's say there are 10-15% of psychopaths in society..."

That number is WAY too high. If it was that high we would be in much worse shape than we are. The estimate is 3-5%. Isn't it amazing? It only take 3-5% of the population to really give a good go at ruining it for everyone.

I don't. And since everyone is just spouting opinions I'll add mine. We've been messing with the food supply too much. We're consuming vast quantities of starch and stuff sweetened with corn syrup and who knows what else. I think we might be engineering our way into bad health.

Also, and this is not a character flaw, I don't think people are honest with themselves about how much sugary stuff they consume. I've been thin all my life (for various reasons, not the least of which is a physically active lifestyle) but I went through a period where I was hanging out with some guys who went to the vending machines every afternoon. I ended up eating a lot of candy and I put on 10+ pounds in no time. The great thing was that I realized what was going on and stopped eating any sugary stuff and the weight dropped right back off.

At work I see people who talk about wanting to lose weight and yet get ice cream every day. It's not a character flaw, but it is a choice. If it's not important to you I'm OK with that. We all have our priorities.

You're playing right now, aren't you?

"No politician in this universe wants to be the one who willfully signs the death certificates of highly trained, highly intelligent and skilled people."

I don't know why. They usually have no problem sending large numbers of people to their deaths. All we need to do is convince them that there are probably terrorists on Mars and it'll be a done deal.

I don't know, but the poll question explicitly states "conventionally alive." At this point the usual indication of death is brain death. Even if you choose other indicators you're only changing the granularity of date of death by a little bit in the big picture.

"...do you KNOW how many laws there are at the Federal, State, County, and municipal level there are on the books..."

That's not even the end of it. If the federal government decides they want to persecute you badly enough they will figure out a TREATY that you somehow violated.

"The short version: If you're not forced to skip meals and not forced to sweat your ass off just to put food on the table, you're going to have a surfeit of calories, and neither your metabolism or hunger mechanism got the memo."

In the 1950s the US was not in the dark ages. We did not have to sweat our butts off just to put food on the table. We enjoyed a huge wave of prosperity. And yet, as a nation we were thinner.