Well, it was yes.

What we’re all seeing now is that the Constitution ultimately depends on our willingness to agree to collectively abide by it.

It was always just a story, but while we all agreed to believe in it, it was a true story.

I managed to logic my parents out of one thing.

My parents actually asked me if it was possible that the vaccines contained 5G micro robots.

After taking a moment to maintain my composure and put on my “pretend I wasn’t asked a stupid question and answer seriously” face, I asked them to take out their phone.

When the phone was in their hand, I asked them to consider the fact that it must be charged every day to keep working, and that the vast majority of the size of the phone was taken up by the battery. Then I pointed out that a device small enough to be injected wouldn’t have enough power to still be on when it left the needle.

Luckily I didn’t have to go further than that.

I think that’s the only time I’ve had any success pounding logic into them. I think the problem is they can’t think of me as anything but a child, except where computers are concerned.

They paid for my computer science degree, and they know I’ve been working in IT for 32 years, and I answer all their computer questions. So, if the subject is computer-related, I’m their expert. Anything else and I’m just a deluded child.

I haven’t tried talking to my mom about the SSA COBOL AI rewrite yet. I’m not sure if she heard about it or if she did whether she understood enough to even be concerned enough to ask me.

I found this to be an interesting question.

I don’t think of myself in terms like that. I’m American (as in United States of). If people ask where I’m from, I’d say Pennsylvania.

If asked what I am, in terms of what countries my ancestors came from, I would typically just list my four grandparents. Since that encompasses four different European countries, it’s too complicated to think of myself as a hyphenated American. Maybe you’re in that situation.

Ultimately, the label is yours, so you get to decide. No one else’s opinion matters. It’s your identity. Just say what feels right to you.

Ah, but is a chicken egg a chicken egg because it came out of a chicken or because a chicken comes out of it?

That is the real question.

You’ve got the right plan, but I just want to share some stories.

My recommendation is always to avoid adding a new cat to a cat household unless it happens during a move when no cat has a claim on territory.

1. My oldest had a cat. After a few months in their apartment they decided to add another cat. They followed a plan very similar to yours. New cat wanted to be friends. Old cat wanted to paint the walls in the blood of the new cat. They tried for months to get them to coexist, but they would separate them as soon as they started fighting.

After many, many months of the two cats essentially living separately in the apartment, they finally accepted that they would have to let the cats fight it out. It was distressing, and there were some minor injuries, but they’ve settled down.

2. Middle child and his fiancee had a cat (disabled: deformed back legs, walks on his ankles with the feet flopping around). They decided to add two more cats. One was missing an eye. The other was missing an eye and an ear. They wanted to give the best life possible to rescue cats that were otherwise screwed.

They again followed a similar plan. The old cat smelled the new cats in the room where they were segregated, and absolutely lost his shit. They ended up fighting under the closed door, and tearing up a 3 foot by 10 inch section of (brand new) carpeting at the doorway trying to kill each other. Bye bye security deposit. Any time they tried to carefully let the cats interact, the was nothing but attempted murder.

They moved to a new apartment, and nearly all violence ceased immediately. There’s still the occasional cat behavior where one decides to slap a brother, but it’s more like normal sibling behavior than attempted murder.

3. Many years ago a co-worker had a cat and she was asked to take on a new cat. I have no idea what process she followed to introduce them, but there was absolutely no violence. The cats didn’t fight at all.

However, her old cat was not happy with the situation and blamed her. He started peeing everywhere: on the floors, on her bed, on her clothes. If you think cats aren’t vindictive and capable of hitting you where it hurts, consider this: he climbed up onto the counter, straddled her toaster, and peed into it.

She ended up getting a prescription for kitty Prozac for the cat, which helped, but did not eliminate the behavior.

When the old cat eventually died, she had to tear out and replace the floors in her house too get rid of the cat piss smell.

4. My wife and I had a cat, and when we moved we decided to add a second. There really wasn’t time for the old cat to establish the new house as his before r added the second.

There were no problems except our old cat was old and lazy and the new cat was young and wanted to play. It was distressing for the old cat until one day when he was able to realize that I wasn’t going to do anything if he decided to beat the shit out of her. From then on if she decided to mess with him, he’d just give her a good beat down and then they’d be ok until the next time she decided to try her luck.

There was a hint for her behavior, as she was surrendered to the shelter because “she didn’t get along with and older cat”. At her first vet visit, the doctor noticed a healed fracture in one of her legs. So, in her previous home she pissed off an older cat who didn’t practice as much restraint as ours.

…ignoring that going from disabled to average would feel like gaining superpowers.

“You don’t come here for the hunting, do you?”

Nuke it from orbit.

It’s the only way to be sure.

I guess I’d recommend watching Banshee.

In the years before the US existed, when the land was colonized by European powers, Europe had a lot of really annoying, prudish types who were a major downer.

Someone had the bright idea to encourage them to move to the colonies where they could live their prudish existence free from the naked bodies of Europe.

We ended up with all of Europe’s biggest prudes. Europe’s prudes have been trying to reestablish themselves, but they are at a serious disadvantage. Meanwhile, we in America have to deal with an overwhelming population of prudes that we’ve struggled for centuries to extinguish​.

While we’re on the subject, Europe also found it convenient to dump their criminals here. So we end up with a culture in which full frontal nudity is unacceptable, but gun violence is just fun entertainment.

I say that as someone who loves some good violence. Nothing quite so enjoyable as living vicariously through some bad ass beating the snot out of the bad guys in a movie.

I never would have thought of myself as a prude, but recently stopped watching the series Banshee because the amount of gratuitous sex in the show was exceeding the amount of gratuitous violence to such a degree that I began to feel uncomfortable.

Also you need to love licorice and sauna, that’s a rule

TIL I’m Finnish.

Your concern seems strange to me.

Looking at “British” for example, you’re taking about four culturally diverse groups (English, Welsh, Scottish, and Irish). “Ethnically British” doesn’t really make sense.

That doesn’t even consider the multitude of people from everywhere around the world who are British and perfectly comfortable identifying as such.

Why would anyone bother with sanctions? Nothing a foreign government could do would be worse than what our own is doing.

Just wait it out and hope you manage to find a way to secure our nukes after everything disintegrates.

I’m aware of an effort to get LLM AI to summarize medical reports for doctors.

Very disturbing.

The people driving it where I work tend to be the people who know the least about how computers work.

We’re monkeys with COMPUTERS!!!

My first cat was born as a barn cat, so outside was all he knew. Then, as a kitten, he managed to get both his front legs broken. When my dad found him he was running around on his elbows, and my dad was barely able to catch him.

My dad made the worst mistake you can make as a father, and brought the injured kitten home and let me see him, hold him, and feed him. He wouldn’t eat anything we gave him until we soaked kitten food in milk until it turned to mush, then put it on my arm and let him lick it off. At that point, my parents had to find a vet to fix him.

It wasn’t easy, but they managed to find someone who would fix him. His front legs were never really right, but he got around ok, and he lived decades longer than any of his siblings.

He was one of the smartest cats I’ve known, and the one thing he made absolutely clear at all times was it was better to be a 100% indoor cat. He would have considered any cat that “escaped” their home to be mentally defective.

So, let your cat know to follow the wisdom of Gimpy. The lure of the outdoors is a lie.

Parrot

You are correct. It relates to the torque (rotational force) that can be produced at different RPM.

Diesel engines have a narrow range of RPM where the torque is highest. At low RPM, the torque of a diesel engine is low. That’s why trucks have to shift into a low gear to start moving and shift multiple times to get up to speed. The driver uses the different gears to keep the engine running within the optimal range of RPM.

Electric motors have high torque at low RPM, so they can start a heavy load moving without having to have any complicated gearbox between the motors and drive wheels.

In a diesel-electric locomotive, the diesel generator can be designed to run at an efficient speed without being affected by the mass of the train. The electricity it generates powers the electric motors which have the necessary torque to handle moving the train.

You now have to lug around a LOT of both fuel and water, instead of just water and dry coal. Water and oil are both heavy by comparison to coal when lugging a train car of it around.

I think you’re making an assumption there. You would need to consider energy density of the fuel. Diesel fuel has almost twice the energy density of coal. For the same trip, the weight of the diesel fuel you would need for an oil-fired steam engine would be just a little more than half the weight of coal needed for a coal-fired steam engine.

Also, delivering the diesel fuel to the boiler would require a less complex mechanism and/or less workers than coal.

I’m not sure if your focus is on the printing or the designs. Personally, I’m really only interested in the designs. I’m not one of the people that enjoys tinkering with a flakey device trying to coax a result out of it. The printer is only a means to an end for me.

So, I’ve got some things I printed using my FDM printers, but generally what I’m most pleased with was printed through an online service.

So, here’s a ring I made a few years ago (printed via shapeways):