Jesus Howard Christ… I’m in the market to buy my first house and this is stuff I’m a bit afraid of finding.

(are they still clergy if they aren’t Catholic?)

Yep, it’s a catch-all term. You can also refer to an Imam or Rabbi as a member of that religion’s clergy.

Me too! Just replaced my eight year old (and beat to crap) Chromebook with a corporate hand-me-down laptop that I stole got when they ordered new laptops! Just played around with both Mint and Ubuntu for a couple weeks and I’ve seriously loved it.

Lol. Fixed.

I just got back to the states, we also went to that museum but didn’t get the amount of time I’d have liked for the visit. It was family vacation; I was negotiating with like seven other people for what we saw and for how long. Next year, I’ll be back in the UK for about a week (sadly, it’ll be mostly just London) and have already carved out plans for a day trip out to York just for the Railway Museum.

No body:

This Owl: “GLORY TO YOUR HOUSE! TODAY IS A GOOD DAY TO DIE!!!”

I don’t want to hype it up too much, but the Expanse show is really great… IMHO some of the best sci-fi television in decades. I’d say it’s easily up there with “Battlestar Galactica” (the RDM or “re-imagined” series) and “Farscape” as a triumph of what I’d guess you would call “post-9/11” science fiction story telling. Most fans of the books would tell you to read them first, but I think either is fine because both are great (I read them as the show was airing and it was awesome all the same). My favorite character in both the books and TV series is hands down Amos Burton… Wes Chatham is the actor that plays him; he has said in interviews that he read the books before filming season 1, fell in love with the character, and it really effing shows. From the writers and show runners to the actors, costuming, and set design… they took great care to be loyal to the books while creating something new at the same time.

Haven’t seen these mentioned here, but the “Old Man’s War” series by John Scalzi is great as are “The Expanse” books by James SA Corey. I’d highly recommend those to anyone, but especially those looking for grounded and hard-ish sci-fi that doesn’t lose the reader or become overly technical.

I highly highly recommend Old Man’s War to anyone looking to get into sci-fi novels for the first time, Scalzi really takes care of his reader and his writing is a delight. The Expanse books are awesome whether or not you’ve seen the TV series… the show runners really took care with the source material and, ask any fan of the books, it is a great adaptation. The show hits the same plot points of the books while getting there in new and interesting ways. Further, the show created a new character in Kamina Drummer who immediately became a fan favorite of both show and book lovers (she’s an amalgamation of a couple of book characters and becomes her own thing that really adds SO much to the story and world building).

Oh god… and Floridians are just dumb enough to vote him into statewide office.

Well, you see, he was the governor… one of the priorities while being the governor of New York State is to hate New York City.

Oh yeah, totally non-fatal fire, just a church and two homes burned to the ground.

As the article states, it’s a VERY recent discovery. I like to pull it up whenever folks try to tell me that “people being trans is a new fad” or that “tHeRe’S OnLy TwO gEnDaRs: pEnUs aNd vAgInA.”

Oooooooo!!! Don’t forget Polish military strategist and father of American calvary Casimir Pulaski who has, for all intents and purposes, been proven to be intersex. Queer people and folks who do not fit into the normative sex, sexual, or gender binaries have always existed and deserve to be celebrated!

so many LLM’s just tell their users they’re always right

This is the problem, they apparently cannot be objective as just a matter of course.

Guess I’m not playing it then. Oh well.

Some US states and local school boards are doing this as well. I believe South Carolina has a law like this going into the upcoming term in August. Students will be allowed to bring devices, but they must be stored during class. One school district is using these little pouches with magnetic locks to which the teachers and admin have the key… so students can keep their devices on their person, but would be unable to access them.

Sadly, one of the more relevant (and understandable) arguments against this trend is parents concerns about being about to get in touch with their child in the event of a school shooting. In active shooter events and lockdowns, many school systems and local governments have been slow to inform parents of the situation… this exacerbates concerns where parents (again, understandably) want to be able to get in touch with their child.

Us Americans live in a hell scape of tragedy and senseless death.

Nah, it’s on the bridge… that panel is loaded to the max with rocks and fireworks.

Indeed it is brother… indeed it is.

Loads of people go on about how “awe shucks, we’re in the Mad Max future, instead of the Star Trek future” completely unaware that Star Trek’s utopia was built on top of the ruins of a Mad Max distopia that came first.

In canon, Star Trek’s utopia only happened after Earth had a nuclear WWIII followed by the Eugenics War (and several related genocides) before first contact with the Vulcans. In fact, without those wars, we might not have gotten the tech for warp drive. In further lore, after the wars of the 21st century and before first contact, there was a concerted “never again” kind of movement globally eventually resulting in the United Earth government being founded. It then took more than a century of technological and societal progress to get to the matter replicator driven post-scarcity economy.

So we could be on track for Star Trek future… but none of us will be alive to see it.

I really loved the “Anchor Man” DVD menu. Solid graphics, great playthrough, simple controls.