“This is especially a problem in Star Trek”

It gets really bad in ST Discovery, especially in the last season. Any time the ship gets into trouble, a cascade of sparks starts falling down. It looks like a waterfall made of sparks. The bridge basically looks like a KISS concert.

probably because of lack of currency for imports

That makes sense. Russia is saving its money to pay smugglers to smuggle in weapons components.

Not mentioned in the article, but mentioned elsewhere - trains. Russia relies heavily on trains to move things. One part of train maintenance is the replacement of bearings. Russia can’t manufacture bearings for its trains and it can’t import them either because of sanctions. Russia has fewer and fewer operational trains and train cars. One very important thing that the trains haul is grain. There are reports that Russia could face starvation by the end of the year if it doesn’t get its trains repaired because they will be unable to haul food to the cities. Russia doesn’t have enough trucks and roads to replace the trains.

Eh, banks give out loans for people to start restaurants all the time

** Citation needed.

It sounds like you aren’t making much money, so you probably don’t owe much, if any, in taxes. For the year 2024, if you got a W-2 from your employer, you should file. What you did in previous years won’t affect your ability to file this year. Who knows? perhaps you will get a refund.

People heard about the original, now discredited study, which came out around the time autism diagnosises were increasing. People then either didn’t hear or chose not to believe that the OG study was discredited.

that does look pretty tasty

At least part of the reason is the people captured in the war on terror occupied a legal gray area. They are sort of like soldiers, so they are not subject to American civil or criminal law. But they don’t belong to a military organization with a formal chain of command, so they are not signatories to the Geneva Convention or any other treaties concerning conduct in war.

Even if they were tried and found guilty in a military court for ‘being terrorists’, eventually their prison sentences would end. So what do we do with them now? A lot of their home countries didn’t want them back (although now the Taliban government of Afghanistan will probably take back their citizens).

Basically, the entire Gitmo internment of fighters captured in the war on terror was a great big mess. It was really easy for Obama and Biden to say on the campaign trail that they would shut down Gitmo, but actually dealing with the prisoners in a politically acceptable way was very, very difficult. It was easier to hope people would forget about them.

BTW - some Gitmo detainees did get released over the years.

They are auditing OPM. Step #1 of the IT portion of an audit is to copy the existing data so that it can be examined without any risk of altering the original data.

Yes! Perfect shape. Perfect size.

Seems to me like Kamala’s team kept Kamala off Joe Rogon’s show, not Elon.

Didn’t Kamala’s team also want to edit the interview? Whereas Rogan does a long form, stream of conciousness type of inteview, so he told the Harris team ‘No’ to editing.

Deleted my FB account just now.

I’d had the thing since 2003

But… Facebook was created in 2004?

Ok… well now you have. Everyone should be treated equally under the law. No one should be discriminated against.

Oh hell yes! We need this!!

Slightly OT, but I want to give a shout out to Witcher 3 as my favorite fantasy RPG.

Early on in the game I kind of struggled with it. I found the UI and especially combat, to be ‘clunky’.

After I mastered the combat UI enough to survive, I started to wander and explore. In this wandering I found some old cave filled with some decent (but not overpowered) gear. As far as I know, there was no quest that would have sent me to this cave. Also, if I hadn’t been pointed in the exact direction I was going, I never would have seen the cave entrance. These little details made the world feel ‘real’ and lived in.

Later in the game, when I was much more experienced, I was following a faint path, in the snow, over a mountain and I see another cave entrance. I go inside the cave and I hear voices. I sneak closer and I hear a fart, Then I hear a voice complaining about the smell of a rotten onion. (it was 2 trolls cooking something). This was totally unexpected and I literally LOL’d. Once again, this little bit made the world feel more real.

In summation, I don’t need games to be ‘bigger’. They just need to be ‘good’.

As a professional baseball(?) player once said, “It’s not bragging if you can do it.”

Nor a Catholic belief…

Exactly. Johnny wins the contest, so he gets the fiddle. If he had lost, he would have forfeited his soul.

I too have seen cats do this. I assume it is one of two things - the cat hopes to draw the birds closer by mimicking their chirps or to alert other cats that there is prey nearby. Perhaps it is a combination of both.