A Third of Antarctic Ice Shelf Risks Collapse as Our Planet Warms (cnn.com) 92
More than a third of the Antarctic ice shelf risks collapsing into the sea if global temperatures reach 4 degrees Celsius (7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels as climate change warms the world, a new study from the UK's University of Reading has warned. From a report: In a forecasting study, scientists found that 34% of the area of all Antarctic ice shelves, measuring some half a million square kilometers, could destabilize if world temperatures were to rise by 4 degrees. Some 67% of the ice shelf area on the Antarctic Peninsula would be at risk of destabilization under this scenario, researchers said.
Ice shelves are permanent floating platforms of ice attached to areas of the coastline, formed where glaciers flowing off the land meet the sea. They can help limit the rise in global sea levels by acting like a dam, slowing the flow of melting ice and water into the oceans. Each summer, ice at the surface of ice shelves melts and runs into smaller gaps in the snow below, where it usually refreezes. But when there is a lot of melting and little snowfall, this water instead pools onto the ice's surface or flows into crevasses. This deepens and widens the crevasses, causing the shelf to fracture and collapse into the sea.
Re: And all the doomsday projections ... (Score:2)
Re: And all the doomsday projections ... (Score:4, Funny)
Feminists not wanting to reproduce with you is not the same as feminists not wanting to reproduce.
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It's just feminists showing good taste
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Re: And all the doomsday projections ... (Score:2)
so your solution is to ruin the sex life of millions?
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If your sexual satisfaction relies on knocking someone up then you're doing it wrong.
Re: And all the doomsday projections ... (Score:2)
Sex with condoms is less pleasurable for men, and it has nothing to do with making a woman pregnant.
There are also other means of contraception and even STD protection that are arguably more effective than condoms and don't affect the pleasure of either party.
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Sex with condoms is less pleasurable for men, and it has nothing to do with making a woman pregnant.
That is wrong, on so many levels that I spare me to explain it to you.
But simple question: which orgasm is stronger?
a) after 1 minute
b) after 5 minutes
c) after 10 minutes
d) after 20 minutes
?
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I have personally experienced it thousands of times, and it is also well documented in the literature.
A non-exhaustive list of problems with condoms:
- the fit, it's never quite the right size, leading it to be too lose or too tight at the base of the penis. Some companies provide made-to-measure condoms which promise fixing this, but that's not really something that's available for everybody.
- the material, many people find latex uncomfortable, it has a distinctive feel, taste and smell.
- the barrier, it pr
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A blowjob with a condom is just terrible.
No idea. Why would anyone do that anyway?
The rest of your points: are simply plain wrong.
Re: And all the doomsday projections ... (Score:2)
There are many STDs that you can catch orally (hsv and hpv most notably), to the point condoms are recommended for oral sex by many health institutions.
Claiming my detailed explanation is just plain wrong suggests that you're not only clueless, but also too lazy to build up a real argument.
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Obviously you do not need condoms in a stable relation ship were both are tested.
And yes: you are plain wrong. Why not try it out with different brands of condoms instead of spreading bollocks?
Hint: most have lubricants that either increase sensitivity or decrease it. First type makes it definitely more interesting to wear a condom, and the second time increases the duration of sex, and most of the time the intensity of the orgasm.
So: you are plain wrong. Probably never even used condoms.
Re: And all the doomsday projections ... (Score:1)
Re:And all the doomsday projections ... (Score:5, Insightful)
People simply don't believe the science any more. 50 years ago, scientists figured out that certain compounds were punching a hole in our ozone layer. Nearly the entire world listened, got together and banned certain CFCs from most use. Industry was FORCED to change. There was grumbling but the ozone hole is slowly healing. If that was happening nowadays, there would be "ozone deniers" simply telling you to slather on a slightly higher grade of sunscreen and hey, that skin cancer could have been caused by ANYTHING, right?
That's what we've got nowadays. Idiots like this basically saying "meh is the science ABSOLUTELY SURE?" (insert best whiney voice) because they don't want to pay an extra 3 pennies worth of tax.
We had better be developing geoengineering strategies, because our species is going to need them. We've already pissed away the opportunity to fix this problem the easy way.
Re:And all the doomsday projections ... (Score:5, Interesting)
This is a perfect example of why absolutely nothing is going to happen on climate change until we 1) lose major costal cities entirely or 2) lose entire breadbasket regions to desertification.
People simply don't believe the science any more. 50 years ago, scientists figured out that certain compounds were punching a hole in our ozone layer. Nearly the entire world listened, got together and banned certain CFCs from most use. Industry was FORCED to change. There was grumbling but the ozone hole is slowly healing. If that was happening nowadays, there would be "ozone deniers" simply telling you to slather on a slightly higher grade of sunscreen and hey, that skin cancer could have been caused by ANYTHING, right?
We had better be developing geoengineering strategies, because our species is going to need them. We've already pissed away the opportunity to fix this problem the easy way.
According to the UN:
Nearly 2.4 billion people (about 40 per cent of the world's population) live within 100 km (60 miles) of the coast.
That's gonna be an expensive move...
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People simply don't believe the science any more. 50 years ago, scientists figured out that certain compounds were punching a hole in our ozone layer. Nearly the entire world listened, got together and banned certain CFCs from most use. Industry was FORCED to change
To be sure, they didn't ban those CFCs until replacements were found.
This is a problem for-- technology [Re:And all...] (Score:5, Insightful)
People simply don't believe the science any more. 50 years ago, scientists figured out that certain compounds were punching a hole in our ozone layer. Nearly the entire world listened, got together and banned certain CFCs from most use. Industry was FORCED to change
To be sure, they didn't ban those CFCs until replacements were found.
But... that's the most important part. We saw an environmental problem that needed technology to solve... and we made the technology to solve it.
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We have the technological solutions already. We don't deploy them because of political reasons. Specifically political reasons that prevent us from fully capturing the externalities. The technology to do point source sequestration of carbon isn't getting deployed everywhere because there isn't fiscal incentive. Once we have a cheaper technological solution for sequestering carbon from the atmosphere, it still won't get deployed, because there still won't be fiscal incentive. There will never be a fiscal inc
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But... that's the most important part. We saw an environmental problem that needed technology to solve... and we made the technology to solve it.
Right. It's going to take technology to solve it. Not blaming and name calling, not using it as a political football. Actually coming up with practical technology to scrub CO2 from the air, to reflect more energy from the Earth, etc.
Re: And all the doomsday projections ... (Score:3)
please don't confuse the isolated case of the USA with the rest of the world; as a society they felt so disconnected to their intellectuals that they rejected them and embraced idiocy.
I think it's mostly a consequence of the large gap between the education and wealth of the average people and that of the elite.
Criticize socialism and equality all you want, but it would have at least prevented this.
Re: And all the doomsday projections ... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's nothing to do with the gap between rich and poor in this case. Instead, it's to do with a group of people seeing political advantage in making sure that people believe the science is wrong.
Re: And all the doomsday projections ... (Score:2)
It's because people didn't have a good education that they can be manipulated so easily.
And in the US education is tied to your class, so you can't have the poor get a good one.
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Re: And all the doomsday projections ... (Score:2)
You are suggesting there are no good reason to vote for conservatives.
There are plenty of good reasons to do so, such as safeguarding the value of your assets and perpetuating the status quo.
What doesn't make sense is the poor voting for them.
Re:And all the doomsday projections ... (Score:5, Interesting)
This is a perfect example of why absolutely nothing is going to happen on climate change until we 1) lose major costal cities entirely or 2) lose entire breadbasket regions to desertification.
You realize that an ice shelf breaking will not raise the water level by one inch when it melts? Even if all of them break lose and melt it will not raise the water level any. In fact, since ice expands when it freezes it might actually go down some.
Granted, if the ice caps melt then ocean levels will rise. But if the ice is already in the water, like ice shelves, then it will have no real effect on ocean levels.
You people are worried about the wrong thing. It's not how much water is in the ocean. It's what type you need to be worried about. Fresh or salt water. Once all that ice melts and the fresh water mixes with the salt, that is going to change the nature of the oceans. That is going to change the ph levels of the water, bad news if you are a fish.
It's also going to change the route and nature of the currents in the oceans. You know the ones that keep the far northern and southern latitudes warm?
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In fact, since ice expands when it freezes it might actually go down some.
You were right until that point. Excluding minute adjustments because of the salinity of the water vs. ice, a floating iceberg melting will have absolutely zero effect on the water level should it melt. It displaces as much water as its weight and since it's basically the same liquid turned into solid, it won't have any effect on the volume of the water.
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In fact, since ice expands when it freezes it might actually go down some.
Curiously, it's actually the opposite [oup.com]. These effects result from the difference in volume of equal weights of fresh and salt water.
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Yeah, I miss typed there. That should have said water expands when it freezes, not ice.
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Whilst factually correct the statement ignores the actual issue - the ice-shelves are holding back ice sitting on terra-firma.
Once the ice-shelves fail the land based ice much more easily ends up in the water - that certainly will lift the ocean MSL.
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In fact, since ice expands when it freezes it might actually go down some.
You had a good start, and spoiled it at this point.
Also you should read the summary at least. The shelf serves as a dam, holding melt water from central Antarctica back.
So if the dam breaks: melt water will reach the ocean and the levels will rise.
It's also going to change the route and nature of the currents in the oceans.
True.
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Well these Antarctic ice shelfs are beached (which is how they act as dams, the friction of the ice on the sea floor and geographical features of that sea floor effectively lock that ice shelf in place), which means you can't treat them like icebergs. They have a lot more ice above water than an isostatic iceberg.
And secondly they are holding back / slowing the flow of the glaciers behind them, acting as a dam. And that ice flow will result in additional sea level rise.
I agree that the first signs will be a
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Obviously there are floating ice shelves outside these locked ice shelves, and the article may be talking about these, in which case they will have no effect on sea level (besides that salinity discussion), but again they might have a secondary slowing effect on land ice flow into the ocean that would be reduced.
Re: And all the doomsday projections ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Nearly the entire world listened, got together and banned certain CFCs from most use. Industry was FORCED to change
The world got together supporting a tactic that was "consume this instead of that".
The message from environmentalists is to consume less. help out poker countries. sacrifice economic growth.
This is a much harder thing to sell. As the recent Seaspiracy film and surrounding discussions show, NGOs don't even want to advocate veganism because it's just too much to ask.
Getting people to buy Tesla instead of BMWs is fine, and spending to mitigate AGW will also be fine, when the argument for spending in prevention looks quite solid. It is just a much harder tactic or set of policies to sell.
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Fortunately enough of the right people believe the science that they've done the only thing possible: invent alternatives. Ozone depletion was the same way. Nobody was actually going to do anything about the problem until there were replacement refrigerants.
In twenty years you won't be able to afford gas to put in an ICE because we'll have used up all the cheap oil, and you won't want to because it will look pitiful in every way compared to a solar or wind powered EV. We might still lose places like Miami a
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And you propose what? You figure the US can shoulder the whole bill for this while China burns ever more coal and other hydrocarbons? If you do not demand China cut carbon emissions I call fraud on you when you demand I make sacrifices for alarmist claims designed to panic me into submission to fantastical claims.
We are not at war with Oceania so we don't need to panic and kowtow to elitist control of our lives, we suffer while Noisome parties.
{+_+}
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25 trillion per year to fix this problem. That's about the GDP of the US, so it's not feasible as a single country, unless we can drive the price down by a factor of 10. So, a few tech advances, massive
Not a doomsday projection [Re: Re:And all the ...] (Score:5, Interesting)
Note that this isn't actually a doomsday projection.
Floating ice shelves are floating. That means, when they break off and subsequently melt, they don't raise sea level.
This fact is right there in the summary: they do have a secondary effect on sea level, because the ice shelves act as barriers slowing down the flow of land-based ice into the ocean, but this is a much smaller effect.
Re:Not a doomsday projection [Re: Re:And all the . (Score:5, Insightful)
Ice shelves also increase the albedo of the area. Without the ice reflecting the sunlight back into space the water underneath is going to be absorbing it and heating up. It's thought that this is part of the reason why the arctic is heating faster than the rest of the world, the Arctic Ocean is sucking up much more heat than it used to when most of it was still covered by ice pack all summer.
Poorly measured? (Score:2, Informative)
Oh you’re one of those morons who thinks every climate scientist is using the data incorrectly. We’ve been able to measure temperature accurately for a good century or two now.
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We’ve been able to measure temperature accurately for a good century or two now.
Calculating global temperature is harder than looking at a thermometer.
For global temperature, we use a terrestrial record, and several different satellites. They all give different numbers. At best, we can say the margin of error is at least as big as the difference between them (unless you can come up with convincing reasoning why one is better than the rest).
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They really should make basic statistics required in elementary school.
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We’ve been able to measure temperature accurately for a good century or two now.
Calculating global temperature is harder than looking at a thermometer. For global temperature, we use a terrestrial record, and several different satellites. They all give different numbers.
It is worth pointing out that one reason they give different numbers is because they are measuring different things. The terrestrial record measures air temperature at ground level, while the satellite record (assuming you're referring to the Microwave Sounder Unit measurements) measures the weighted average air temperature from a range of altitudes roughly 0-11 km.
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At best, we can say the margin of error is at least as big as the difference between them
The difference between them is actually quite small. I imagine the uncertainty in any one dataset [nasa.gov] is greater than the difference between any two. For example, here's Berkley Earth [berkeleyearth.org] (with 95%confidence interval) vs analysis by other teams.
Here's UAH 5.6, RSS, HADCRU, GIS, and BEST on one graph [woodfortrees.org]. The only minority report I can find is UAH v6.0 which appears entirely krunked [woodfortrees.org] around the early part of this century
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Oh, because we don't ever adjust [judithcurry.com] our recorded temperatures. From the link:
All of these changes introduce (non-random) systemic biases into the network. For example, MMTS sensors tend to read maximum daily temperatures about 0.5 C colder than LiG thermometers at the same location. There is a very obvious cooling bias in the record associated with the conversion of most co-op stations from LiG to MMTS in the 1980s, and even folks deeply skeptical of the temperature network like Anthony Watts and his coauthors add an explicit correction for this in their paper.
Re:And all the doomsday projections ... (Score:5, Informative)
How is global temperature poorly measured? We're literally using ground stations, ocean-based sensors and satellites to map global and oceanic temperatures.
And thermodynamics is a thing. CO2 has the absorption/re-emission properties that it has. Thermodynamics means increasing the amount of GHGs in the atmosphere inevitably raises the thermal equilibrium of the atmosphere (and oceans as well), meaning more energy (in the form of thermal energy) gets trapped.
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Apparently according to conservatives carbon dioxide works differently on Earth than it does on Venus, Mars, or anywhere else in the universe.
1 degree Celsius over last 150 years (Score:2)
But we are supposed to be concerned about a 4 degree rise? The heat trapping effects of CO2 are bounded logarithmically. If you don't know what that means, please stop posting and go educate yourself.
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A four degree rise in average globally is indeed a massive increase. It's clear you don't have a fuckjng idea what you're talking about. Another techie with delusions of cross disciplinary expertise. Arrogance and stupidity in one brain
AGW and Covid (Score:5, Insightful)
Interesting to watch human behavior concerning threats.
In general, conservatives approach AWG in much the same way as they did, and continue to do, with Covid-19. Ignore it, downplay it, actively seek out conspiracy theories that will allow them to ignore it, claim God is bigger than $theat, blame $threat on some other race or country and resist any change at all the while focusing irrationally on something that is a much less threat... such as the concern that complying with mask-wearing and social distancing will lead to communism.
Re:AGW and Covid (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact that comparing any kind of collective effort to communism is conservative is a real mindfuck. I wonder just how well these people understand this concept of "united we stand" as some of the words our founding fathers embraced. Likewise these people probably haven't read more of Einstein's casual writings that talk about how united America was during his time here and how he saw Americans helping each other out so earnestly. Conservatives and prosperity gospel in general seem to be modern synonyms -- that somehow wealth and individual expressions are the rewards reaped for their loyalty to such a philosophy and that any social concession towards the social contract is a total afront to the American Ideal when the necessity of the social contract is clearly laid out by our founding fathers.
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Leaving this here for posterity:
Then join hand in hand, brave Americans all
By uniting we stand, by dividing we fall
In so righteous a cause let us hope to succeed
For heaven approves of each generous deed.
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These people are conservative only when it suits their dogma, religious or otherwise. It's all about individual rights and freedoms until something they don't agree with comes along. You want the ten commandments posted at city hall? Well now you have to allow passages for the Quoran and Satanic Bible as well. See how well that goes over. People die every day from alcohol and tobacco related deaths but Marijuana (who exactly zero people have died from) is still the devil's lettuce. All life is sacred so no
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Bring up the conservative fight against Marijuana decriminalization/legalization is another excellent example of irrational risk assessment behavior.
Where I live, in the progressive state (/s) of Idaho they tried to pass a constitutional amendment that would specifically prevent the legalization of marijuana _forever_... meaning regardless of the future popular support of legalizing MJ it can't happen per the constitution. They wanted this generation to control all future generations' democratic wishes... i
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I don't know how that's legal, much less an intelligent political position. The whole purpose of a constitution is it's a mutable legal framework. To attempt to stop this in any regard, is to break the legal security through flexibility that it provides. It means the only resolution to the matter is total rebellion. The idea that people could lead from such a position is just ludicrous, no matter what your current position on anything may be.
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I don't think the 10 commandments at public buildings are necessary but I do think the origin of legal systems should be studied and likewise understanding better the nature of religious tolerance. This is one way that the US and China are actually quite alike. There are two general solutions to religious tolerance: atheism or inter-faith which is to say you either push for no faith in the public and political domains, or you embrace the beauty, history, and culture of religions. Both China and the US are l
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There is nothing wrong with individualism and freedom, as long as it doesn't endanger or harm every one else. An in a few cases go against the will of the collective.
Lets look at a recent example that I heard about recently. I don't know all the details of this plan so I'm just going on what I heard. Bill Gates is planning on seeding the atmosphere with chemicals to reduce the amount of sunlight and cooling the planet. Virtually everyone that has reviewed this plan thinks its a bad idea, but Bill
Re: AGW and Covid (Score:2)
I don't understand the argument you're trying to make. Were he to attempt something like this without the approval of the government, he would be prosecuted.
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I'm not going to label Bill Gates as a James Bond super villain, not yet. He has so much individual wealth at his disposal he could probably find some government that would let him do what he wants to with enough money.
Elon Musk, Jeff Bezo, and Bill Gates, not casting any of them as a villain, but right now all of them has so much wealth and power that theoretically they could do anything they wanted to, given enough time an planning.
Re: AGW and Covid (Score:2)
That would be corruption, which would lead all involved elected officials to be prosecuted.
You realize that in a democracy, the government is controlled by the people, even in an individualist society?
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In the United States, probably, but there are 200 other countries out there that don't have the same laws.
Re: AGW and Covid (Score:2)
Most countries are democracies, and the USA isn't exactly the role-model it thinks it is.
I think you need to learn what the world outside of your bubble actually is like.
Re: AGW and Covid (Score:4, Informative)
We can just as little afford to follow the doctrinaires of an extreme individualism as the doctrinaires of an extreme socialism. Individual initiative, so far from being discouraged, should be stimulated; and yet we should remember that, as society develops and grows more complex, we continually find that things which once it was desirable to leave to individual initiative can, under changed conditions, be performed with better results by common effort. It is quite impossible, and equally undesirable, to draw in theory a hard-and-fast line which shall always divide the two sets of cases.
This every one who is not cursed with the pride of the closest philosopher will see, if he will only take the trouble to think about some of our closet phenomena. For instance, when people live on isolated farms or in little hamlets, each house can be left to attend to its own drainage and water-supply; but the mere multiplication of families in a given area produces new problems which, because they differ in size, are found to differ not only in degree, but in kind from the old; and the questions of drainage and water-supply have to be considered from the common standpoint. It is not a matter for abstract dogmatizing to decide when this point is reached; it is a matter to be tested by practical experiment.
Much of the discussion about socialism and individualism is entirely pointless, because of the failure to agree on terminology. It is not good to be a slave of names. I am a strong individualist by personal habit, inheritance, and conviction; but it is a mere matter of common sense to recognize that the State, the community, the citizens acting together, can do a number of things better than if they were left to individual action.
The individualism which finds its expression in the abuse of physical force is checked very early in the growth of civilization, and we of today should in our turn strive to shackle or destroy that individualism which triumphs by greed and cunning, which exploits the weak by craft instead of ruling them by brutality. We ought to go with any man in the effort to bring about justice and the equality of opportunity, to turn the tool-user more and more into the tool-owner, to shift burdens so that they can be more equitably borne.
The deadening effect on any race of the adoption of a logical and extreme socialistic system could not be overstated; it would spell sheer destruction; it would produce grosser wrong and outrage, fouler immortality, than any existing system. But this does not mean that we may not with great advantage adopt certain of the principles professed by some given set of men who happen to call themselves Socialists; to be afraid to do so would be to make a mark of weakness on our part.
Re: AGW and Covid (Score:2)
Or you could just look at other countries which have a collectivist culture and see how happy they actually are with it.
Spoiler: they're not, it leads to pressure to conform, suicide or escape.
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The US got really freaked out about the Soviet Union. A few generations of propaganda later, there are some lingering eccentricities. Of course, some people figured out how to make money off of those peccadilloes, and there you go: positive feedback.
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peccadilloes
I think we are in complete agreement. but I wanted to say excellent vocabulary usage.
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Why thank you. As soon as it came to mind, there was clearly no other word to better describe current US politics.
Hey, don't belittle the struggle! (Score:2)
I tried on my mask for the first time since the pandemic started, and I went out to run some errands. Now there's a copy of "Animal Farm" on my bookshelf, alongside "The Prince". I don't remember buying either.
In addition, somehow I'm wearing somebody else's pants. I'm less stressed about that, since they're functional and clearly meet my needs.
Something evil is afoot... I'm going to forgo a second wearing, lest I find myself in Cuba looking for an apartment.
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Ssshh next up you're going to leak that by registering as a democrat you get stock buy ins from mask manufacturers!
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Of course. The word conservative literally means "opposed to change." This is one of the few conservative values that many "conservatives" actually hold.
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Not really. Liberals do a bunch of randomized double blind studies. Quibble endlessly amongst themselves. Constantly behave like a herd of cats and snatching victory from the jaws of defeat due to excessive individualism. But outside of gender issues, they do recognize reality. They are not productive or unified.
Conservatives are more frequently associated with religions and authoritarian thought so they typically comply with whatever reality their leaders tell them is reality and are less individuali
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"complying with mask-wearing is going to bring about the end of times."
Examples? What I see and hear is that people are pointing out not wearing masks and complying with protocols ends up killing others, endangers medical workers, and prevents us from re-opening sooner and compete as a nation.
However, I am not going to deny that liberals go overboard with fear-mongering, which in the end invokes an opposition attitude and is harmful to their issues, but IMHO not to the same extent that conservatives go abou
We all need to think about China & coal (Score:1)
Reading the book right now. (Score:2)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Am I the only one excited about this? (Score:1)
For archaeological reasons?
it's been cold all week in California (Score:2)
derp! I'm smarter than the scientists who spent several years studying this extensively.