There are presumably 'non-goofy people' who refer to "pregnant persons", "persons with vaginas, cervixes, uterus.", rather than saying an (apparently)...
The preview of a man standing on the slippery stainless steel and vertiginous heights of the Chrysler Building was high anxiety inducing. How much mor...
We worry about the long-term health of our most revered moderator and shoutbox guru. In addition to the risks of red meat, sugar, and alcohol there's ...
Last things first: death is unavoidable. Sooner or later we all die, along with every other living being. Suffering: reducible but not eliminable. Ine...
Welcome to The Philosophy Forum! Not sure, but we have very few participants who are Russian. I'm not sure what Paine meant, but you are doing the bes...
Odd that the name for blue berries would have Celtic, Latin, or Greek roots, considering the berry originated in the New World. The Ojibwa (tribe in M...
@"Hanover": Just so you know, the blueberries I just ate were grown in Georgia, They were a large blue berry having a remarkable similarity to blueber...
Very true! Pigs are very poor at flamenco; they might like to be good at it, but they just can't. Dalmatians aren't great flamenco dancers either, but...
Slavery was a social arrangement, of course, and a central, critical feature of Southern state societies. It was also a tremendously important part of...
Indeed they did, and this influence continued long after the Civil War was over. 70 years later, the southern block of senators and congressmen (from ...
There's more. Much more! Surprising (shocking!) fact: the squishy stuff that fills your eyeball can be removed. Once removed, even more ghastly proced...
Yeah, life is a bitch and then you die. Oh, sorry. You were perhaps looking for something more uplifting, upbeat, and positive sounding? Actually, I d...
I agree. Some people used to think that the potential for universally beneficial economic growth was unlimited. Some very optimistic socialists used t...
When we decided to leave the trees and walk on two legs, we didn't know where that would lead us. When hunter-gatherers started collecting wheat kerne...
Is this because they are committed to live in balance with their ecosystem, or is it that other organisms prevent them from getting the upper hand? Th...
Yes and no. Two areas of technology have (imho) have contributed the most to population growth: The Haber Bosch process of converting nitrogen and hyd...
Experience is our best guide to what is good. We can spin theories about what is good forever, but until we act, and experience consequences, we have ...
Very good questions about growth/no growth. If consumption were even distributed, there would be some dramatic changes. The wealthiest people consume ...
This is obviously a topic dearer to your heart than mine. Not criticizing your lengthy reply, just observing the depth of your response. No, it isn't ...
Thanks for the thoughtful response. Institutions--legislatures, schools, corporations--are indeed ill-equipped to make enlightened trade-offs. Being g...
A local example of good growth is the share of Minnesota's electricity generated by wind and solar -- 33%! The other 66% comes from nuclear power plan...
And before the Bronze Age? Very slow change, except for development of agriculture and settled towns. The dispersion of bronze (tin and copper alloy) ...
That's basically what I did. I didn't have a 5-year plan when I started college. I finished school and took a job with VISTA (now called Americorps). ...
Many vets use pentobarbital, a barbiturate. It's fast, induces sleep, then shuts down cardiac and pulmonary activity. When I had to euthanize my dog t...
Westerners don't seem to have any problem with people blowing their brains out or splatting on a sidewalk after jumping off a building. Somehow disemb...
How far is far away? On a good night WBBM-CBS (780 AM) in Chicago comes in clearly (if intermittently) in Minneapolis. 400 miles away. French-speaking...
There are two reasons why (per Tom Storm above) most people do not leave notes, poems, or letters: The first and main reason is that explaining why, e...
This is a quite different topic, but related: Who, in a given society, tends to revolt first: the lumpen proles at the very bottom of society, or the ...
Interesting information, thanks. I have a distant memory of swathing wheat. Back in horse-drawn and hand harvested wheat days, the swaths of wheat (oa...
A number of cities have tried UBI programs and the results have been quite positive. The amount recipients are paid is nothing close to a living wage,...
Looks like satire to me. and effective at that. Roundup--glyphosate--isn't used on wheat. It's used on corn and soybeans, mostly. It's applied when co...
You may be very familiar with the points I am making here. Not everybody is. The problem with entitlement spending is that Congress has not seen fit t...
Nice! I like that. Here's another in like vein: All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace I like to think (and the sooner the better!) of a cyberne...
"The American Dream" is a phrase coined by James Truslow Adams in his 1931 bestseller The Epic of America. According to an article in JSTOR, the publi...
#1. Make money. I do not know what percent of the vast bulk of material sucked up for AI training is copyrighted, but thousands of individual and corp...
The processors in AI facilities lack intention, but AI facilities are owned and operated by human individuals and corporations who have extensive inte...
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