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One of the reasons why Japan and Korea are experiencing population decline, and the United States is not, is that they are very reluctant to allow imm...

Another good reason for living as far north as possible. Does the owl repel spiders?

So, tornus is from Latin and Greek "turning lathe". A tool for sure, but not a vise or a vice. Thanks for the information. Facts duly added to the col...

tornillo vs. vicio -- not confusing. Torquere is the Latin word for twist; I wonder if that isn't the root of Spanish tornillo. But then there are tor...

Odd how I had not noticed that there is a difference between vice and vise. Maybe that's why I failed to succeed in the sex/drug trade.

I just read that cigarettes are $15 in Minneapolis (MN), which recently added an extra tax. I don't know. Most people (who quit smoking) do so on thei...

The cost of grinding up tobacco, putting it in a paper sleeve, adding a filter, and packing 20 of them into a little box is pretty small--less than 30...

Well, what vices ARE affordable, then?

It's just damn hard to get some people to change their behavior. We know from STD stats that despite all the effort that has gone into it, a lot of pe...

Ouch! Well, does it discourage people from smoking, or do they just cut back on frills like food, clothing, and shelter? Average numbers of smokers in...

There are nothing but up-sides to quitting smoking / vaping / chewing. For example, 48 hours after quitting cigarettes, the chances of surviving a hea...

Of course not. Seriously: One of humankind's problems with seeding life on other planets is that our lives, our civilizations, are too short to know h...

I don't care whether life on earth was seeded or just happened in a warm little puddle. In either case, life is here, as likely or unlikely as that ma...

Leave it to Rogers & Hammerstein to elevate corn to about the level of an elephant's eye: I'm as corny as Kansas in August, I'm as normal as blueberry...

Oh, sorry Frank; be not bewildered. You know who Tom Lehrer is, right? He is the author of several of my favorite comic lines. I forget that probably ...

Is that a comeuppance already winging its way from Georgia to Massachusetts? As a newly minted MAGA man, you'll have to do a good deal more than merel...

It also doesn't matter which one you did after the roller coaster flies off the rail at maximum speed, killing everyone on board. Tom Lehrer, quoting ...

Oh yes, I certainly noticed Clarky's failed attempt at my dismissal. He'll get his comeuppance one of these days.

When one constructs a comparison, one says "this squash is bigger THAN that squash." One doesn't say, "this one is bigger FROM that one". When examine...

Well, there is. Here's a picture: https://www.melissas.com/cdn/shop/files/image-of-buttercup-squash-vegetables-1125636152_600x600.jpg?v=1738793794 A r...

Both of you raise well reasoned objections to my post about hate speech which I have referred to the Department of Opinions to be Reconsidered. In the...

My problem with hate speech laws is based on just what I see here in the United States. It isn't a "hate speech law vs unlimited free speech" problem....

According to Google Ngram (a word/phrase frequency application) "hate speech" did not register as a phrase used in print until 1990. Its rise to promi...

Acorn squash is "serviceable". It is not the tastiest squash. That honor, in my squashy opinion, goes to buttercup squash.

You are correct -- Theodore Roosevelt. And Roosevelt commenced the Progressive Era. Did Leon Czolgosz, McKinley's anarchist assassin, intend to promot...

This is very familiar territory to me, too. But... We are OF the world, which is how we happen to be IN the world. I may not like the world as it is, ...

Thanks for the video. That San Cristobal is a high crime / dangerous neighborhood doesn't jump out at one. One would need to hang around the place at ...

From the NYT: President Trump said federal regulators should revoke broadcast licenses over late-night hosts who speak negatively about him, a day aft...

So, the all-knowing AI says this is LIKE Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, but is from a modern source; it just doesn't know what that source is. I thought...

Bear in mind that "the press" was never what it used to be, and seems to be more so all the time.

To paraphrase a song from the Joni Mitchell And the painted asses go down and up we're captive on a carousel of trump ...We go round and round In the ...

And the critique of propaganda vs. objective factual discourse didn't just emerge in the last 18 months either. Those who possess economic and politic...

In the good old days, chickens were kept in small coops and were outside a lot eating bugs. grass, seeds, etc. They were sometimes fed grain, but a ve...

Everything you have stored in your fridge and pantry will help you out-wait and survive the Zombies. You don't want to run out of food while they are ...

In 1625, Francis Bacon famously wrote, "Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man". In order to be a well rounded ma...

Only the Odyssey and parts of the Iliad; Metamorphosis, Candide; several Dickens, Mark Twain, Henry James, Dr Zhivago by Pasternak. None of the rest; ...

I liked the essay; for one thing, it provided another word for my list of words rarely used in English -- pulviscular, "dusty or resembling a fine pow...

True. The "now" of a basketball game or tennis match is very short. The now of a marathon, not so short. Broadcast baseball games seem to have an inte...

"living in the here and now" sounds like just one more cliche from authors making money in the self-help trade. Not that I have anything against "bein...

The bloody cow cocktail 1. Barkeep: Call bouncer to remove any customer who orders a bloody cow cocktail 2. Bouncer: Throw the customer out on the sid...

Farmers. That's the idea -- to make good farmers, something or other.

Other invocations of hell and cow: what in holy hell... hell's bells! what fresh hell is this! Hell! hell of a... helavuh (hell of a...) snowball's ch...

It's good to be a major contributor to vital statistics. One quibble: It's "bloody hell" and "holy cow". I wonder if Hindus in India say "holy cow"? D...

A depressing--and not at all realistic--response. A "conscientious cooperative civil society" isn't forced -- it is reared from childhood. You have to...

You didn't say that, of course; Kirk did. And it's specious. Having a gun never protected "God-given rights", other than the holy sanctity of private ...

Of course! The lot of us actually disclose very little pertinent information about our drab wretched lives. Some people here seem to feel they might b...

Charlie Kirk is a complete unknown to me. Every day anonymous strangers are killed whom I cannot mourn. As for The Malcolm X issue of ballots vs. bull...

No advice from me on where you should go. Given the thread, I will note that if one did not exist, housing choices would be much simpler. I can only h...

I was doing so well without having heard of "ipseity". Now? The future is uncertain. A new word can cause the world to veer off in unexpected directio...

Perhaps you should live someplace else? Of course, I know that circumstances may preclude just casually moving from a neighborhood with gangs to a nic...