We won’t have a clear winner. No matter which candidate “wins”, there will be widespread allegations of voter fraud. There will be protests. Biden will declare a national emergency. What happens after that? I don’t know. But I am prepared for major social unrest.
A large number of people from both major parties are absolutely unwilling to accept a win by the opposing candidate. I’ve never seen the country so divided.
Name one thing President James Garfield is known for, without looking out up?
There are plenty of companies that will sell your name, email addresses, phone numbers, street addresses, marital status, and relative’s names. They obtain the information from publicly sold databases. I had access to one that had all that, plus the registration info for the car I drive, my estimated income, my military record, my driving record, my political party preference, and pictures of my home that had been on the realtor’s website.
The scary one was when a phone center employee in the Philippines stole my wife’s debit card number and then did two big Western Union MoneyGram transfers to a couple of Filipino men. That means bad actors have access to the credit companies’ databases from which Western Union draws their proof of identity questions, like who holds your mortgage, where you lived when you were 10, and the make/model of your first vehicle.
If you’re well-off enough to be a financial fraud target, paying a company for identity theft protection is probably well worth it. Put fraud alerts in with all the major credit bureaus too. That usually stops identity thieves from accessing your credit. If you use 2FA with your phone, make sure your telecom provider will not transfer your number to a new device without in-person authorization and authentication.
Absentee ballot. Always worked for me in the Navy.
When you shop for a place to live, do you buy/rent nothing because nothing is “perfect”? Or do you weigh the benefits and detriments of each available option and choose the best one?
There’s a clear choice, and if you need to see what voter apathy gets you, look at Venezuela. We got a second chance because the Jan 6 attempt failed. If you don’t vote, the usurper might win.
Totally agree. Iran can see incoming aircraft and missiles on their radar. There would have been widespread social media reports of the missile flying over the city. These things did not happen. Where’s the missile debris? That would have been the lead story on local TV news. Iranian leadership would love to tie the attack back to a missile provided by the US. That would have been their first claim if it really was due to a missile. This story sounds more like Iran belatedly trying to change the narrative.
Not recommended for lycra or spandex suits, or any suit that has elastic closures, particularly during the summer months. They will rapidly degrade in the heat of the car. My wife left hers in the car after a vacation (never used it). It was tucked in the trunk. Found it a month later and it disintegrated in the wash.
It wasn’t any particular scientific discovery that weakened religion. It was the popularity of science fiction that did it. As Arthur C. Clarke put it, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” People can now imagine how miracles are done without invoking anything supernatural. We might not have the tech to do it yet, but we have a pretty good idea of potential methods. That has placed a lot of “creator god” religions under pressure. Create life? Tech will eventually do it. Create a world? Sure, tech again. Given enough tech, a solar system can be spawned. Water into wine? We’re halfway there with Kool-Aid. We already have vimanas (those ancient Hindu flying vehicles). We call them airplanes or helicopters. We can destroy a whole city with a single weapon. So why should we worship a supreme being who supposedly did those things?
Assuming we can conquer poverty, religions that survive will be centered around improving the human condition. Worshipping dieties will eventually fall by the wayside. It will still be a long process. You can’t dispel faith with reason and facts. And people in poverty tend to embrace religion because it gives them comfort and hope that things will be better in the afterlife.
Animals were doing it long before humans even existed. Some birds will “bathe” in an ant nest because the formic acid excreted by the ants rids them of parasites. There’s even a word for it - zoopharmacognosy.
Long before recorded history, people knew what plants were helpful to treat or cure various maladies. Who knows what possessed the first human to chew on willow bark to relieve pain or reduce a fever? The earliest documentation of it was 400 BCE by Hippocrates, but it was probably common knowledge for much longer than that. The Chinese have been using various herbs to treat disease for at least 3000 years.
Every time I do a search, the bot usually provides enough info. The problem is that I don’t trust the bot because it’s been wrong before. So I still need to continue the search to find an authoritative answer.
That’s the problem with bots. If you trust their answers and they’re wrong, it can be a real problem. There was a story a while ago about an Air Canada customer service bot that was giving out bad info about bereavement travel. When a customer tried to get the promised refund, the airline admitted the advice was wrong, but claimed the bot was a separate legal entity, therefore they were not responsible for the advice it gave.
Critical Thinking skills. Imagine a world where everyone is able to sus out the lies, separate fact from fiction, and not fall into pitfalls of illogical thinking.
A pair of off-the-shelf reading glasses will make everything other than what’s right in front of your face blurry. But please don’t use them to blur distant things you actually will be looking at for long stretches. Your eyes will still try to focus on those blurry distant objects, and that will cause ocular muscle strain. If you did it for a few years, you could cause permanent changes to the shape of your eyeball. Then you will really need glasses.
Biden needs to start putting up billboards with these Trump quotes, referring folks to his “trumpsucks.com” website, which now simply redirects to the “joebiden.com” website.
Me: I wish I could stop paying taxes. Genie: poof Wish granted! Me: Woah…I don’t feel so good! Genie: It’s a fatal heart attack.
That there is an all powerful supreme being that demands our worship or else we will suffer for all eternity after our death.
I reuse the small Amazon shipping boxes. Each box has a number and a general category. My phone has a database. When I put something away, I take a picture of the item, add it to the database, put it in a box, and record the box number.
One independent source of true random numbers with timestamps:
https://csrc.nist.gov/Projects/interoperable-randomness-beacons/beacon-20
If the random number comes from an event beyond the control of the group or server, why not? For example, many Keno games post results online. It is agreed by all parties that when the server says, “flip”, the next number generated by the Keno game will have modulus 2 applied to it (even or odd), resulting in the coin flip - 0 for tails and 1 for heads. Everyone can see the source of the number independent of the server and no party has control over the source of the number.
Alternately, any independent source of true random numbers that are time stamped can be used. The agreement is that the server will specify a time in the future and the number generated closest to that time will be used. The number is independently verifiable and out of the control of all parties.
Covering my cough or sneeze with my shirt collar.
There’s no doubt that US sizes have become more generous. Size measurements have increased over the years by about 2 inches. A size 10 from the 50’s fits like a size 8 today. A medium shirt is closer to a large from 70 years ago.