The information should be out there.

Half the posts I see here talk about having ‘social anxiety.’

People need to make the effort to get into conversations that aren’t on screen.

https://www.sciencealert.com/isolation-has-profound-effects-on-the-human-body-and-brain-here-s-what-happens

Isolating is just not healthy.

We’re talking about Trump here. There was a list of 10,000 lies he told while he was in office.

At least 10,000 because the article is from 2019

https://news.yahoo.com/trump-has-made-10000-false-and-misleading-claims-washington-post-fact-checker-145444166.html

Do you talk to people in the park? In the grocery? The point is that those little chats actually do a lot for people’s mental health.

You only get over stuff by doing them. I don’t expect everyone I talk to to be utterly fascinating; I just want to know if you’ve read a particular author.

“Deaths of despair.”

It’s a subtle thing. I like to browse bookstores and libraries. It used to be if I engaged someone in small talk we’d have a pleasant little chat about books. These days, the only people who want to chat are the employees.

I tried to find a link but my Bing-Fu is weak.

There’s a passage in the book ‘The Godfather’ that everyone should read and understand.

One of the most powerful Mafia families in New York rose to power because they were willing to kill people over garbage collection. All the businesses needed trash hauling, and nobody was crazy enough to risk their life to compete with murderers.

Putin wasn’t a genius who gained power through subtle moves; he was a shark who ate up anyone in his way.

One story I heard was that his lawyers have to come into the room in pairs, because he’ll tell one lawyer Story A and the other one Story B.

He doesn’t lie like an adult; he lies like a child.

MAGoo logic at it’s finest. Back the Blue, until they come for you!

I just had an exchange with a fellow who claimed that Trump didn’t commit fraud because none of the banks complained.

I didn’t mean that it was going to happen over night. But it only took them about 30 years to go from the Theory of Relativity to the A Bomb, and about 40 years to go from Goddard’s first rocket to Man on the Moon.

Not me, but I heard a good line from a sign maker.

They said consult the local sign maker. That person knows a ton about businesses opening and closing, and which locations are cursed.

And we didn’t even get into the fact that we’re a few steps away from genetic manipulation on a wide scale.

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2024/03/21/1239790816/first-pig-kidney-human-transplant

Pretty soon you will be able to grow an animal with transplantable kidneys, or hearts, or any organ.

Thank Sarah Palin for the new political track. Back in the day, a losing pol could only go home or become a lobbyist. Now they can become media darlings. MGT will be flogging her wares for decades, in or out of office.

He was a college educated executive at an airport, which means he was interacting with the TSA and other law agencies on a daily basis. He knew that he was in violation of the law. He should have acted like a professional crook and had his lawyer’s number ready.

If you read ‘The Autobiography of Malcolm X’ his advice to crooks was to cooperate with the police when they come for you. He knew what he was talking about, because he was a thief and drug dealer before finding religion in prison.

A handful of renegades weren’t going to topple colonial Britain, either.

They never did.

America had the French navy and the post WW2 anti-colonial forces were facing an exhausted foe with no will for a long battle.

And the people at Waco had their children burned to death.

Almost as if the government can pick and choose when to unleash full force.

You’re not even comparing apples and oranges here; it’s more like apples and Apple computers.

He wasn’t part of a revolutionary army, he was an untrained lone gunman who was seriously outnumbered.

Also, pretty much every successful revolution has had some outside force bearing down on the Establishment. Washington had the French Navy; the Viet Cong had Russia and China; Lenin had WW1 chaos on his side.

I think it’s likely that the two things are connected. If nothing else, why would he want to stick around and watch the fifth [?] battle for the Speakership this year?

You’re confused. ‘Survival of the fittest’ doesn’t mean physical strength, it means those who fill their niche in the world and live to reproduce. A lion that kills a million deer but dies without reproducing is an evolutionary failure.

Our environmental niche is to invent and experiment. Back in the day, people thought that cities had reached their natural limit because you couldn’t have too many horses in one place. They thought people would never have heart transplants or IVF.