And yet, in that part of the country, there will be plenty of people waiting to be on the receiving end of his TP.

I don’t know about y’all, but I’d prefer not to win a Darwin Award.

I’m more a visual person, so let me show you some graphs: Famine rates are down: https://ourworldindata.org/images/published/Famine-death-rate-since-1860s-revised_850.png

We can do so much more with our computing resources - Note, logarithmic scale: https://www.singularity.com/images/charts/MicroprocessorClockSpeed.jpg

Poverty is down: https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/chorus/uploads/chorus_asset/file/2545610/Screen_Shot_2014-12-12_at_10.34.38_AM.0.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0,0,100,100

Billions of people live in a democracy, before 1850 almost none did: https://bigthink.com/the-present/democratic-rights/

Have y’all seen the pictures of chimney rock?

I’ve heard that Kamala needs roughly a 3.5% advantage nationwide to break even in the electoral college. It’s not a direct correlation of course, but it stands as a good indicator.

It’s insane if you think about it though, that we give the republicans 3.5% house odds. That’s more than we give casinos in blackjack. We don’t even give most one arm bandits that much.

20 of us were out canvassing in my local county today. It was super enjoyable. Even the two folks that were voting for the other party were decent and respectable.

But I guarantee, not a one of us was out there for that orange guy.

Get a Dietician and physical trainer. Use this opportunity to get yourself into healthy shape and never look back. I did something years ago and had no clue just how bad I was actually feeling before the improvement. Both physically and mentally. We are not designed to sit at desks all day.

Do your feet crack sometimes? Consider testing for athletes foot.

Blood, STD and Cancer screenings, as many as they’ll give you. Hell, depending how old you are, maybe a colonoscopy.

Sleep study. MRI, ECG, EKG. Allergy test. Dermatology/mole screening.

IQ test, find out your best skills and then learn how to use them to your advantage.

DNA testing, if you really want to know some things you may be perceptive to…though personally i don’t know if I would want to know if Huntingtons is in my future.

And I replied to you, specifically, regarding sports not being a hack on our emotions.

I suppose this begs the question, do you burn couches when a movie takes an emotional turn?

I have no contribution to why certain people do so around sports, other than to say 20% of the population also believes that the earth is flat, that is to say, they’re morons.

The difference is that movies and TV shows are often specifically made to elicit those reactions. Storytelling is essentially a hack that uses our emotions to implant lessons.

The same can’t be said for sports events.

What part of this did I miss?

Way to completely miss my point.

Hmm, gonna try and narrow this down further. Did you climb any light poles as part of your celebration festivities?

Seriously!? A Cinderella team spends a full year working their way to the sweet 16 and perhaps eventually the final four? Then loses by one point. Do you not see the struggle, the passion, the determination and the heartbreak in that?

Or a champion tennis player, significantly past her prime, coming back to championship after multiple years out and winning the title.

Or two soccer superstars at the absolute peak of their field going head to head. Can you not sense the tension, and suspense as these two juggernauts battle it out to see who comes out on top?

Or a man, born without arms, overcoming adversity at all points in his life to become the fastest swimmer and winning the gold.

Do you not see how sport can be an allegory for the human condition? The struggle, the heartbreak that comes with failure, the celebration of success, the toll of aging.

If not, I challenge you to take up a sport for a year, just a year. Try to get as good as you can with it. Celebrate your successes. Reflect on your failures. Document your milestones as you progress . Try not to give up. Make friends along the way. Become the true definition of an amateur. Living through your own experiences, you may discover that sport is full of emotion.

Not going to go into details due to confidentiality, but I recently was involved in an initiative to utilize AI to scan education databases and identify students who may be at risk of dropping out, with the goal of having an early safety net for these folks. And also raising the schools retention rates, thus better outcomes overall.

So yes, AI can absolutely be used for good.

There’s a saying, around here people know it…some people over there may know it too… the enemy of my friend is my enemy, the enemy of my enemy is my contractually non-binding Diplomacy partner.

They used to say that about Ohio. …before that Florida …before that Iowa …before that California ….way before that, Pennsylvania

Queue that XKCD.

Soon it’s going to be Georgia or Arizona And then Texas

I for one, can’t wait for the chili cook offs, and when all the candidates start wearing cowboy hats. The y’all’s will truly have it!

Yea but this is grade A in the same way that school lunch ketchup is grade A.

I visited Panama for an agricultural trip about a decade ago where we focused on coffee agriculture and production. Coincidentally, there are some coffees that blend in beans or peanuts to mellow the flavor. This is usually done for cheaper coffees that use robusto beans instead of arabica. It’s also to relieve some of the acrid taste that can develop during the drying out process if the beans are dried around animal droppings.

If you’re interested in what a mellowed coffee would taste like, I think chock full of nuts is a brand you can try in the states.

Edit: ok so I did some more research and it appears that chock full o nuts likely no longer does this, they just have typical coffee nowadays. I’ll leave it to you other internet sleuths to find a brand that does.

I’d donate a few dollars a month. Newgrounds is a great content creation space. I still play games there from time to time. The Mario 63 game is off the wall. Dead Estate is also a fantastic retro style shooter like the ones I remember from my childhood. I think places like this need to survive.

Sure I’ll give it a shot. Romney did Obamacare for Massachusetts, so a moderate republican may do OK with DHHS.

I’d also be OK with Federal Reserve, isn’t a republican currently serving in that role? Bernanke was a republican and he did alright.

Veterans Affairs possibly as well, if Kamala gave guidance.

But keep them the hell away from Energy, EPA and Education. Probably not DOT if we ever want a decent rail system too.

Didn’t Lincoln include members from various political parties? And he’s arguably the best president we’ve had.

It’s as if, and hear me out on this, there aren’t enough progressives alone to elect a president in a nation of 350+ million people.