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  1. #16
    Ultimate Member Gray Lensman's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by A Small Talent For War View Post
    Indeed, bees are cute, friendly and hardworking. We need more bees.

    Hornets, yellowjackets, wasps should all be eradicated. Who needs them?
    Depends on the wasp.

    download.jpg

    For example, that little guy is the primary predator of the black widow spider, and I'd much rather deal with the wasp than the spider.

    Likewise, Tarantula Hawks may be yuuuuuge, but you need to work at it to piss them off enough to sting you, even if the result of doing so is the second or third most painful sting in the world (It used to be the second but I think they have discovered something between them and the bullet ant).

    GettyImages-139289963.jpg

    I'm still giving that one a lot of space, though.
    Dark does not mean deep.

  2. #17
    Ninpuu - Shinobi Change! Striderblack01's Avatar
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    This is the only kind of wasp that I need.




    Also, how many of you think I'm some kinda devious Trumpist sabateur?
    Just trying to get my bearings here.
    Thanks!
    Last edited by Striderblack01; 05-03-2020 at 06:23 AM.
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  3. #18
    Astonishing Member jetengine's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by WestPhillyPunisher View Post
    Dubya was dumber than a box of hammers, but not even he would’ve suggested pumping disinfectant into your body. Astounding.
    From what I understand Dubya wasnt actually that Dumb he just was rather folksy. I also hear he wasnt too bad innhis former political position its just the White House was WAAAAAY beyond him.

  4. #19
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    Quote Originally Posted by jetengine View Post
    From what I understand Dubya wasnt actually that Dumb he just was rather folksy. I also hear he wasnt too bad innhis former political position its just the White House was WAAAAAY beyond him.
    W's persona was of the "everyman," but he really leant into the dumber side of that stereotype so much so that people think he didn't have any idea what his government was doing. While I buy that he wasn't as smart or manipulative as his VP, Cheney, who was Darth Vader incarnate, he was a master at making people think he was too dumb to be held to account for his administration's horrible decisions like Abu Garib, Katrina, "enhanced interrogation," and a laundry list of crimes both foreign and domestic. However, he had troubles with not knowing how to navigate interactions with heads of state, like when he nearly caused an international incident giving Andrea Merkel an unwanted back rub (on camera!) and every once a while did something stupid, like almost dying from eating food. He's proto Trump, everything Trump does W did it first except Trump makes W look like a Rhodes Scholar.

  5. #20
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    I remember when W's administration had difficulty getting W up to speed with briefings so they had to make dvd's to dumb it down for him. This only encouraged everyone to think he had less IQ points then a carrot. To think that Trump would beat that is incredible. I didn't think it was possible.
    Last edited by Steel Inquisitor; 05-03-2020 at 06:51 AM.

  6. #21

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    Quote Originally Posted by CaptainEurope View Post
    The French national airline Air France is getting a government bailout... under the condition to become "greener" and cancel all inland flights on connections that can be done by train in under 2.5 hours.

    Am I crazy to think this would not have happened without the Friday for Futures school strikes? Go Greta!
    France is already pretty green in general, right? I seem to recall they are big in nuclear power generation which is the one power source that reduces greenhouse gases the most by energy output. Would these be electric train connections? How many flights would that actually eliminate, though?

    Honestly, though, I'm not really sure why airlines - or any large company - would need a bailout. Are the bankruptcy and restructuring laws that different in Europe? In the US, corporations certainly don't need the bail-outs they've received. The big banks in the financial crisis didn't need the bailout they got back then and just funneled the money to the investors and executives. It would be better to give that money to the people who depend on paychecks to make a living and not big corporations where any assistance just helps the investor class.

  7. #22
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    Quote Originally Posted by A Small Talent For War View Post
    France is already pretty green in general, right? I seem to recall they are big in nuclear power generation which is the one power source that reduces greenhouse gases the most by energy output. Would these be electric train connections? How many flights would that actually eliminate, though?

    Honestly, though, I'm not really sure why airlines - or any large company - would need a bailout. Are the bankruptcy and restructuring laws that different in Europe? In the US, corporations certainly don't need the bail-outs they've received. The big banks in the financial crisis didn't need the bailout they got back then and just funneled the money to the investors and executives. It would be better to give that money to the people who depend on paychecks to make a living and not big corporations where any assistance just helps the investor class.
    The entire point of a bailout is to pay off rich investors, giving money to people directly would just be socialism and we can't be having that...

  8. #23
    Fantastic Member MacrossPlus's Avatar
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    both sidesism helps fascists. "everyone is the same" is empiricaly false, and that kind of cynicism empowers the worst people.

  9. #24
    Extraordinary Member CaptainEurope's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by A Small Talent For War View Post
    France is already pretty green in general, right? I seem to recall they are big in nuclear power generation which is the one power source that reduces greenhouse gases the most by energy output. Would these be electric train connections? How many flights would that actually eliminate, though?
    That's only if you forget about the fact that our children, their children, children's children and so on will somehow have to produce the energy to keep the nuclear waste safe from natural influences and terrorists for 80,000 years or so. If you factor that in, nuclear power is probably dirtier than coal, we just kicked the can down the road a bit. That's one of the reasons why my country got out of nukes and bet on wind and solar. Nuclear power is not a green energy at all, especially now that wind power plants can be built faster (and causing less CO2 during construction) than nuclear plants.

  10. #25
    Astonishing Member Tuck's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Steel Inquisitor View Post
    He's proto Trump, everything Trump does W did it first except Trump makes W look like a Rhodes Scholar.
    Reagan was proto-Trump.

    Coming in from way outside the mainstream. His own party thought he had no shot at winning the nomination. His eventual VP called his economic ideas voodoo. And documents that came out a couple of years ago from the British government show people there calling him unserious and a buffoon. (Or something quite similar.)

    All this trickle-down, job-creators, prop up the banks first idiocy would have been considered idiotic before he came along and made America dumber.
    Last edited by Tuck; 05-03-2020 at 08:56 AM.

  11. #26
    Astonishing Member jetengine's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Tuck View Post
    Reagan was proto-Trump.

    Coming in from way outside the mainstream. His own party thought he had no shot at winning the nomination. His eventual VP called his economic ideas voodoo. And documents that came out a couple of years ago from the British government show people there calling him unserious and a buffoon. (Or something quite similar.)

    All this trickle-down, job-creators, prop up the banks first idiocy would have been considered idiotic before he came along and made America dumber.
    Was Eisenhower still alive then ? Cause I suspect he'd of hated what his party became.

  12. #27
    Extraordinary Member PaulBullion's Avatar
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    This new development is again something that nobody would buy in a movie script:

    Katie Halper, the journalist who first introduced Tara Reade and her accusations to a wider audience made several very stalker-ish tweets about ... Joe Biden, years ago. When somebody dug those out today, she started deleting them.

    "How does the Green Goblin have anything to do with Herpes?" - The Dying Detective

    Hillary was right!

  13. #28
    Astonishing Member jetengine's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by PaulBullion View Post
    This new development is again something that nobody would buy in a movie script:

    Katie Halper, the journalist who first introduced Tara Reade and her accusations to a wider audience made several very stalker-ish tweets about ... Joe Biden, years ago. When somebody dug those out today, she started deleting them.

    If Trump is "Stupid Watergate" then Tara Reade is "Stupid Monica Lewinsky case"

  14. #29

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    Quote Originally Posted by CaptainEurope View Post
    That's only if you forget about the fact that our children, their children, children's children and so on will somehow have to produce the energy to keep the nuclear waste safe from natural influences and terrorists for 80,000 years or so. If you factor that in, nuclear power is probably dirtier than coal, we just kicked the can down the road a bit. That's one of the reasons why my country got out of nukes and bet on wind and solar. Nuclear power is not a green energy at all, especially now that wind power plants can be built faster (and causing less CO2 during construction) than nuclear plants.
    True, those have been concerns and should be concerns when addressing climate change.

    Still, all those problems are less pressing and more solvable than the immediate and devastating problem of climate change. People have already worked on nuclear power problems for decades and have solutions available. If we believe that the rapid rise of greenhouse gas emissions are causing climate change, and we believe that climate change is a problem that humanity has the capacity to solve, then I can't rule out nuclear energy as part of that solution. If we are able to solve the former, we can certainly solve the latter.

    If I rule it out, then what would my goal actually be? It doesn't seem like I'd be serious about addressing greenhouse gas emissions. Certainly, just like our ancestors in the modern age have left us with a lot of problems to deal with today, whatever we do today and in the next few years will saddle generations decades, centuries and thousands of years from now with problems - most we cannot even predict.

    However, I think climate change may be an existential threat within the next century or so, so I'd rather leave future distant generations with the problem of what to do with nuclear waste than avoid that problem by basically going extinct. It may be that natural gas plants. wind and solar can give better immediate reduction for the expenditures, though, and for all we know, within the next ten to twenty years we may have figured out fusion reactors or batteries capable of storing energy from wind and solar for use when the plants can't generate it (and reducing the amount of land needed for those sources) or lines capable of sending power over massive distances. We don't know what solutions may appear or what new problems may arise, but I don't want to focus all attention on just one kind of solution.

    I'm reminded that city planners in 1900 had eliminating horse manure at the top of their lists of unsolvable problems they would have to deal with in the 20th century. However, the invention of the automobile, which no one predicted, made that concern irrelevant.
    Last edited by A Small Talent For War; 05-03-2020 at 10:43 AM.

  15. #30
    Latverian ambassador Iron Maiden's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by WestPhillyPunisher View Post
    I'm fine with bees, it's those goddamn giant hornets that scare the **** out of me.
    You and me both! Something that is big as they are and can sting through a beekeeper suit is something I don't want even in the same county let alone in my yard

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