Although he was married briefly, and many years later his former wife was moved to state, peculiarly, that he was an “adequately excellent lover,” it is clear from all available evidence that sexuality, procreation, and the human body itself were among the things that scared him the most.

He was also frightened of invertebrates, marine life in general, temperatures below freezing, fat people, people of other races, race-mixing, slums, percussion instruments, caves, cellars, old age, great expanses of time, monumental architecture, non-Euclidean geometry, deserts, oceans, rats, dogs, the New England countryside, New York City, fungi and molds, viscous substances, medical experiments, dreams, brittle textures, gelatinous textures, the color gray, plant life of diverse sorts, memory lapses, old books, heredity, mists, gases, whistling, whispering—the things that did not frighten him would probably make a shorter list…. The things that did not scare him generally are absent from his work.

source

Sounds like it's time for a municipal broadband solution. If AT&T doesn't want the business, fine. Let's not force them to take our money.

Ok, I'll be that guy. Yes, the kid actually did win all these matches. Though it's not clear whether the old guys were masters, grandmasters, or just old.

I think a lot of this is just provocation. "I'm gonna put this on a T-shirt to own the libs." I doubt they are even thinking about what it means.

It's well established in the Star Wars universe that all you need to create gravity is a floor. Take, for example, any scene from within any of the space ships. Gravity is never a problem.

Of course, a deep chasm also seems to create gravity, as seen in the first movie when Luke and Leia swing from one ramp to another to escape the stormtroopers chasing them.

Regardless, it's easy to see from the blueprints that the layout is stacked like your first image.

Edit: upon closer examination it turns out it's both. The plans show three 'concentric surface decks' that apparently work like your second image. So I guess the answer is 'it depends on where you are in the death star', and, I guess, which way 'down' is where you are.

they "watch what they want, when they want, where they want, and they don't pay for it."

Damn. Are these guys trying to sell me on being a striminal now?

I doubt it's polished. It's probably a mirror wrap. Much cheaper and less effort.

It's pretty clear what the consensus is here. Yes, talk with women. You can even (politely) hit on women you fancy. Based on your statement about yourself it's unlikely you would be pushy and threatening if she said no, but still, just understand when to stop.

Next question is how to get there from where you are. You're scared you would be seen as a threat, harassing women just by talking to them out of the blue. So you doubtless have little experience talking with women. That's where you are.

I see two possible paths to take. Which one is right depends on why you feel that way. If it's an emotional issue, like if you (for instance) start shaking and sweating at the thought of walking up to a woman and introducing yourself, then maybe start by talking with a therapist. They can be really helpful. On the other hand if you are just nervous because you don't know how to talk with a woman then look into learning how to make small talk. It's actually a skill. It's something you can learn. And once you have learned it and practiced it enough that you are comfortable with it, then approaching and talking with a woman is just about starting and having a conversation. You can even practice with guys if it makes you more comfortable. A quick google search produces a bunch of good ideas on how to start.

Now you have homework. Learn how to carry a conversation. Learn to make people feel comfortable around you. Learn to actually be interested in other people. It shows and it makes a difference.

EDIT: In a reply to another comment you mentioned severe violence in your childhood and the resultant fear as a major deterrent in approaching people. That's definitely something to see a therapist about. You can work through stuff like that in time. And you'll be amazed how much more free you feel once you have.

It isn't right you need an extension for it, but here we are. Don't F*** With Paste

Maybe a relationship will just come to you and maybe it won't. A lot of the advice you get in these kind of threads is like 'just be yourself' or 'don't be desperate' or 'be comfortable on your own' or whatever. None of that ever worked for me. I was never able to just be myself or be on my own without feeling lonely and desperate and that made me seem weird and off-putting to potential partners. Honestly it took recognizing my mental issues, getting serious about finding a solution to them, and working on them for a while before I was able to act like a normal human around someone I was attracted to. In the end what worked for me was a combination of Buddhist meditation and some kind of therapy. But everyone is different. YMMV.

On the other hand maybe you are perfectly comfortable in yourself, are handsome and charming, and have no trouble talking with women, but you just met some women with issues of their own. If so, just try to get out more and meet more people. In that case it's a numbers game and eventually you'll find the right one.

So, Terry Bernadino?

Trump presidential pardon incoming in 3, 2, 1...

A lot of people in the comments here are taking the high ground. "I wouldn't use it. I'm not a killer. I'm better than that."

But by not using it you are even more of a killer. This is a trolley problem. If you pull the right switch one evil psychopathic murderer dies, if you don't pull the switch thousands of their innocent victims die. If you have the power to make that decision then the responsibility for the deaths falls on your shoulders, whether it's one death or thousands.

So yeah, I'd use it. I'd start at the top of the psychopathic killer list and move down. I doubt I'd have to wonder when to stop. There are so many. But once they got the message I'd be more moderate and only use it when necessary.

I read this as a call to action for the people Musk/Trump are ordering around. If everyone just said "no, I won't to do what you tell me" then we might avoid the collapse of the government/economy/country.

Well, things would exist whether you're in a capitalist economic system or not. People would make music and label their genre. People would write books and want to sell them. The real difference is who gets the profits.

There are two kinds of true, and thus two kinds of 'real'. There's the kind where what you believe matters and the kind where it doesn't. Gravity is the second kind. Step off the top of a building and it doesn't matter if you believe in gravity, you're going to fall. Politics is the first kind. If everyone believes I'm the king of North America, well, then that's the truth. It's reality. Likewise if everyone in the government believes that Elon Musk can fire whoever he wants, then he can, because everyone will just go along with it.

You seem to be arguing that FDR was a leftist because of the policies he implemented. But I think what you are missing is why he implemented those policies. I think the truth is he didn't really have the public interest at heart. His agenda was to contain a growing threat to capitalism in the form of the Communist Party of the 1930s. His strategy to contain the CP was to neuter the party by bringing it into the Democratic party fold, alienating their most militant members, and slowly squashing their agenda. Of course he had to appeal to their interests to do so. But it was a temporary strategy, not a real shift in US policy. There are a few articles on the topic if you are genuinely interested. Here's one. And here's a quote from another.

The New Deal reforms Sanders evokes were not the product of a farsighted, enlightened reformer, but responses to tumultuous class struggles in the early and mid-1930s. These reforms sought to contain explosive social struggles and were never truly universal, excluding women and African-Americans, for example. After mass struggle ebbed, Roosevelt shifted back to his original goal of stabilizing US capitalism while moving toward establishing US global domination during World War II. Progressive reforms came to an abrupt halt in the late 1930s, allowing the rollback of many popular gains during the 1940s.

If you're linking to a paywalled site like bloomberg, could you please provide the text in the post, or link to a archive.org copy? All I know about this is the title and the first paragraph of the article. Frustrating.

No offence taken. You're right. And one of the few things the two parties cooperate on is working to insure it never changes.

I just got a high priority request to write a couple of VBA macros to fetch data from a database then use it to make a bunch of API queries. I know VBA about as well as I know Chinese or Icelandic. I figured out the query and told Chat GPT to use it in a macro. It wrote all the VBA code. I went through a few rounds of "fix this bug, add this feature" and now my client is happy and I didn't have to think much about VBA. I knew what and how to ask it for what I wanted and it saved me days of searching google and reading about VBA. That's high value to me because I don't care about VBA and don't really want to know how to use it.