The proposed bill, primary link, would ban use of both approval and ranked ballot methods in local elections. Currently no ND municipality used ranked choice, but Fargo has used approval since 2018.

Not every student needs a rigorous scientific education. Not every parent will demand one. Not every public school will require or offer one. My claim is that Christians absolutely should. Likely other religions as well, I use Christian merely because it's what I'm most familiar with.

The mission of a public school is to graduate students intellectually fit to participate in civil society, which in my opinion does include at least a cursory understanding of evolution. At least enough to know how to look up the details later if needed. A Christian school must do similarly, but carries the additional objective of raising students confident in their faith, which requires a more detailed and rigorous treatment of the subject.

If you want your children to be able to defend their religious beliefs against scientific encroachment, then they better know exactly what science they're defending their faith from. Although evolution presents a credible alternative to a literal interpretation of Genesis 1, it isn't inherently incompatible with Christian education and doesn't prove atheism right. Even when the belief in evolution is optional, understanding the scientific basis for it is critical.

When Christian parents neglect their children's secular scientific education, they grow up to say stupid shit like, "If Darwin says we evolved from monkeys, they why are there still monkeys?" They'll think they cleverly debunked all the atheist scientists, even though neither Darwin, nor any evolutionist since, made that claim. This makes them a disgrace to their faith and to their educators.

I understand that the bite test was used by frontier merchants as a low-tech way to assay gold, which worked because elemental gold was softer than some of the less valuable alloys that might otherwise be mistaken for gold.

But Olympic gold medals contain less than 10% gold. They're exactly the type of forgery the bite test is intended to root out. I've even seen athletes breaking their teeth on silver or bronze medals which makes even less sense to me.

Is it all just a big fuck you to the IOC, mocking them for being too cheap to spring for real gold?

Because if it ices over, your furnace will stop working on the day^1^ you most needed it.

Flushing it out from the outside with a bucket of hot water and a pump similar to this one ^2^ will melt the ice and open up the drain and you will get heat again.

^1^ Day because if your freezing weather lasts much longer than that, your homebuilder probably engineered a house that could handle the cold. Unfortunately my house was built by southern rednecks who'd never heard of insulation.

^2^ Not an endorsement of any brand or retailer. Just make sure it has a long enough hose. That's what made it work better than some of the things I tried first.