This would actually work, though of course you would never get more energy out of it than it took to set it all up. But conservation of energy doesn’t actually apply when expanding space time is involved. The universe doesn’t actually conserve energy in all cases. Or hell, in most cases.

I killed someone. It’s a called a dead name for a reason.

We have one. A small one that came with this little countertop ceramic honey pot we found at a pottery shop. We actually tried using it, but the ants got to the literal honey pot very quickly.

The sex part they’re a bit young for, but perhaps the Chinese Communist Party talking points have some merit. :D

It’s also the death of even the pretense of the American dream. Think about it. All pricing goes algorithmic, for all goods and services. Every company figures out the absolute maximum you can pay and charges accordingly.

What does this do in aggregate? It means that every raise you will ever get during your career is now immediately consumed by rising prices. This produces an economy where there is literally no point at all to advancing your career, gaining new skills, or bettering yourself. Why go to college or trade school, if the extra money you earn is just going to be consumed by companies charging your more for the same products? Why should anyone do anything but simply find the most tolerable minimum wage job they can, and simply work it until they die of old age? If all pricing is algorithmic, anything you do to improve your personal financial situation will be immediately hoovered up by the big conglomerates.

I really wonder about what people thought of that then. Did people really think it was a medical thing, or was this just a socialy respectable way for a man who couldn’t get his wife off to pass the task on to someone who could perform the task with an air of medical respectability?

Or Hell, maybe it was a 19th century kink or swinger thing. People have always been freaky. At times in history they just had to hide it better.

When these get deployed, they’ll finally implement eyeball tracking into the ads. Some smart TVs have in built cameras, and this could easily be one the norm. The companies so far have been too afraid to use it, but the tech has existed for years at this point. Technically, there’s nothing stopping YouTube from just requiring users to have an iris tracking camera enabled. And this would defeat a smart glasses AI ad filter. I suppose you could maybe have a screen on the front that projected fake eyeballs towards the camera, but maybe they could then defeat that.

Or, more likely, they’ll just lobby Congress to ban ad blockers and and blocking devices.

What’s worse is this even makes attending the game in person miserable. I know many very passionate college football fans who show up hours before the game to hang out with friends, and then more times then not end up leaving the game itself early. Why? Because the game itself is a drag. If a game is televised, they add extra breaks to the game to accommodate ads. The game gets stretched out from something of reasonable length to some absurd 3-4 hour long slog. People then only stick around if the winner remains unclear. If the games were a more reasonable 2 hour length, with more engaging and constant action, then most folks would stay to the end.

Exactly. The whole point of a ghost gun is that it’s untraceable. You made it yourself; they can’t track it so some purchase record. The way you use a ghost gun is you make it, use it, and then just leave it at the crime scene. You make sure you never touch the thing with bare hands, so there are no prints on it. If you made one ghost gun, you can make another. They’re easily replaceable. No need to keep it with you after the crime.

It’s important to keep in mind that Luigi is exactly the type of person that the police would try to pin this on. It’s so easy to see how it could happen. The NYPD had a high profile murder of a wealthy CEO to deal with. The NYPD leaders had politicians and corporate leaders breathing down their necks, demanding this case be solved immediately. And at the same time, the suspect seemingly made a perfectly planned getaway and had disappeared. This kind of thing has happened countless times in history. Have a high profile case that simply must be solved? Find some undesirable to pin it on. Ideally this is someone who is already dead, maybe someone who recently killed themselves. You don’t have to prove guilty beyond a reasonable doubt if you blame the crime on a corpse. But if a suitable dead person isn’t available, then a living person can do in a pinch.

If you want to pin a crime on someone, you find someone who resembles the suspect and also isn’t someone with a lot of social respect or clout. Homeless people are classic targets. And Luigi was a queer kid, out of contact with his family for months, living in a youth hostel. He is the exact type of person the NYPD would choose if they were looking for someone to pin this on. I’m sure they would try to pin it on a black person if they could, but the person they chose had to at least have some visual resemblance to the person on the security footage.

The walking stick was an afternoon project. Just carve, sand, and stain. The staff was a lot harder, specifically the tines that wind around the crystal. I made the staff off and on for several months. I built the tines up by cutting out thin strips of wood. Then I glued them together, laminating the tines up one layer at a time. Once they’re built up, I carved them into a smooth shape and filled in cracks in the epoxy. The amethyst is affixed into the socket I carved with epoxy as well.

I could have made the staff faster if I was really pushing it out. But just the time to glue it up would still require about 2 week to make.

Thanks! Here’s an example. That’s me on the left, my husband on the right.

I made both that walking stick and wizard staff from old Christmas trees. And a close up view of the staff:

When I can, I get a real tree. After Christmas, I trim all the leaves and branches off the trunk and put those in the municipal compost bin. I then put the trunk in storage and let it dry out for a year or two. Once dry, I’ll carve them into things like walking sticks, wizard staffs, etc.

I’m sure it will be built by a contracting company incorporated just for this purpose. And after this, it will be dissolved. They’ll have no reputation to defend.

Polls have been pretty accurate. Some of the polls involving elections Trump specifically runs in have been less accurate, but even the polling of his race in 2024 was pretty accurate.

If you’re involved in any kind of protest, the phone number of a lawyer. Hell, generalize this. Make sure you memorize numbers of at least the first few of your emergency contacts. You never know when you will be separated from your phone.

Because I’ve personally met Jesus Christ. He’s a 10,000 year old former cave man.

No no no. You want WoodsScientist. I’m WoodScientist.

You know, now that I think of it, there must have been some decent number of men that had a Hitler moustache before Hitler ruined it. Imagine being the guy in 1941 who is stubbornly refusing to shave it saying, “hey, it’s not my fault he’s a jackass. I’m not changing my life due to him!”