Nullity wrote on Jun 24, 2025, 12:40:

Glass bottles found to contain more microplastics than plastic bottles - Phys.org.

Well that's about the silliest headline I've read in a while.

It does sound silly, but that is what they found. They seemed to think it was due to the manufacturers using glass bottles handling the plastic caps too roughly -- the particles in the bottles, matched the color and plastic type of the caps. It could be the sample size was small, nothing in the article indicates how many products they looked at or how many samples they took.

WannaLogAlready wrote on Jun 24, 2025, 09:58:
Besides, Mr. Tact lives in his high ivory tower and BoP is an obstreperous curmudgeon (except to his dog)

Wait, I don't get credit for being a curmudgeon?! Dang! Ivory tower? Well, I guess my brick ranch is painted white, but not much of a tower...

Depending on your definition of the sword falling, I will probably live long enough to see it fall for some. Hell, it already is falling for some people, right? But I won't be here for the full collapse, assuming it happens. Outside the climate problems, it would be interesting to see how the world is impacted when the population collapses, which a lot of the people studying population demographics seem pretty sure is on its way. On the one hand, less of us seems like a good thing, on the other the way the world economy is built, it probably isn't.

I'm pretty sure humanity will still be around in 100 years. But I wouldn't care to bet if it will be in 500 years, at least not in any way most of us would like to experience. I hope I'm wrong. I hope we figure it out again. The last 200 years have been crazy in both good and bad ways. I suspect it to continue being crazy good and bad for a long time to come.

Simon Says wrote on Jun 23, 2025, 17:09:
All I'm hearing in the last 2 comments is pretty much irrelevant, you aren't the demographics most at risk.

Those that die are the the poor, the old, the very young, the sick, etc.

That's true, despite being 60+ I am not in an at risk demographic. But at least I didn't say it would be "fun" when tens of thousands of people die. And yes, I realize you were being sarcastic, but is that really something you should be joking about? *shrug* Whatever. Have a good one.

Simon Says wrote on Jun 23, 2025, 15:23:
Wait til you guys have multiple recurring "wet bulb" events every year and tens of thousands of people die each time.

It's gonna be so much fun.

I'm in the midst of the heat wave (central Illinois) and I am feeling so good about the solar I had installed in Apr 2022 -- haven't paid for a single kWh since then. The great part is the same thing that causes the need for the power causes me to produce more power. Even switched to an electric water heater this spring since I have enough excess generation to easily cover it. Stay cool out there everyone!

In the pinball article there is a photo which shows the Captain Fantastic pinball machine. I remember playing that.

I wouldn't say I am getting good at Balatro. I would say I suck a lot less now then I did when I started playing.

Apologies if I made a bad assumption, but your language suggested to me that you were unaware NASA rockets had blown up on launch pads during testing. Men even died during tests, and yet the Apollo missions still happened.

This was a test. The test may have failed, but that doesn't necessarily mean they won't learn something from it. They do the tests for good reasons. It makes no more sense that astronauts would avoid SpaceX rocket now because of this test than it does to have assumed the Apollo astronauts would have refused their missions.

Prez wrote on Jun 21, 2025, 16:20:
Would any astronaut ever want to be inside of one of Space-X's rockets?

Did you know all three crew members of Apollo 1 were killed during a cabin fire during a launch rehearsal test? Spaceflight is a dangerous activity. Humans are not perfect. There will be mistakes made and people will die. It is unavoidable. That said, obviously every single precaution should be and usually is taken.

Mr. Tact wrote on Jun 17, 2025, 21:35:
More than anything I suspect the "remake syndrome" which has infected Hollywood is the impact of corporate think getting better control at the studios. I mean, film making has always been about making money. But making money didn't drive EVERY decision previously and now, it does.

LOL -- I just saw they are making another "I Know What You Did Last Summer" -- No indication this film is part of a series, or seemingly a series of films in my eyes. Hilarious.

Okay, I watched the Taconic video and while this won't add to the discussion of what might have happened, something about it did really strike me as odd. It almost immediately seemed to me that "Law & Order" had written an episode inspired by if not loosely based on that incident. But upon checking dates, both L&O and L&O CI were off the air by the time the Taconic incident happened. So... that is really weird.

More than anything I suspect the "remake syndrome" which has infected Hollywood is the impact of corporate think getting better control at the studios. I mean, film making has always been about making money. But making money didn't drive EVERY decision previously and now, it does.

I didn't read the article, but I looked up Ruth's Chris Steak House on Wikipedia. And yeah the reason is pretty much what anyone would guess..

The Flying Penguin wrote on Jun 16, 2025, 12:43:
We MAY have 20 active users at most, but somehow maxed out our bandwidth limit last month, mainly due to AI scraping.

That does sound damn annoying.

The Flying Penguin wrote on Jun 16, 2025, 10:46:
My web site got hammered last month by AI bots, AGAIN. I had to work with my host to setup blocks.

Work web-site or a personal site?

In slightly related news I see YouTube has made another push to try to get past ad blockers. Caused me to waste some time trying to figure out why the YouTube function icons weren't working this morning... eventually had to disable Brave's internal ad-blocking. Which had no noticeable impact since Ad-Blocker and uBlock Origin apparently had it covered and I haven't seen any ads so... yeah whatever YT.

I only ever heard of him last year I think. Looked at his channel and could tell by the titles they wouldn't interest me. Decided to try one, but it wasn't long before I said, "Yep. That's stupid" and left. *shrug* I applaud his ability to read the audience and do what makes him a ton of money, but I'd have a hard time convincing myself to do the same thing even if I was able, which I am not.

If Stellar Blade is a "gooner" game, I wonder what they call the actual "adult" games -- oh I don't know like "Leap of Faith" for example.

InsolentCow wrote on Jun 13, 2025, 19:43:
My brother died back in 2009 from this very cancer.
He was a young man at the time, in his late 30s.
Non-smoker, non-drinker and a PT nut.
Sigh.
Life is not fair.

As I started reading the article my first thought was "micro plastics" -- which they did mention. But apparently they just don't know at this point. I don't they even really know what function, if any, the appendix fulfills. There are some theories, but no definitive conclusions.

That is a pretty good episode. As for the idea put forth in the article that "... some fans perceive its earliest seasons.... as a slog to get through before you hit the real good stuff." I would say that is only true for anyone who 1) Had unrealistic expectations and 2) Never watched the show after having completed the entire series. Much like Babylon 5 which used a similar story telling structure, it is far better the second time around.

This comment was edited on Jun 13, 2025, 14:37.

Maybe. Let's hope we don't find out.

jdreyer wrote on Jun 12, 2025, 16:21:
100 million?

I think I can safely say, 100 million deaths in the US from a pandemic would probably be enough to convince most of the idiots. Most.