Don Edwards

Same things happen in webcomics. In Twokinds an anonymous and unimportant female tiger among a crowd of tigers did something mildly interesting and got dubbed "Tigress #37" in the forum. She's now the daughter of the feline delegation's leader. And how do we know that wasn't the plan to begin with? Well, there's her now-canon name... Therie Sah-Van.

Yeah, looking at Canada and Britain lately, I'm skeptical. And with the two-party system, I've often wondered if the two parties were competing to see which could pick the worst candidate. Could be worse, though - we could have a one-party system. (With two parties, one of them will pick the SECOND worst, and that candidate will sometimes win.)

Rather disappointing. 1) only one variety of tea tested (I'm a bit of a tea snob: my regular tea is pu'erh, currently a brick from the 2008 harvest, but for special occasions I have a brick from the 1968 harvest) 2) their time test used only 1, 3, and 5 minutes, and then decided that 3 minutes is optimal - without testing any even or non-integer number of minutes 3) no second-cup time tests (I expect a minimum of 3 good cups from a teaspoon of pu'erh leaves; I assure you that for the second cup, a minute of steeping is much longer than necessary) ---- Here's why not to boil your water in the mug, in the microwave - which they briefly touched on but didn't explain: the inside surface of the glass, china, or glazed ceramic mug is too smooth. The water can super-heat - above boiling - because there are no microscopic irregularities for the vapor bubbles to start forming on. Then you drop in some sweetener or a teabag, or otherwise bring that water into contact with something not as smooth as glass, and it starts boiling everywhere all at once - which bears a passable resemblance to an explosion, and throws above-boiling-hot water in all directions.

Round dice are actually pretty easy to roll. What's hard is getting them to stop, and then deciding which number is on top.

In fact I strongly recommend NOT looking it up. Just imagine something as horrible as you can, and add 15%.

A SCUD that misses the intended point of impact by a little bit, often still does the job. An anti-missile missile, nope, it has to be more accurate - or be rather plural. Both the accuracy and the plurality increase the cost.

Nothing is going to increase to infinity in a finite amount of time. However, it may increase to close enough to infinity that the difference doesn't matter to anyone (or, in this case, there can't be anyone for it to matter to). I occasionally use the term "functionally infinite" - meaning yeah, there's a finite limit to that, but you're never going to hit that finite limit because you'll hit this other finite limit much, much sooner.

Yeah, that truck is perfectly fine. It's just delivering a planet. Where do you want them to unload it?

I certainly wouldn't. You each had work-related secrets you weren't supposed to discuss, and you each knew that the other had such secrets. Presumably you respected each other's situation enough to not share and not pry. While I have no data on the subject, I would be unsurprised if it turned out that such couples are a bit more stable than average. (On the other hand, there is no shortage of NON-work-related stuff that can eff up a marriage.)

I suppose it would make firing while in motion a bit trickier... but I don' t know if they do that.

Rampaging tribes of vicious dust bunnies?

And why da eff did they use an equator-centered Mercator projection for a map of the north Atlantic?

And/or learning of Diane and/or Susan.

Almost looks like her tail has two tips.

Thanks, found it. https://www.reddit.com/r/NonCredibleDefense/comments/yafglj/breaking_news/

I need a link for that...

The king of denial did not suggest that the recruitment effort would be successful...

And did the medics tell you something like that might happen? Did you call and ask about it?

Osmium rounds. Price negotiations for osmium (it isn't a regularly-traded commodity) currently start at US$400 per troy ounce. Osmium is the densest naturally-occurring element, at 22.59 grams per cubic centimeter. (Depleted uranium is only 19.1 g/cm3 and costs circa $26 per ounce, while lead is merely 11. 34 g/cm3 and costs roughly a dollar a pound when purchased in ton lots.) It's also one of the rarest natural and non-radioactive elements in the earth's crust. Aside: while looking for that info, I happened across a 2017 article giving info on the world's 25 strongest militaries. Russia was #2. Ukraine was not on the list. Might need an update.

I vaguely remember a story, I think it was in a comic book, where Merlin (of Arthurian legend) had been granted eternal life... but not eternal youth. Several centuries old, basically all his weight-bearing joints were shot. Then there's this other story, where a wannabe-immortal wannabe-world-dictator summoned one of the Fates for a consultation... (He was later turned into a ceramic statue and, a day or two before the Solstice, dropped into the Marianas Trench.)

Lemon is something I add only immediately before dumping the drink down the drain and washing the glass. Or dumping the food in the trash and washing the dish.

Well, it's reported that they did win their first big battle... ...that being, the regular-army troops demanded that the conscripts hand over all the personal possessions they brought with them (apparently a traditional thing in that military), and the much more numerous conscripts beat the tar out of them.

I know that feeling. Wednesday morning I was fighting with a water hose and two rocks decided to join the fray. One tripped me; the other bashed me in the thigh really hard. I might have had a few craps in the resulting expletives. (Keeping track of what I said was not on the priority list.) It hurt enough that at the supermarket yesterday, I chose to use one of their powered carts. And if we went to a similarly large store today, I might still use one. Oddly enough, the bruising and swelling were both just barely visible at all, even though it's still quite tender in an area a bit larger than the palm of my hand. (I still defeated the hose though.)

Warn your manicurist. The good ones can make allowances that drastically reduce the chance of getting cut. (Note though that "drastically reduce" is not "eliminate".)

Hey, I'm not talking about whether it is reasonable for Iran to be angry at the US. I'm talking about the dichotomy of Iran being at war against the US when the US is not at war against Iran.