TheVat

Who is keeping you from your heritage? What fanatical beliefs have been imposed on you? Were you forced to attend a mosque? Marry a 13 year old? Sacrifice a goat during Eid Al-Adha? Join a jihad? You keep making the claim you have personal experience of cultural imposition - what are examples?

Thank you, @Cap'n Refsmmat . And thanks for your helping us keep aligned to a "stable member matrix." Though clicking on the above yields Sorry! That page does not exist. Error code: 2S136/1Z

It certainly has been a misnomer here, as per my earlier allusion to indigenous tribes in the US. Where it was definitely about erasure. It's some better now, and the nearest high school to us now has Lakota (the language of the Sioux tribes around here) as an elective course. Agree with your comments about the fears of "replacement" or marginalizing as drivers of FR authoritarian subversion of democracy. Some of the manosphere loonies are especially worried about manly men disappearing as all are replaced by "soyboys." The mention of veganism reminded me of this and generally the way mythologies proliferate from some starting single kernel of anxiety.

To many Americans, accustomed to a highly heterogenous patchwork quilt of cultures, there's a tendency to find phrases like "______ integration" offensive. Integration is a word that somehow always conjures its opposite. Having lived next to an indigenous reservation, I know "assimilation" (with it's very dark history out here) also makes good people bristle. Such terms are a reminder of how often a core ideal of America has been tarnished by its own citizens. Groupthink, usually paranoia-driven, subverts all the fine talk enshrining individualism. I saw a similar thing spending a summer in France 50 years ago. People bashing Arab immigrants, others lamenting the buckling of France's ideals of personal freedom and cultural tolerance. La plus ça change, la plus c'est la même. Even some liberals here are apt to favor diversity so long as it doesn't come to their street. When it's close to home, they really want....total assimilation. Borg-like levels of it. Glad I'm not a social scientist. I think it would be incredibly difficult to plumb the depths of American hypocrisy and cognitive dissonance over what it means to protect the nation's core values.

Florida's swamps are besieged by these slippery devils, and people are looking for new ideas. An aquatic ecologist (quoted in second article below) is looking for a better eel trap. (Hovercraft optional.) https://www.fws.gov/media/ecological-risk-screening-summary-asian-swamp-eel-monopterus-albus-high-risk (...)There are negative impacts of introduced populations documented from peer-reviewed literature for this species, specifically in Florida where significant declines in the abundance of native fishes and decapods were found following the introduction of M. albus. M. albus is regulated in multiple U.S. States. M. albus has also been introduced beyond its native range in Asia and there have been reports of negative economic impacts due to burrowing behavior that has damaged rice fields in the Philippines and Japan. The History of Invasiveness for M. albus is classified as High due to the multiple established nonnative populations that have led to negative impacts. https://people.com/invasive-asian-swamp-eel-threatens-florida-wildlife-and-ecosystem-12066812 “We have no way to remove this animal from the wetlands,” Florida International University Associate Professor and aquatic ecologist Nathan Dorn said in a March presentation. “If someone wants to come up with a great trap, I’ll try it.” Dorn’s laboratory, which studies Everglades restoration and focuses on Asian swamp eels, confirmed their discovery at the Marshall Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge in 2025, noting that the species might have reached the area the year before. The fish has since taken out a massive portion of the crawfish, frog and small fish populations that Florida’s heralded long-legged wading birds rely on.

News from Silicon Valley in Emily's feed: Per aide: Meta renegotiates a set AI to generate media rep.

My first stab at it was identity, x=x, but then I wondered if it was too much a tautology. An equation should "say something" if we're speaking in the domain of science. The simple ones do seem to be definitions. V=IR. The complexity comes when we unpack the deeper physical meaning of volt and amp and ohm as those exist in a circuit. (Or that volts are also joules per coulomb, or watts per amp, or electronvolts per elementary charge, etc.) Then we get into complex relationships that are teased out empirically and can't always be handily compared to water flow in some ideal Hagen–Poiseuille setup. For me, a really simple equation would say something that doesn't get you into all that unpacking. It's late here, so I'll have to think on that later. Wait, okay, I guess water flow in a pipe at its most basic might be one of the simplest, the rate is Q = A × V (Flow Rate equals Area times Velocity).

Dennis Dias has been reeling in quite a few years. I think I see what a grampus whole note (semibreve, as the Limey folk call it) is, something emitted by a cetacean that will not hold up well with excess reverb? And this acoustic accident somehow caused some distress in a Kentish town? Fascinating. Well, any band that composes the palindromic "Aja" is on Emily's playlist. As for hits like Hey, Nineteen, I may have to back, Jack, and play them again. On Emil bus, Dias, sitar rat, is said sublime, no?

Mahayaha Buddhists avoid the word worship in describing their veneration of the bodhisattvas, but it seems to me to have some elements of that. Guanyin, for example, the bodhisattva of infinite compassion, is widely prayed to in East Asia for help and safety. Guanyin et al aren't seen as gods, nor as some ultimate spiritual refuge like a supreme being, but they strike me as sort of "god adjacent" in that they are prayed to and seen as guides towards nirvana (which they themselves have put off, so they can help mortal humans). Because of that, I find "atheist" carries maybe the wrong connotation for Buddhist practice when applied in the Western sense. Just saying, you have to be careful with your definition if you apply the term to a Buddhist.

Yes, the AI is confused if it thinks a site on a German host server could be "working in America" while kaput in Europe.

Emily took issue with some critcisms of her life by Emma of Normandie. I am mess, eh? Cudgel a leg, Duchess Emma I.

So this one went six days. Wonder if Pinball could get on now? I.e. was all this downtime for an upgrade or flushing out bots or something site improving? Hetzner gmbh, the host, refuses to tell you anything, I did learn that. Anyway, would be helpful to hear from @Cap'n Refsmmat or someone who knows what happened. Also, is there an email we could reach an admin or owner at, when site goes down? At present there's a catch-22 - you need the site up to reach anybody you could tell the site is down.

Yes, old cowboy saying out here is never squat with your spurs on. This might add TMI to your TIL experience but... when cowboys had to poop, far from commodious civilization, they often would remove their boots rather than remove the spurs. They left their spurs permanently attached to a dedicated pair of riding boots, as letting leather boots sit without spurs could distort the shape of the heel counter (a structural support at the back) over time. There was also a spur shelf (a ridge on the back of the heel) which held the metal band securely in place, and this also was better not to keep taking on and off.

I have to ask: are you on the spectrum? This quote is so clearly someone responding to your prejudice with some withering sarcasm, that I have to wonder if you cannot pick up on basic social signals. Try to zoom back a bit from your own written words and consider what they reveal. Also.... evidence? Beyond your personal anecdotes about raper/pillagers named Bob, and your hot takes on what seem to be impoverished areas?

Not easy to do, either. Once you're seen as funny, it can be really hard to transition to serious dramatic roles. Bill Murray tried and failed in The Razor's Edge.* Steve Martin was fairly successful in some darker roles. Most of the famous SNL alums tended to stay with comedy AFAICT. * My partner and I witnessed this debacle in a crowded movie theater. Everytime Murray would raise his eyebrows or, really, react in any ironic way to another character, titters would run through the audience. (And often, us) If Somerset Maugham had written offbeat wisecracking comedies, there might have been some scope for Murray's considerable talents.

Gaga not my thing (nor is rap, but it's somewhat inescapable if one raised millennial kids in the US), but popular for her stage theatrics I gather. I liked Beyonce in Cadillac Records. (it is my understanding that she is bootylicious) Patinkin is probably better known to those who followed Broadway productions, e.g. his perf as Che Guevara in Evita or George Seurat in...that Seurat musical. He was Inigo Montoya in The Princess Bride, if that means anything. And starred in various popular tv series, like "Homeland." *(Sunday in the Park with George)(Once I visualized his most famous painting, the title came to me)

If by pop icon you mean just musical icons, then I'd say Lady Gaga and Jennifer Lopez are two prominent examples of jumping from concert stage to screen. Gaga is okay as an actress, but Lopez is to me more of a standout. I also liked Bowie as Tesla in The Prestige, awa TMWFTE. There's also Awkwafina, in Crazy Rich Asians, who was a pop rapper. Possibly best known for a song titled "My Vag." Yes, that's what it sounds like. It is a song about her lady parts. Quite graphic. I think it's satirical. Idris Elba, now a big screen star, was a popular London DJ. Solid actor, never seen him phone it in. Oh, and can't leave Mandy Patinkin off the list. Stellar musical vocalist (Evita, for one) and solid screen (both tv and film) actor. Madonna? Meh. So overhyped, I'm leaving her off my list.

Possibly a selection effect in such statistics. Ordinary drivers, if they have an accident, or several, and/or rack up lots of speeding tickets, don't usually remove themselves from private driving.* Taxi drivers OTOH could be removed from their jobs. Thus leaving a higher proportion remaining of taxi drivers with excellent reaction times and pattern observation and predictive skills. Business models in this regard would be fairly darwinian. * That would vastly improve driving where I live, if they did. Unfortunately most drivers of lesser skill and judgement are only "culled from the herd" by racking up enough points for license revocation or having insurance cancelled (and even that doesn't stop some of them).

Wow. Emily is reading the election results combined with a physics article. Dog nips self, Farage vegetal, U. Clacton not calculate GeV, e.g. a raffle's spin god. .

Empire, rip me. Binface, decaf? Nib? Leg in, Nigel?

The amount of navving I've done from vague directions, memorized maps, or wilderness treks with a compass, I guess I'm cognitively safe till 100 or so, barring strokes, parasitic infestation, or too much Netflix. What's funny (to my wife, anyway, who is too easily amused) is that I will occasionally lose track of the car in a large parking lot. When I was in London, I did okay finding places, except for one occasion when the cabin lights failed in the Tube. Sitting in darkness as we rolled along I got nervous and grasped the arm of a fellow next to me. As we approached another stop, I asked, "Is this Cockfosters?" "No," he answered, rather sternly, "It's mine!" (Sorry. Been saving that one.)

I'm taking a wild guess of...the latter? Interior secretary (and reported emu eater) Doug Burgum was the governor of North Dakota, perched atop the Bakken shale bed and epicenter of the US fracking boom. "Frackin' the Bakken" was the catchphrase. I'm doubtful these guys read any of the print, fine or otherwise. We could use a Senate on that model. Instead of twits like the infamous senator from Oklahoma who, during a cold spell, walked into the chamber with a snowball in hand crowing "See? No global warming!" Nota bene, on emu grub: Laminates La Brea tar pits, tip rat a 'erbal set animal?

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/aug/13/forests-carbon-dioxide-emissions (Clip) In that past era, forests covered a much larger extent of the world than now, with no ice at the poles and much higher seas than today. But while the PETM changes occurred over many thousands of years via carbon released by the natural forces of volcanic activity, current climate change is much faster and caused by our deliberate combustion of fossil fuels. The paper is a “genuine advance” and provides a record over tens of thousands of years that shows the knock-on impacts of thinning forests, according to Trevor Keenan, a scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, who was not involved in the new research. “The headline is that warming won,” Keenan said. “Carbon dioxide rose sharply, and any benefit that gave the forests was not enough to stop canopies from opening up and staying open for tens of thousands of years.” This is worrying because the pace of change today, he added. “The ancient carbon release happened over thousands of years, ours is happening over decades,” he said. “Faster forcing gives ecosystems less room to adjust. “Second, those forests faced climate change alone. Today’s forests are dealing with the same warming while also being fragmented, logged, converted to agriculture and exposed to altered fire regimes. If forests thinned under the slower and cleaner version of this experiment, that is not a reassuring precedent.”

Haha. A propos of the housing sidebar here, I do want to voice my support for the Clacton candidate who has promised to build one affordable house, Count Binface. I am not informed enough to weigh in on the nationalization (Brit. nationalisation) of Adele, but I trust Binface has given his positions careful thought, unlike some of his competitors.