NielsBohron

As someone who lives in this same town, black bears are more like overweight raccoons.

Fun fact, our “city hall” is at the tiny community airport, which also had a restaurant with the best chicken wings in town (salt and vinegar wings FTW). The restaurant was still going when this happened in 2019, so my guess is the bear smelled the food and went looking for the kitchen, only to get sidetracked by the city council meeting.

“No Skyrim until you finish your homework and finish your chores” is a fantastic motivator for my 10yo. When I can model that I can’t play Rocket League with him until after I finish the dishes, it drives the point home that IRL responsibilities need to come before video games.

It’s more like a mutual friend. There’s a connection to both reactants (aka “binding affinity”), but not as strong as the bond that is formed between the two substrates (if the reaction is forming a covalent bond between the two substrates, anyway)

Edit: I’m actually saving this meme to show my coworkers that teach biochem, because it’s a pretty decent analogy. You can even extend it to other reaction classes, like a phosphorylase being like a friend who connects your buddy who is selling a guitar with your other buddy who wants to buy a guitar, or a isomerase being that friend who gives you a make-over so that another friend can set you up on a date.

The idea that humans need the diverse micro ecology of earth in order to not become ill over the course of generations is pretty interesting.

Really pretty well-supported by current science, too. I teach chemistry at a community college, so maybe I’m an outlier, but I read a ton of current research about the importance of diversity in “gut biomes” and the damaging effects of monoculture on global ecology, etc.

It seems pretty clear that even if engineers could solve the physical and chemical issues with a generation ship, the limiting constraints are almost certainly going to be biological and ecological, and KS Robinson’s estimates for the upper limits seem pretty reasonable based on current knowledge

GOG.com had it for pretty cheap last year and it worked as well on Win10 as I remember it working on Win95 (or was it XP? I forget). Point is, yes, you can get it for cheap on modern OS’s and it’s just as fun as it was in 2000

Someone what mentioned Kim Stanley Robinson’s Red Mars trilogy, and that is really good, but his book Aurora is almost exactly what you are describing.

Highly recommend.

Therefore adherents of a religion are also not implicit in extremism, right?

That’s literally laughable. Religion is a conscious choice to believe in something for which there is no evidence (which is colloquially known as “faith”). Allowing evidence to provide an understanding of how the natural world works is not the same as choosing to be a part of a community that is not based on reality.

It seems that we’re mostly in agreement that it’s the broad category of humans who are culpable

Correct. However, we differ in our definition of extremism, which I define as intolerance of others, willful ignorance of the natural world, and desire to restrict the rights of others based on their interpretation of Bronze Age manuscripts.

What term do the people who aren’t “nut jobs” use?

Evolution. If we’re feeling pedantic or spicy, “the theory of evolution.”

And you still didn’t address the fact that understanding and believing in a scientific advance does not make one an extremist. It doesn’t place you in the same ideological group as people who use that scientific advance for a crime. People who believe the theory of gravity are not “gravitationalists” or “Newtonians.” Moreover, if I use gravity to commit a crime, that doesn’t implicate everyone else who believes that gravity exists. I understand how nuclear reactions work; does that make me a “nuclearist” and therefore complicit in the bombing of Hiroshima?

I’d love for you to point me to a community of humans who haven’t done something extreme.

Secular humanists. There are a number of others I could cite if I felt like pushing your buttons, but I’ll stick with the single option so you don’t get distracted.

FWIW, in my experience as a scientist and science educator, “Darwinism” isn’t a real term used by anyone besides religious nut jobs looking to create a straw man. Just so you know.

Scientific advances are not extremist. People who understand the scientific method and make use of scientific advances are not extremists. People who use scientific advances to commit atrocities are extremists.

Edit: and you still didn’t demonstrate that “all humans and all ideologies are capable of extremism.”

You didn’t demonstrate that “all humans and all ideologies are capable of extremism.” You demonstrated that Nazis are extremists. Do you honestly not see the difference or are you simply muddying the waters so you can argue in bad faith?

which ironically enough is the exact same thing that fascist right wingers do, but ofc it’s not the same thing

Middle Ground Fallacy. Just because two sides exist does not mean the truth is somewhere in the middle. There are issues where one side is objectively right. Supporting the side that is wrong does not make you a advocate for civility; it makes you wrong.

Now, could there be more polite discussion? Sure. Does that mean anti-theists should allow religion to further taint our politics, rights, and conversation? Absolutely not.

GTFO of here with this bullshit.

Yes. I watched the whole series before starting the books and I found the books to be much, much better once I got to the part that the series hadn’t touched.

The problem is that the plot is close enough to the books that you know what’s coming, but the characters and details are enough that it’s still worth reading the books. But it is a slog if you’ve seen the series first.

And let’s not forget the Giants’ amazing reliever, Pablo Sandoval (0.00 ERA and 0.00 WHIP)!

For those not in the loop, he was a (seemingly) overweight 3rd baseman who made phenomenally athletic plays and hit monster home runs (especially in the postseason, leading to 3 World Series trophies and a WS MVP), earning the nickname “Kung Fu Panda.”

Then, in the twilight of his career, he also pitched 2 innings without allowing a baserunner, becoming a bit of an SF meme, including at least one “Let Pablo Pitch” bobblehead.

Better stay noided

It can be a passive-aggressive way to call you out, but not necessarily. If you and your SO have a healthy relationship, discussing problems in front of others shouldn’t necessarily be seen as an attack. In my experience, if a situation like this comes up, it’s usually either:

1. A way to help a friend who that might not realize they’re in a toxic/abusive relationship. For example, “Sometimes, Niels is really impatient with me being late, but he doesn’t demean me or put me down” can be a way of inviting me to provide some context or show that I’m not perfect but also that there are hard lines that shouldn’t be crossed

2. A way to empathize with a friend that is coming to grips with the fact that no relationship is perfect. It might not be a conscious invitation to participate, but it does potentially allow you to provide another way of thinking about the issue. For example, “Tell me about it; I’m always picking up after this guy” is not mean-spirited or passive aggressive, IMHO. If it seemed like they actually wanted me to participate rather than just have a way to vent, then depending on the friend I might jump in with “oh man, my ADHD has been really bad since the new project started at work! I’ve been a mess and it’s been really awesome that you’ve been able to help me out”

It’s still not an excuse for an SO oversharing something that you told them in confidence, and it’s not an excuse for turning an ongoing point of contention into a full-fledged argument in front of others, but it’s not necessarily cause for concern. If you’re a very private person, and you ask an SO to not discuss certain things with others, that’s a little different. But on the other hand, they do need to be able to discuss concerns with others to some extent, so maybe differentiating between “good friends are OK, but not that friend” would be helpful.

And the classic, “hold my beer”

This is the correct answer.

That’s how some of these generational boundaries blur together, where the experience that defines one, can already have been part of the previous in specific circumstances.

Definitely. Especially when you go out of your way to learn or experience things more commonly associated with different generations. Personally, I didn’t ever really need to learn DOS or Win3.2, but because I loved computers from a very early age, I spent a ton of time learning about computers from very early on. Now it means that I understand computers and technology way better than my contemporaries that are more traditional Millenials (and don’t even get me started on Gen Z and their inability to understand basic folder/file structures).

That applies to technology, music, films, books, etc., especially since the internet has completely changed the way that people find, learn about, and consume media. It’s kind of tangential, but if you want to hear a great example of the effect of internet on music culture, just listen to the song Losing My Edge by LCD Soundsystem for the story of a Gen Xer whose encyclopedic knowledge of music briefly made him “cool” in the early 2000’s until all the Millenials started finding all the stuff he experienced firsthand.

And personally, I’ve VERY interested in seeing 10 years down the line when we have the first adults who grew up with on-demand streaming and tablets/phones.

Yeah, I’ve already noticed some generational differences with my own kids and some of the students I teach. They seem to be simultaneously less patient and more patient. Less patient because they are used to always being able to watch something of their choosing and change shows whenever they get bored, but also more patient because everything can be paused as is available on-demand, so they have no problem waiting for a more opportune time to watch something as a group (and with my kids, we only started to let them use tablets after they turned 5 and then only on road trips).

It’s also interesting because the cultural zeitgeist is a lot less monolithic. Instead of everyone watching Ninja Turtles or everyone listening to Nirvana, kids have developed their own little niches and shared interests by watching whatever piques their interest. Anecdotally, it seems like it’s resulting in a lot less of an “in-crowd.” Even though there are still “the cool kids,” the cool kids have known shared interests with the uncool kids, so it’s lot more like a web than a hierarchy. In my very limited experience, every day is like the end of The Breakfast Club, albeit still with plenty of drama and cattiness.

I’ve always subscribed to the “shared formative experience” model of describing generations. The description I always remember best is that the most impactful experience that separates Millenials from Gen X is that Gen X remembers getting their first computer at home but for Millenials there was always a computer at home, while the dividing line for Millenials and Zoomers is that Millenials remember a time before the internet and Gen Z doesn’t. Being more or less tech literate does tend to shift how we interact with some of these paradigm shifts, at least in my anecdotal experience.

Personally, I’m right on the boundary between Gen X and Millenial by this definition, as I remember my family getting our first home computer, but barely. That’s not really all that relelvant to the discussion, but it really does help me understand some of the fundamental differences between the various generations, especially as a boundary case that doesn’t particularly feel like I belong to either group. Plus, I work in at a community college with a bunch of Gen X and Boomers, teaching everyone from Gen Z to Boomers, so knowing what some of the most common formative experiences really helps me communicate better.

Yeah…yeah. I think that was when I lost all faith in Hollywood to adapt anything without shitting all over it. It’s gotten better with some recent stuff (Dune, for instance), but if I ever have to watch anything that is based on a property that I like, I try to go in with my expectations at absolute fucking bedrock.

Also, this is a reasonable time to mention one of my favorite heavy bands of all time, He Is Legend. They take their name from the Matheson book, and their biggest “hit” is called “I Am Hollywood,” so your comment just made me flash back to the late 2000’s metalcore scene.

For sure. I agree with you completely and see the connection to hexbear. I was mostly just making a joke that my particular circle had different but still very specific inside jokes.