Coincidentally, this very week, I accidentally texted my neighbor a vulgar comment about TSA patting down my balls that was meant for the Mrs.

Unsend did not work 🙄😙🤮

I got a little taste of what Truman must’ve felt like when he realized everyone got to watch his awkward years.

New for Sid Meier AI Incarnate’s Civilization 24: Play as infamous 7-time (and counting) President Donald Trump!

Personality: Aggression Score: Varies per round +30 diplomacy points to players following the government: autocracy, monarchy, fascism, corporate kleptocracy +30 points to players following the government: theocracy and the same religion -30 diplomacy to players with settlements within 6 tiles of him -30 to players following the government: Philosophy, Freedom, Digital Democracy +30 points to war mongers and players who have killed other players -20 points if the player total score is less than 40% his score +20 for gifts of gold per turn that are at least 10% of his current gold per turn +10 points for military parades -100 points for denouncements but +120 points if player attempts to declare friendship after denouncement ends

Theme: Make America Great Again! and Again. and Again… and Again… +10 Religion points per city -10 Happiness to cities with population > 5 -8 Science +4 Food to all cities with <5 population that are not within 6 tiles of another player’s borders +1 Gold per city but -3 Gold to cities that are within 6 tiles of another player’s borders

Apostles automatically gain the “fervent believer” trait +4 religion points -1 science points +1 climate damage +5 health for each opponent unit defeated within 1 tile Can convert into a militia or engineer unit for 10 turns

Unique Wonder: Southern White House +75 gold for each player spy or diplomat that occupies this wonder; player’s spy/diplomat gains two levels of insight and spies operate at +5 in the city that contains this wonder Must be built near a lake and ocean tile

Unique Building: Golf Course +1 Happiness but only for 1 of every 10 city population (min = 1) +1 Culture points +3 Religion points +1 climate damage Must be built on: marsh, rainforest, beach, archaeological site, natural wonder or national park

Unique Building: Frac Well (Replaces Windmill) +4 Production +5 Gold +10 climate damage +3 Energy -3 Appeal Can only be built by engineers Can be built on opponents territory, when constructed in this manner -4 happiness to the player where this building resides

Unique Victory Condition: Art of the Steal Can only be won if 3 players or more exist All players are under the following governments: corporate kleptocracy, fascism, anarchy

Unable to win the following victory conditions:

• Diplomacy
• Science
• Culture
• Religious

Everybody shamed Joe Manchin (and rightly so for holding up the green new deal), but that MF was one of the reasons the dems had 51.

There are so few progressive states that, if the dems are going to ever win the Senate and be able to confirm judges, they are going to have to hold space for progressive and moderate dems alike.

Now, there is some silver lining this year. There’s an independent in Nebraska who is neck and neck with the GOP incumbent there. This person is pro union but with some socially conservative values. If elected, he will likely vote sometimes with the dems and sometimes with the GOP, essentially being a spoiler for both, but probably to the great advantage of Nebraska.

I think this person should be celebrated and encouraged. We need more people who see country over party in politics.

Serious questions here. The world, by design, has arid zones around the tropics. If we heat up the planet, does that mean deserts pop up in other places? Like, will the Sahara and Cape Town turn green, but Spain and Italy and Argentina turn to desert? And if that’s the case, will hurricanes more often frequent New England, but less frequent Florida? Also, isn’t one of the major reasons we have hurricanes in the first place due to Sahara seeding them? If less desert then…?

Please keep the October surprises coming.

Why use a nudge when you can have an agenda and a sledgehammer.

There are a whole trump load of Magats that infested that area of Florida in recent years. If we’re relying on Pat as our local weatherman, you would have thought the hurricane would approach further south.

Same thing up in those Western NC mountains. Asheville may be a cesspool of sin, but everything around it is a sea of red.

All schadenfreude aside, this whole hurricane season really really sucks. I hold a lot of sympathy and empathy for those just trying to live their lives. We as a collective community are not doing enough fast enough and we need better leadership in place that will bite the bullet here and make the hard political decisions that need to be made.

He also got convicted by a jury of his peers.

I wanted to agree with you at some point here, but I just can’t bring myself to it.

He didn’t just notice her at 14, he kept on pursuing her. He frequented the toy store she worked at with his family. He then frequented the restaurant when she was a server (doesn’t say what age). It paints a pretty clear picture of obsession.

He also had already knocked up one of his office staff outside of his marriage. It doesn’t seem that this person has much regard for women.

Sure gifts, dinners and travel are part of courtship, but the line gets damn hazy when you start introducing drugs (particularly ones you prescribe) into the mix. I think as a society we certainly should frown upon that.

Do you mean to tell me that you are not actually a flying squid!?

Consider the numbers presented. If you can figure out the math on how to get the 24th ranked countries out of 102 rankings to be below 100, then I’ll reconsider.

The countries who rank higher than 100 only have about 1.5 billion people within them and their average is only slightly higher compared to the countries that have an average significantly lower. For example, India with its 1 billion people is on there at an average of 82.

The math doesn’t add up for an average global human. I think we need to know more about how the scores in the study are calculated.

What does the abbreviation stand for?

Per the Wikipedia definition:

An intelligence quotient (IQ) is a total score derived from a set of standardised tests or subtests designed to assess human intelligence.

This is a well written article. I’m not sure how the OP came to their conclusion. The US ranks 24th on average IQ (with an IQ of 98) and is in good company with France, Denmark, Australia also at 98. For those curious, Canada, Finland and Germany were 99.

24th out of 102 should not be considered “dumber than average”. Additionally, as the article clearly states, the average has been going up, approximately 3 points per decade, and this is partly due to an increase in logical thinking.

East Asia is the outlier here, with many countries at 101 or higher (China at 105) though I find it curious that Hong Kong and Macau were singled out separately from China.

I wonder if these higher numbers have something to do with the homogeneity within these cultures, the average age of the county’s population, and/or, as another commenter mentioned, the way in which the higher IQ countries approach education.

JoMomma has spoken.

I’m hearing a lot of what y’all are saying on this thread and sitting here nodding my head in agreement. I was going to remark something a bit off color as well, but in finding the words to say, I remembered a story on a podcast that I frequently listened to.

Here it is: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/levar-burton-reads/id1244649384?i=1000651142934

I don’t want to give away the story in case anyone wants to listen to it. It was eye opening for me. One of the best that Levar read IMO.

But all that is to say, maybe, just maybe, like the black klansman, it would actually be a good thing to have a Republican Party on the campus of FAMU. I think we need leaders who inspire less polarization of our country, if she is it, then I think she should be celebrated.

For the record, I have walked the campus of FAMU, and it is a lovely place. The trees covered in Spanish moss are wonderfully bucolic to stroll through in such a busy city. And of course, shout out to Loretta.

Ah the early MTV era, such a good time to be alive for music.

I don’t know about y’all, but I’d prefer not to win a Darwin Award.

I’m more a visual person, so let me show you some graphs: Famine rates are down: https://ourworldindata.org/images/published/Famine-death-rate-since-1860s-revised_850.png

We can do so much more with our computing resources - Note, logarithmic scale: https://www.singularity.com/images/charts/MicroprocessorClockSpeed.jpg

Poverty is down: https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/chorus/uploads/chorus_asset/file/2545610/Screen_Shot_2014-12-12_at_10.34.38_AM.0.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0,0,100,100

Billions of people live in a democracy, before 1850 almost none did: https://bigthink.com/the-present/democratic-rights/

Have y’all seen the pictures of chimney rock?

There have been some responses: https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/08/1153656 https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/07/experts-hail-icj-declaration-illegality-israels-presence-occupied