Bullshit. There are vast areas of the western US and Alaska where this simply is not economically possible or even desirable. The same is true for huge parts of Canada and Australia and other countries that have very remote and thinly settled regions. Even when I lived in Ireland, which is tiny and relatively densely populated, there were rural communities that only had bus service once or twice a day.

The prefix “Mc” or “Mac” is Celtic anyway, not Germanic, so you failed in that sense too.

None. My wife doesn’t know about tact, or the polite white lie or anything like that. She doesn’t have time for that bullshit. It’s one of her endearing qualities.

So is yours, ambiguous I mean.

In other words, I think you’re being ridiculously over-generous in your interpretation of ancient knowledge.

If it were in fact the case that the ancients had any real notion of Darwinian theory, I think they would have stated it in unequivocal terms, as they did with so many other Platonic and/or Aristotlean concepts.

Vaguely suggestive biblical lines interpreted as somehow suggesting an understanding of Darwinian theory strikes me as wishful thinking.

It’s partially but not entirely true. Having correct technique in your upper body matters too, as does accuracy, timing and the ability to create collisions.

All else being equal in terms of technical skill and leg strength, the guy with the bigger arms, fists as shoulders will have a stronger punch.

I had a ton of muscular atrophy in my right upper body due to a bulging disk in my neck --since corrected by surgery-- and I definitely noticed a huge diminution in my striking power, as did my regular sparring partners at the gym. So it definitely does matter.

I’m doing better now, but still not back to 100 percent and probably never will be. But that’s OK since I’m pretty old anyway.

That’s a very generous interpretation. I don’t think anyone can be blamed for not taking it seriously.

Most of what society tells us will make us feel happy and fulfilled in life is bullshit. Living a good life is primarily about your personal relationships. Things like social status and personal wealth are far less important.

you can always just call them by their first name or something else

Well I didn’t know you were called Dennis.

This is actually a win for UAW. They want to unionize Tesla’s workers, so any anti-union activity on Elon’s part just gives them more ammunition with the NLRB, which has strict rules regarding what ownership is allowed to say publicly. It plays directly into their hands.

Also worth saying that the Biden NLRB is the most pro-union and labor-friendly in history.

No, this is a straight up win for UAW. They are trying to unionize Tesla’s workers, so any anti-union activity on Elon’s part only plays into their hands at the NLRB level.

This is a win for UAW though. They are trying to unionize Tesla’s workers and this behavior gives them an edge on the already labor-friendly NLRB by showing that Elon is actively anti-union.

If anyone thinks for a moment that union organizers don’t actively plan this kind of thing out, I can assure that they do. It’s part of their job description. My union is a lot smaller than UAW and our organizers get up to all kinds of subterfuge and shenanigans, so I can only imagine what the UAW people are doing.

And your point is…?

As a guy wholly descended from the peoples of the British Isles, I have a similar feeling, only in my case, it really is true that my people have trashed the world for their personal benefit.

Granted that the Irish side of my family was never entirely on board.

Fair play. That said, please do look up Hanford. It’s way bigger than Westlake and is potentially a much bigger problem, though granted, Westlake is problematic as well.

Scarcely. This is the tyranny of small differences. Portland and Seattle have way more in common with one another than they do with any other big cities in the US. Sure, there are differences, but to the rest of the world they seem trivial.

It’s notable, for example, that even something so organic as Seattle’s “grunge” music scene actually had its roots in Portland with all of the proto-grunge bands, like Napalm Beach and Dead Moon that came out of Portland’s Satyricon in the 1980s.

Right, but that’s why people are talking about nuclear as a bridge technology, not as a permanent solution. Whether or not we can make it pencil out before smashing through all of the critical tipping points in global temperature averages is not something I’m qualified to have an opinion on, but I’m credibly informed that we might at least want to give it a serious look.

Oh good, let’s quibble about semantics instead of actually discussing the meat of the problem.

Were they stupid or deliberately misled, propagandized and manipulated by the fossil fuel industry? Sure some of them were stupid, but I don’t think that’s the whole story.

The problem isn’t fire, it’s that the waste at Hanford has leached into the soil and a plume of it is headed towards the Hanford Reach on the Columbia River. There’s a mitigation plan in place and it looks like it’s ultimately going to work, but it’s very expensive and not something that anyone wants to see happen again.

The waste is vitrified, meaning that it’s encased in what’s basically solid glass.