Eh. You should be cutting that with a wet saw, like any other masonry product. The problem is that a lot of contractors are trying to go fast, since time is money, and they skip wetting stone and masonry products while cutting.

Lead in gasoline was a stop-gap solution. If I remember correctly , it was added because we didn’t have the technology at the time to refine gas sufficiently to get the octane levels necessary to prevent pre-ignition of fuel (which causes rod knock) at a reasonable cost. Tetraethyl lead effectively increased the octane level/resistance to pre-ignition. As a side benefit, the lead slightly lubricated the valves and valve seats so that they lasted for tens of thousands of miles, instead of needing to be reground every few thousand miles.

It was a stupid stop-gap though, esp. since the dangers of lead were well known by then.

It’s only too late because I have too many other things that I do with my time. If I had a thousand lifetimes, or never needed sleep, it would be different. Unfortunately, you need to make choices about how you spend your time in life.

It would never be more than just a hobby; I’ve seen people I know try to make a living as musicians, and I simply don’t have that kind of passion to live in poverty just to get a taste of the dream.

It is what it is.

I tried reading his “Mission Earth” series. I did not finish the series; I managed about two and a half books before I realized that I wasn’t obligated to finish it just because I’d started.

Spoiler: he wasn’t. It was “The Apprentice” that made his fortune, before that it was just him squandering an inheritance.

I will always regret not learning to play drums; my parents insisted that I learn clarinet instead. (My brother got to play drums though. Bastard.) Oh well. I have too many hobbies to try and add another one at this point. :)

calling the reporting reckless and defamatory.

Uh.

First of all, he’s a public figure, so the standards for libel are considerably higher than they would be for me. Secondly, truth is an absolute defense against defamation. If what CNN reported was accurate, then Robinson has no suit. This lawsuit is solely about optics; there’s no fuckin’ way he wins it.

We’re trying to speedrun getting to the Fallout 2 prologue.

There’s no way in hell I’m going to be able to afford a spot in any of the vaults.

Couple big problems -

To start, this is a morning routine, not a mourning routine. While it is true that I often mourn the morn, dude needs to learn how to spell.

Second, if you’re up at 5:30, and not drinking coffee until 7am, and then have 3 hours of focused work, that right there is 10am. Your morning is supposed to be ‘won’ by this point, and you still haven’t gotten to the weight training part of your morning.

Why would I care if critics hate something?

…Because it’s expensive to go see a movie in the theaters, and going to see something that’s probably going to suck is a waste of time too?

I pirated ‘Borderlands’, and I still got ripped off. Knowing that ‘Borderlands’ was only a slightly bigger pile of shit than ‘Reagan’, why would I want to waste the time and kill the braincells to figure out that the critics were right about Reagan, too?

Oh no liberals didn’t like a movie! Cry me a river!

Hold on a sec, let me see if I’m translating this correctly.

Liberals hate this movie. Critics hate this movie. Therefore, critics are all liberals.

Do I have that thought process about right? Do you think that there might be any other reason that a movie critic–people who have a professional obligation to watch and critique films–might not like this film? Or is the only possible reason that they didn’t like it–despite whatever they wrote–is because they’re politically liberal?

What you’re saying is on par with claiming that the only people that didn’t like Battlefield Earth are people that hate Scientology.

Progressive metal.

One of my favorite bands has a song where it sounds like everyone is playing a different time signature simultaneously, and it feels out of time and chaotic… And then snaps into focus perfectly, before breaking up again. (I can’t identify the time signatures, no. I can hear at least two, and I’m pretty sure three. I think the drummer is doing polyrhythms?) You can listen to the same song five times in a row, focusing on a difference part each time, and hear something new each time. Or take Opeth’s “River”; the same same song seems to effortless combine elements of country, blues, 70s rock, NWBHM into something that feels both classic and new. (“New” despite being originally released in 2014.) Or, shit, An Abstract Illusion’s “Woe”; it’s nominally split into 7 tracks, but the lack of breaks between songs means that the whole thing flows into a single piece. Or, or or!, “Castaway Angels” by Leprous; Leprous stretches and strains the definitions of what metal is, and is not. While some of what they do is clearly metal, are they still a metal band?

The only thing that’s a real constant in progressive metal is that the bands all have impeccable musicianship.

There’s damn near universal consensus that it was a trash movie. When you look at a wider swath of reviews, you see that it’s still trash, with the outlets most likely to give it a favorable review are things like “Epoch Times”, and “Gospel Coalition”.

If the customer base skews wealthier, you’re going to have more people shopping there that are pulling in $500k+ annually, and probably a handful that are pulling in over $1M. If you only have one bottle in that price range, but you have 100 members at a given location that have enough income where that seems like a reasonable purchase, then you’re probably going to be able to sell it.

TBF, China is doing a good job at transitioning to renewables. Which isn’t the same as meeting their climate goals, but it’s better than we’re doing in the US overall.

There’s a bar in Chicago, Lady Gregory’s, that has a whiskey bible. They will sell you 40yo Scottish single-malt whiskey–they have multiple choices, including from distilleries that have been out of business longer than I’ve been alive–by the dram, at up to about $250 per dram (as of the last time I was there, in 2016). Assuming that they’re using the American standard dram measurement of 4ml/dram, that works out to up to $46,000 for an entire bottle.

People that shop at Costco skew far wealthier than the average American. Given that only a few Costcos, in very wealthy areas, are going to have even a single bottle of $28,000 whiskey, it’s entirely reasonable to expect that they’re going to be able to sell it.

it’s an expression of accelerationist thought.

…And that’s the really terrifying thing. How many vulnerable people are they willing to see die for their accelerationist fantasy?

And you don’t get to tell me what I do or don’t believe in.

I can tell you, and everyone else, that you’re lying, because it’s clear that you are. What you say, and what you do, is consistent with people that are religious conservatives, not with people that are actually leftists, or Satanists. I can say that what you say you believe is not what you actually believe, because you haven’t yet acted in a way that’s consistent with your claims.

None of my communities are racist

Uh huh. And I’m sure that your posting about transracialism and apparent support of it has nothing to do with white people raised in white families trying to erase ethnic and cultural identities by claiming them as their own, right? And I’m sure that you don’t mean it as a very thinly veiled attempt to refute the existence of transgender and gender-queer people either, right?

Oh, and hey, you entirely failed to address your red-pill community.

And attacking someone’s religion, regardless of what it is, is wrong too.

Yeah, no. You choose whether or not you adhere to a religion. If you don’t want to be Mormon, you can send a notarized letter to the records department in SLC and have your name removed from their records. Or you can choose to publicly do things that will get you excommunicated, like advocating for protecting children from sexual predators (like, say Sam Young did). If you don’t want to be tarred with that brush, then stop being Mormon.

The entire Mormon religion is a rotten religion, and it was started by a con man. Anyone that knows this, or has the ability to learn it, and still follows the con deserves condemnation. The information is out there for anyone that truly has an open mind, which is why Mormon leaders keep telling members not to read any sources that aren’t approved by the Mormon church. How’s that quote from Dalin Oaks go? Something about how things that are true, but not faith-affirming, aren’t useful?

You would think. I mean, that’s the whole principle behind things like reproductive rights, or LGBTQ+ rights, isn’t it? The freedom to control your own body without the government telling you what you can and can’t do with it, as long as you aren’t directly harming someone else? And yet. Ignore the fact that Stalin et al. almost always had purges of LGBTQ+ people, and that the rights of women were–and are in current Russia–sharply curtailed.