I don’t attribute a lot of positive things to social media, but I will give it credit for turning me around on spiders. Arachnophobia scared the crap out of me as a kid. For years afterward, I’d never sit down on a toilet without first getting down on my hands and knees to make sure there weren’t any spiders lurking underneath the bowl. Thanks to years of spiderbro memes, now I generally view them as comrades.

Perhaps the Balrog underestimated Gandalf, thinking it could cast him into the abyss, then fly back up to deal with the rest of the Fellowship. Alternatively, maybe it calculated that its best chance of defeating the wizard was to grapple with him at close quarters. Either way, the Balrog falling doesn’t necessarily mean that it wasn’t capable of flight.

Yeah, certainly there are many different kinds of bread. I’m sure I was overly broad in designating all dough made with butter as pastry. I was responding to the previous comment , which I interpreted as implying that butter(or bonemeal, in a pinch) is a necessary ingredient in bread.

But… you don’t use butter to make bread. Flour and water, maybe some yeast. If you’re using butter to make dough, then it’s some kind of pastry.

Money can be exchanged for goods and services!

Nothing to do with cryptocurrency. Great podcast, though.

I think you’re right. But it’s also apparently true that there exists a critical mass of uninformed fucking dipshits flibbertigibbets, who could be swayed by this kind of thing. The true believers are unreachable, but so much political theatre is directed at that segment of the population that just can’t be bothered to assemble more than one or two data points at a time.

I’ve never visited Asheville, but I know it by reputation as the Austin of NC—a liberal enclave. Is that inaccurate? If not, that doesn’t seem to signify anything.

You’re much better off not knowing, imo. Influencers are like Tinker Bell, in that they disappear if there aren’t enough people who believe they exist.

Hey, if we can make a pencil out of leaves, cephalopods can swim through our GI tract like species 8472 through fluidic space.

I’m sure that’ll work, provided there aren’t any meddlesome kids about!

Alan Alda’s got a pretty good podcast now. I watched a lot of MASH reruns growing up. Feels strange that kids now don’t have the experience of watching a bunch of stuff that’s not made for them at all, just because that’s what’s on TV.

The trick is to have someone distract you mid-fall, so you forget to land.

In the actual world, governed by actual mathematics, you are incorrect. This has been repeatedly pointed out to you, with illustrative examples, by many people. Your stubborn, willful ignorance cannot change the fabric of reality.

I really appreciate this take. It’s good-hearted and makes good sense. I’ll try to remember it going forward, when cynicism overwhelms.

I think you’re right, but I’d like to believe there was at least one person out there that thought, “Shit, I’d better vote for Harris, or he might shoot me in the face!”

Oh, crumb! I’ve gotten here way too late to make a joke about it not being a zero cum game. Ah, well. Next time!

What a twat.

Whataboutisms aside, if you’re going to claim an article is libelous, you ought to at least be able to refute one of the assertions made by it. You haven’t actually done that here. Jill Stein’s defense is that she’s naive to the point of idiocy. So she’s either a witting catspaw of Putin and the GOP, or an imbecile that has no business being president.

Furthermore, I was unable to find any language in the senate intelligence committee’s report to indicate that she’d been cleared of wrongdoing— merely the absence of an indictment. Regardless of whether she’s committed any crimes, she is objectively a spoiler candidate. She could be as pure as the driven snow, and it wouldn’t change the fact that the only thing her campaign stands to accomplish is to elect donald trump.

If she really wanted to further her purported agenda, she would use her candidacy to get concessions from Harris in exchange for dropping out and endorsing her. Stein could actually effect change that way. Instead, she parrots Russian talking points, exclusively attacks Democrats, and consequently is completely counterproductive with regard to her stated goals.