Wednesday Night Open Thread

Is there intelligent life in the universe?

Okay, here’s where you insert a joke about there not even being any intelligent life on Earth.

If there is life out there, would we be able to tell?

[The YouTube]

So, what’s been on your mind? Got something you wanna talk about? It’s Wednesday Night Open Thread.

Who wants to start?

Wanna Get Free Money? Move to Alaska

Newark, NJ is now planning a Universal Basic Income test program that will give people free money for doing nothing.

New tourism slogan – New Jersey: how much do we have to pay you to live here?

[title reference link]

Just Another Nerd Playing With His Food

[How Microwaving Grapes Makes Plasma] (Viewer #5,830,039)

I’m totally trying this next time grapes go on sale.

Link of the Day: The Other Side of Right to Bear Arms Is the Right to Load Them

[High Praise! to Ammo.com]

Commercial Ammo: The Untold History of Springfield Armory and America’s Munitions Factories

Think you have a link that’s IMAO-worthy? Send it to harvolson@gmail.com. If I use your link, you will receive High Praise! (assuming you remember to put your name in the email)]

Trump Truths: Return

In the new version of Pet Sematary, there’s a cat that dies, gets buried, then returns to wreak havoc on everyone around him. President Trump paid Paramount $20 million to name the cat “Socialism”

Is This Some Kind of Chappelle’s Show Sketch?

[High Praise! to Freedom Is Just Another Word]

[title reference link]

Straight Line of the Day: Millennials Say Life Is More Stressful Now Than Ever Before Because of…

Works like this: I feed you Moon Nukers a straight line, and you hit me with a punch line in the comments.

Millennials say life is more stressful now than ever before because of…

The Illustrated Frank J: I Fully Support This Plan

[source]

Random Thoughts: 16 Year Olds and Pro-Life

ANNOUNCER: “The first astronaut emerges to set foot on Mars, and it’s a woman!”
“This is a small step–”
ANNOUNCER: “Now the main event: The first man on Mars!”
male astronaut jumps past the woman, landing with both feet
“Nailed it!”
turns to woman
“Mars is the red planet.”

Everyone’s ideas to fix this country are TERRIBLE. Just leave it alone so hopefully it won’t get worse.

Ooh. I have an idea: Anonymous tweets. Tweets to everyone who follows you, but with no name attached.
Wait. Is the goal to fix twitter or make it worse because I’m not sure what I’m doing.

Does the ACLU twitter feed reflect the views of the entire organization or are they just letting some 20yo intern have at it?

I honestly don’t get the Beto thing. He’s a bland, rich white guy with no notable accomplishments. It seems like there has to be a hundred other people he’s completely interchangeable with.

Why Beto? Why not that drooling Kennedy who gave the SOTU response a while back?

Britain, you have to get over your irrational fear of knives. You can’t be a civilized society and freak out about stone age technology.

Don’t know why people are acting like it’s spoilers to reveal that Tony makes it back to join the rest of the Avengers. Of course they’re going to reunite before the finale. Not having that would be like not having a reunion of Han, Luke, and Leia in the new Star Wars trilogy.

I’ve really been making fun of Beto, but when I look at the rest of the Democratic field, I’m like, “Eh. He’s not so bad.”

I think for the best clarity, we should tie voting right to gun rights. Someone you wouldn’t trust with a gun, you shouldn’t trust with a vote. If we’re okay with 16 year olds owning handguns, then yeah, let them vote.

This is definitely a time to talk about Islamophobia, but since the incident took place in another country that already has strict gun laws, you might want to give your default NRA rhetoric a rest.

74% on RottenTomatoes for Triple Frontier? That’s certainly good enough for a “free” movie.
Hey, I enjoyed Orc Cop.

I never know what to say when there is senseless tragedy — especially when perpetrated by hate and evil. We need to not just respect but cherish all people and all lives. There is no greater cause.

As kids get older, they need their dad less. I can’t wait until they’re college-age and need to be coddled like infants again.

It happens with every generation. As you go from teenager to adult, you learn to lighten up and have some fun and now you’re the one telling teenagers to stop being such humorless scolds.

I’m okay with banning guns as long as it’s the government that disarms first.
I lost all my guns in a boating accident, so it wouldn’t affect me anyway.

That Anning guy seems unbelievably horrible, but that kid who hit him with an egg while holding up a phone to film it doesn’t seem like someone fighting bigotry but instead like a self-aggrandizing twit trying to make everything about him. How about people just not be terrible?

So much of the anger today is performative. It’s like with that Chelsea thing; they claim they’re doing it out of concern for others but the point is to get it on video and prop yourself up. It stems from selfishness, not caring and concern.

Anytime I rant like this, there’s always a mocking voice in the back of my head going, “Ooh. Look at you. The only rational, reasonable person left. Why can’t everyone be like you?”

Women need eyeshadow because otherwise men are like, “Hey, woman, do you not have ridges around your eyes that block the light and make shadows?” and they get self-conscious.

Being a woman sounds so complicated. Being a man is much simpler. If I don’t understand something, I punch it.
Men also don’t have all those cumbersome emotions. Except for rage.

Does anyone think they would have been a smarter voter back when they were 16?

It’s a bit sad watching the Force Awakens now. All that potential for the story and characters, but you know The Last Jedi just stomps all over it.
What I’m most mad about is Finn. He’s the most interesting new character—no analog from original trilogy—and I was excited to see where his character arc would go in the next movie. But the answer was nowhere. He’d go on a wild goose chase from which no one would learn anything.
One day I’ll stop ranting about The Last Jedi. I won’t live forever.

I don’t think I’d make a good journalist. I have integrity and I’m sometimes aware of and acknowledge my own biases.

Wanted to see if there was anything to Trump’s statement about Google and China. Unfortunately the first article I went to was at Gizmodo written by some left-wing idiot that made me less informed for having read it. Those tech/pop sites are the worst when the topic is political.
The antidote to Trump is not opposing blather written with zero self-reflection and absolute certainty.

Teenagers are dumb. A smart teenager is one who is marginally aware he’s an impulsive idiot.
The only teenager I would trust with voting would be one who’d say, “But I’m too stupid to vote.”

Hit the racist with an egg. Punch the “nazi.” Do whatever you want to whomever you decide are bad people. I’m sure this attitude will only affect the powerful and no one more vulnerable.
People love this pose of “caring,” but they’re just narcissists satisfying their id.

The primary purpose of the AR-15 is to expose people who don’t understand how rights work.

I consider “pro-life” more of an aspiration than a political position. It’s the idea of seeing value in everyone — absolutely everyone — and of never looking at human life as an obstacle or inconvenience to be worked around. We all fail that ideal at times.
Unfortunately there are numerous issues on both the right and left which treat various groups of people as inconveniences or obstacles — and sometimes literally as garbage. This erodes the soul.
When one loses respect for life, the rest of our political system falls. If life isn’t something special to be cherished in everyone, then the concept of equality and rights begins to crumble.
That’s why we always have to examine ourselves and how we are thinking about others. Some people may seem like a burden at times, but they’re a burden in the sense that a bar of gold is a burden to carry. And people are worth far more than gold.

Isn’t celebrating being Irish like a microaggression now?

I’m going to buy a copy of Spider-Man into the Spiderverse when it comes out this next week. I’m like an activist for that movie and feel I need to support it.
I always get the DVD/Blu-ray/digital combo. The DVD is for the kids in the car and the digital for watching in HD at home. Don’t know what the Blu-ray is for.

Standards are really dropping. With Obama, he had to at least be a Senator for a couple weeks before they made him a presidential candidate. With Beto, he lost to the Zodiac Killer, and everyone is like “This is the man. This is the man to lead this country.”

If you think racism is a thing of the past, look at how the Democratic field is filled with accomplished women and minorities but as soon as a guy shows up who’s only accomplishment is being a white male, everyone flocks to him.

I remember this SNL sketch where Norm MacDonald played Larry King and just shouted out all these inane observations. That’s what Andrew Yang’s twitter feed reminds me of.
In other words, he’s currently my favorite for the 2020 Dem nom.

It’s time for sensible gun control. No one should be allowed to own more than 43 AR-15s. Unless they really think they need them.

“Let’s assault whomever we think are bad people. Let’s pack the courts. Let’s ban speech we think is bad.”
They want 16yos to vote, but it seems like the left is already full of teenagers who can’t think past next week.

Devin Nunes is suing his own mom?

Sure, we’ll get rid of the Electoral College and the Senate. We’ll just have two thirds of the state vote to…
Oh.

I’ve a couple times thought about dunking on a Andrew Yang tweet but then decided I’d feel too bad afterwards.

I’ve started watching the Expanse and also reading the first book from the series at the same time. They call the moon “Luna” in it, which I know I’ve seen in other scifi. Makes sense that at some point it would get confusing for our moon to just be called “the moon.”

Another Trump term sounds fun, but a number of the Democrats sound fun too (Yang-mentum!). I’m excited for 2020!

If you’re talking about a cloud computing game streaming service, you better address latency in the first paragraph because that’s all I’m wondering about.

They all have terrible ideas, so vote for whichever candidate you think will be least effective in implementing them.

They Once Read About Stress on the Internet – Were So Outraged They Organized a Twitter Mob Against It

A new study shows that millennials believe that life is more stressful than ever before.

Yes, and I’m sure that all my ancestors who narrowly escaped being eaten by wolves agree.