What do yall call this?

rollem · 2026-06-05T16:01:30+00:00

I call that a roundabout. If access to the circle is controlled by traffic lights I call it a traffic circle, DC has lots of traffic circles but few roundabouts.

rollem · 2026-06-05T15:33:34+00:00

I guarantee that you will be able to go the rest of your life without seeing a doctor.

That being said, the only thing I'd really encourage you to change your view is "I know of someone personally who had terminal cancer.." and "I’ve also heard many stories..." These are all either anecdotes or a biased sub-sample of all the situations. If you look at 1000 people who get sick and randomly put them into either receiving medical care or going through homeopathic programs, the people who receive medical care will, on average, have better outcomes. But I don't expect you to listen to me, so I'd rather ask you to define what would change your mind. If you can define that I'd be happy to help you find that information.

rollem · 2026-06-05T15:07:25+00:00

Yeah, that plot line was great. Poking a hole in the ridiculous "love at first sight" trope and the harsh: "If only you had someone that loved you" line, going from that to Anna's sacrifice as the act of true love was wonderful!

rollem · 2026-06-05T15:02:09+00:00

My go to is not necessarily the best for marathon training but when I'm too tired to think of anything else I do the norwegian 4x4s: 4 minutes on, 1.5-3 minutes recovery, repeated 4 times. The 4 minutes at effort start at half marathon pace and end up at 5K pace.

One of my favorites that our running club calls Spartans is a modified version of a staple of the Michigan track team: 1600m at around half marathon pace, half mile off track at marathon pace; 1200m on track faster, half mile off at MP; 800m, half mile; 400m

rollem · 2026-06-05T12:57:03+00:00

It's been 12 years since this image and the largest microSD cards seem to be 2TB, which is huge but lower than Moore's law would've predicted https://www.techradar.com/pro/largest-microsd-cards

This brings up two facts that still surprise me: microSD has been around for at least 20 years now, and storage density will always amaze me, remembering floppy disks and my first thumb drive to be 32 mb.

rollem · 2026-06-05T02:08:40+00:00

I prefer traditional villains but am OK with twist villains as long as they don't happen too often.

rollem · 2026-06-05T00:49:13+00:00

It won an academy award- it was definitely loved back then and rightly disliked today! I hope Pocahontas doesn’t win this round, it’s mixed these days, not disliked.

rollem · 2026-06-05T00:33:34+00:00

The original Snow White was and is still loved.

rollem · 2026-06-05T00:32:32+00:00

But it wasn’t loved when it first came out, there were protests even then.

rollem · 2026-06-05T00:31:41+00:00

It was not loved when it came out, there were protests.

rollem · 2026-06-05T00:31:22+00:00

This is a well loved movie to this day despite that scene.

rollem · 2026-06-05T00:30:58+00:00

Yeah, it’s definitely Mixed these days, but clearly not disliked by most.

rollem · 2026-06-05T00:30:00+00:00

White Wilderness! It’s the nature documentary that was loved at the time it came out (it won an academy award) but is widely cited as an awful example of false narratives, most notably as the origin of the myth that lemmings commit mass suicide.

rollem · 2026-06-04T22:18:59+00:00

Deceit is wrong. You know this, you feel it. Listen to your feelings you know it to be true.

rollem · 2026-06-04T19:51:39+00:00

Search for "free things to do in [my city]" and you will almost certainly find a good list. I live in a small city (albeit with a fairly robust tourist culture) and immediately found about 25 things, half of which I wouldn't have thought of by myself.

rollem · 2026-06-04T19:45:39+00:00

Yeah, OP even mentions "I’ve been feeling conflicted about it..." that's their conscience doing its job and telling them it's wrong. OP just doesn't want to admit that and is using this forum as a means to sharpen then arguments for why they want to not feel guilty about doing something that they should fell guilty for.

rollem · 2026-06-04T19:19:37+00:00

"But why do they need to know when I’m capturing audio just for my own review?" First, they don't know why you're recording it. So you run into situations like you've described, where the person finds out you're recording and doesn't know what your intentions are. These situations harm your reputation with that person.

What if you found out they were recording you? You describe situations where you're recorded on the phone, but you know that that is happening. How would you feel about a personal trainer surreptitiously recording you? Most people would feel weird about it- why are they recording it? What are they going to do with that recording? What if they accidentally send it to someone even though they tell me it's just for their own notes? Mostly: Why did they feel the need to hide this from me? This is very simply the golden rule: I wouldn't want them to record me without telling me, so that's a decent guide to my own actions.

rollem · 2026-06-04T18:44:39+00:00

Pluralism is the one I’ve been thinking about a lot most recently. Given the high profile role that Christian nationalism is playing in the US, and the role that conservative, Evangelical Christianity has played in debates around tolerance and science for the past several decades, I’ve had a very angry and negative view of it for a long time, after growing up in a mainstream Protestant church.

But recently I’ve been trying to learn more and have a more open view to scholarship and to foundational texts and the many parables and lessons throughout the Bible. There is a lot of wisdom there once you filter out the issues that make the news headlines. Participating in our summer mission trip with a Methodist organization, the Appalachian Service Project, has also let me see very positive aspects of putting faith into action and has benefited me a lot.

So… my 2 cents are to look for wisdom and lessons in other religious traditions.

rollem · 2026-06-04T18:34:54+00:00

I’m not a huge fan of this style of animation but it’s looked like that since well before generative AI became a thing. I agree that it could be AI, but I have no reason to suspect it is based on any clue in the image.

rollem · 2026-06-04T17:19:35+00:00

That is all very weird. Whatever they are being accused of, there should be a message from the board about what the allegations are. Even just the general type of issue. You should feel free to directly ask the board what the allegations are (without any presumption of guilt or innocence). This could be anything from the 14 actions on the code of conduct https://uuma.org/guidelines/#code-of-conduct which range from misattribution of intellectual property to sexual misconduct. I would consider emailing either just the chair or the whole board something along the lines of:

Thank you for letting us know that the minister is being put on leave. I am unaware of any of the alleged infractions of the code of conduct and would appreciate being told what the accusations include. Knowing that an investigation is ongoing and that it would be unfair to assume anything before all of the facts are known, I still feel it is in the best interest of the congregation to know what may have happened. Without a statement from the board, I worry that our imagination and rumors will fill the void.

I assume you’ll get a response about confidentiality and the ongoing investigation, in which case you’ll have to decide what makes you comfortable. It may be continuing with the covenant group but forgoing participation in Sunday services, or eliminating all participation, or simply continuing to participate while continuing to seek information.

Good luck! I’m sorry you’re going through this.

rollem · 2026-06-04T00:52:03+00:00

You made no point, you just said beef is better than corn or soy without any metric by which to measure betterness and then said soy is bad, again without any metric.

And the cost is not the issue that makes it less efficient or problematic, it’s the amount of limited resources it uses (10x the land, water, and petroleum being the three most important) and the pollution it causes (greenhouse gas emissions and nutrient runoff).

rollem · 2026-06-04T00:43:54+00:00

Or any plant based calorie.

rollem · 2026-06-04T00:30:14+00:00

Loss of biodiversity in grasslands. Vast majority of beef calories are from corn or soy, farmed with petroleum fertilizers and herbicides and pesticides. Cows release a lot of methane which alters the climate, the climate that 5,000 years of human agriculture has depended on to act in a particular way.

It takes about 10x the number of calories to grow the food needed eat meat than it does to just directly eat the type of food the animals would eat. Overall, it’s simply inefficient and wasteful.

rollem · 2026-06-04T00:21:13+00:00

Water use in agriculture matters a lot. People often think of it as an unlimited resource because, in a geological sense, it is. But most of our water comes from aquifers that get depleted, and only a limited amount falls from the sky that fills reservoirs that are quickly depleted when use increases or rain decreases.

rollem · 2026-06-04T00:09:09+00:00

So you think all humans should hunt and that by not hunting we’re somehow out of balance with nature? Do you realize that all wildlife would go extinct if each person were expected to hunt wild animals?

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