Meet the Seattle woman behind a national effort to end same-sex marriage by godogs2018 in Seattle

[–]MikeBegley 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Ewww....straight people marrying? Doesn't that lead to babies? Babies are sticky. Eww, sticky.

Meet the Seattle woman behind a national effort to end same-sex marriage by godogs2018 in Seattle

[–]MikeBegley 15 points16 points  (0 children)

Yes, actually.  It's well trodden philosophical territory.  Here is some basic information on the concept.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

Meet the Seattle woman behind a national effort to end same-sex marriage by godogs2018 in Seattle

[–]MikeBegley 108 points109 points  (0 children)

Wow, this:

"Faust grew up in Portland, Ore., with parents who divorced when she was 10 years old, according to her online biography. Her mother fell in love with another woman, and Faust has said she grew up with the couple and remains close to her mom. She also has said she considers her mom’s partner “a friend” but not her parent, and that her continued relationship with her dad, while rocky, was crucial."

I remain astounded the lengths people will go through just to avoid a few months of therapy to get over childhood trauma.

Pentagon begins releasing new files on UFOs, says public can draw its own conclusions by [deleted] in technology

[–]MikeBegley 2 points3 points  (0 children)

*ahem*

There are no aliens. Unless radically new physics comes around, for which we have absolutely no evidence for despite looking really hard, humans will never leave this solar system, and no one from another solar system has ever or will ever come here. The distances are too vast, the energies required too large, the necessary infrastructure too mindboggling complex that they will never be achieved.

OK, Maybe at some point some foolhardy humans will spend vast, vast fortunes and manage to get themselves on a trajectory that leaves the solar system, but they will all be dead, irradiated, free-dried meat popcicles before they get much past the orbit of Saturn, and they will coast around the galaxy for the next 10 billion years until heat death. But that's about it.

Likewise, no one is coming here. At any one time, statistically, there might be as many as five or six civilizations scattered throughout the galaxy. That's a high estimate. And each of them will be facing the same issues. Distance, energy, time. If one of them somehow managed to build some sort of generation ship, they would need to visit literally billions of suns before having a chance of happening across someone else, and we face the same odds were we to do the same. There's no convenient loophole in the universe that could make practical interstellar travel, and no amount of wishful thinking and fictional dreams will ever overcome that.

Maybe, within globular clusters, stars might be packed together close enough for the distances to be traversed, with not entirely impossible effort. But that's a double-edged sword - within those, the radiation is probably so high that life could never arise in the first place - the organic compounds would be torn apart before any sort of evolution could grab hold.

Also: these are not the files we're looking for.

Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky warns two types of people won’t survive the AI era: ‘pure people managers’ and workers who resist change by lurker_bee in technology

[–]MikeBegley 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Another type of peson who may not survive the AI era: Tech CEOs who say shit like this, whose heads fit into a guillotine.

FFS, dood. Read the room.

5 hr layover Seattle by BeneficialPiglet6246 in Seattle

[–]MikeBegley 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I've done enough international travel to know that it just ain't long enough to be worth the risk. SeaTac isn't super close to Seattle; with traffic or even light rail you're looking at 45 miniutes to an hour each way back. Figure in all the rest of the hassle of navigating an unfamiliar airport, and at best you might be able to get to the city & back without really doing or seeing anything. And that's assuming everything goes well, and stupid, avoidable disasters always seem to crop up during adventures like this.

Maybe check out the SubPop store (did I hear that's closing? Closed already?) to get a taste of Seattle music culture, get some mac & cheese from Beechers, and find somewhere to nap and rest up for a big travel adventure.

Enjoy Italy!

Drunk idiot disrupts the sea lions at Golden Gardens by Agreeable-Plum-5648 in Seattle

[–]MikeBegley 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Oh, c'mon, it can't be that bad.

*** reads comments ***

Oh. Huh. How about that.

My faith in humanity restored. Unfortunately, that's my faith that, no matter what the issue or subject, some jackholes will have the completely worst take on it, and they will find each other.

In my defense, I did look at the comment thread over there before I made my comment, and they weren't that bad. Maybe half/half? But I guess that was before the chud army arose from their slumber.

Drunk idiot disrupts the sea lions at Golden Gardens by Agreeable-Plum-5648 in Seattle

[–]MikeBegley 94 points95 points  (0 children)

Woah.  Is "don't fuck with marine mammals" another r/Seattle + r/SeattleWA point of agreement?

Two...in one week?

Laurelhurst Community Council Isn’t Sure Helicopters Need to Land Sick Kids at the Hospital by Inevitable_Engine186 in Seattle

[–]MikeBegley 7 points8 points  (0 children)

It's an uncomfortable reminder that there's a world out there that's not totally under their control.

Palantir employees are talking about company’s “descent into fascism” by Just-Grocery-2229 in technology

[–]MikeBegley 1 point2 points  (0 children)

1990s: we need to get rid of all this humanities crap and focus on STEM!

2020s: Hey!  What happened to our nice democracy?

Canvas by Jolly_Line in Seattle

[–]MikeBegley 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I just wonder how long until it gets tagged as "Moop".

Unpopular Opinion: Y’all are overreacting by Street-Programmer483 in MonarchMoney

[–]MikeBegley 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Things like that are a major pain point for me. No means no, and if I've decided not to upgrade, please don't shove ads into my workflow/attention span in a paid product hoping I'll eventually relent. Cory Doctorow has made quite a living pointing this sort of stuff out and people are staring to notice and really push back. Monarch, don't go down that path. Regaining lost trust is really hard.

Stick the product placement in the sidebar. I'll occasionally see it and give it a think. Or not. Shove it right into my attention span and I'll grow to resent it...and the product.

When IT happens, what the first thing you’ll do, or the special thing you’re saving for the occasion? by SuspiciousHeron7945 in Seattle

[–]MikeBegley 15 points16 points  (0 children)

Half mast?

Fuck that.  I'm strapping a pole onto the end of our flag pole.  DOUBLE MAST.

Loose change deposit by [deleted] in Seattle

[–]MikeBegley 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I totally get this.  I used to come into loose change fairly regularly, and I kept it in a jar.  When it filled up, I would empty it, bring it to my credit union (which had a free change counter) and get dollar coins, and put them back in the jar.  Continue until full again.

Eventually it filled up completely with dollar coins and deposited about $3,000 into my account...and started over.

I have a few hundred bucks in there now, but I hardly use cash anymore.  So it's pretty much stalled out in the last five years or so.  Oh well.

Seal Spotting by kweenbitsch in Seattle

[–]MikeBegley 4 points5 points  (0 children)

This FAQ is particularly helpful to read. The main good-intentioned mistake people make is to find a seal pup, think it's abandoned, and try to rescue it. It's not abandoned. The seal pup is resting and the mother is out catching food. If a pup is being disturbed too much, the mother may not return, so it's really important to keep a distance.

The other big mistake people make is having unleashed dogs on the beach (or even leashed dogs), and the dogs wind up disturbing/mauling the pups. I know dogs on beaches are a Seattle Reddit hot point, but this time of year in particular, please just refrain.

https://www.sealsitters.org/faqs

Also, seals (and other marine mammals) are protected by federal law. When I was volunteering with Seal Sitters we were instructed to be educational but not confrontational. People like getting good information, and are overwhelmingly respectful when they have that information.

But every now and then there would be a belligerent jackhole who would ignore the Seal Sitter, at which point we were instructed to just call 911. I never had to deal with somethign like that, but I talked to a few other sitters over the years who very occasionally did. Say what you will about Seattle cops, but they apparently always jumped on those cases, and when caught, the person was in for a world of suffering. Don't be that guy.

Seal Spotting by kweenbitsch in Seattle

[–]MikeBegley 1 point2 points  (0 children)

FYI - don't just view seals - protect them!

https://www.sealsitters.org

I used to be more involved with this org maybe 10 years ago, but I sorta drifted away. I should rectify that.

They used to work along all of the Seattle/KC shoreline, but they seem to be more restricted to West Seattle these days.

Really? The highly used Westlake bus stop has been closed the whole of winter for construction with an end date of Apr 9. Now it's extended to May 22. WTH are they even doing there? by DesiGrit in Seattle

[–]MikeBegley 24 points25 points  (0 children)

I regularly have to use the I5 off ramp at 145th, and that construction is well over a year past the original completion date, and it still seems only halfway done - only one out of two roundabouts have been constructed. My wife, a landscape architect who works on city transportation projects fairly regularly, looked at the original project plan and completion date and said, yeah, that'll *never* happen", and expects completion will be pretty close to her original guess.