1. The ball was red.
2. I have no idea.
3. I have no idea.
4. Like, maybe softball sized? A little bigger? I'm not sure.
5. Square. It was made of brown.

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.

The guide specifically calls for police agencies to set up what NTAC calls behavioral threat assessment units that can assess potential dangers and then provide resources to make sure individuals get help before they resort to violence.

This is the part that everyone is intentionally missing.

Most people that commit the kinds of mass violence that make national news can be diverted without getting caught up in law enforcement. These aren't people that are mentally ill in most cases, but they usually do need some kind of help. A heavy-handed approach that involves jailing them or taking their rights because they might be dangerous at some unspecified point in the future is not a great approach, since we don't have a functioning Pre-Crime Bureau yet. Moreover, as the Secret Service pointed out in a prior report, people that commit mass violence have a wide number of warning signs, but no person in their study had all of the warning signs, a very few had no obvious warning signs, and most of the warning signs are common and could apply to potentially hundreds of thousands of people.

If you have nothing to hide, why worry?

This is such a stupid, disingenuous argument. Look, if you've got nothing to hide, then you should be fine with cops performing a warrantless search of your house, car, and strip searching you, right? After all, you haven't done anything wrong, correct? If you've got nothing to hide, then your medical records should be public, right? Why are you keeping that bathroom door closed if you're not hiding something, huh?

The right to keep and bear arms is a right. It's not supposed to be a privilege dependent on the good will of the state. Same as speech/press, freedom of--and from--religion (which mean, yes, freedom from religious interference in state matters as well), and so on.

red flags laws

These have already been used to harass people that legally own firearms. Because it's a civil process, the gun owner needs to pay for their own attorney to fight the claims. That means that you can easily end up with tens of thousands of dollars in legal bills just because you have someone decided to report you to police. It can take months or years to fight, and there's not a clear standard since you might be a risk. I've personally dealt with this kind of bullshit in Illinois; I lost my FOID because I was held for observation for 72 hours while I was in the middle of an ugly divorce -and- being abused by my spouse. I would have needed to sue the state in order to get my basic rights back.

I've seen all the Harry Potter Films, and liked them okay. I thought Wonder Woman was decent; not great, but enjoyable as far as DC movies go. I haven't seen very many overall. OTOH, I've seen about half of the films on the male list. Blade Runner 2049 was an outstanding film, a modern classic that's severely underrated. I walked out of the theater completely emotionally drained.

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.

Yeah, 100%. Because it's ironic.

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.

That's good to know, and not something I would have expected.

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.

The whole case is just a nightmare.

When you start looking back at Satanic Panic legal cases, it all seem so crazy. It's hard to believe that this was in my lifetime, and it's even harder to believe that people still think that was now. For a really good deep dive into some of the child sexual abuse cases that were going on at the time, check out, "Satan's Silence: Ritual Abuse and the Making of a Modern American Witch Hunt" by Debbie Nathan and Michael Snedeker. I remember some of this. And there are people that still defend the witch hunts.

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.

I don't believe that the judge or prosecutor have to allow you to have that option.

...Where you are currently stationed? What, military?

Regardless, if I were you, in Chicago, I'd take the reckless driving charge over being a CI.

IIRC one of them got out on an Alford plea, and is still trying to fight it.

People forget what this was like. Just being a weird kid and playing Dungeons & Dragons was enough to get you condemned as a devil-worshiper.

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?