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Serak The Preparer

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Everything posted by Serak The Preparer

  1. Why are we not that special? Do the math. Yes the universe has been around a long ass time, and there are a lot of solar systems out there. But what are the probabilities for development of life? We have a shit ton of placeholders for assumptions but very little confidence in the assumptions themselves. I am certainly not going to claim that there isn't life out there, I'm not even claiming that it is unlikely that there is life out there. I do think we don't even have enough basis to say likely or unlikely, though, other than what any individual wants to be true.
  2. He may be a super smart dude but that is a dumb thing to say. We don't know nearly enough about the requirements for formation of life (and distribution of those requirements across the universe) to define a probability, let along a mathematical certainty, for other life in the universe.
  3. "The pathetic GOP votes to deplatform itself from Gab" might literally be the funniest thing I've seen in the last month, and that includes The Audition from Mr Show. It's a platonic ideal of masterbatory stupidity and team-on-team purity testing.
  4. Can the UFO's wrap up for tackles? If so, sign me up (but not for the full @NowThis experience).
  5. I haven't jumped to any conclusion. I haven't said they are lying and I haven't said that there is trafficking. What I asked is what that prevalence is compared to the separation of non-trafficking families. I don't know, I strongly suspect you don't know, and I strongly suspect that nobody in BP knows either. In that absence of information, stripping families apart "just in case" is a terrible decision (oops, I mean bad optics).
  6. what the fuck? The optics are the concern? So I guess I'll put you in the "Know this but think it's not a big deal?" category. Do we know there were traffickers with children? If so, how many? How does that compare to the number of children separated from parents? Totally agree that the system was overwhelmed so maybe, at a minimum, don't fucking take kids from their parents (never to see them again) until you are sure what you are doing?
  7. Under the Trump administration, children were forcibly separated from their families. In a large number of cases, records were not kept about this separation so that children can never be reunited with their families. We literally tore apart families and left them broken, unable to reform. Did you: Not know this? Know this but think it's not a big deal? Think this is still occurring under the Biden administration? Know that this is not occurring but still think the Biden administration still has "exactly" or even "almost exactly" the same policies as the Trump administration? It's not the detention centers themselves that led to so much of the outcry, it's the way children were placed in them.
  8. Hi @markstanco, I see you are back in the CR in the active shooter thread. Any chance you can come back to the thread you started and let us know the significance of 3 digit numbers with regard to Google searches?
  9. Speaking of traipsing through version of reading, the poster who first said "damn" when it was released that the shooter was not white did not do so out of political or moral outrage. Rather, @Pasken was concerned that, as a another non-white person, he/she would face increased discrimination, as has happened in past terror incidents. I don't know if it's true, but I also know that I don't know because as a white person, I've never once felt extra scrutiny because of something a different white person has done. Frankly, I can't even imagine a scenario where that occurs. You have 10+ posts now being outraged that people want to blame white people, when in actuality it's non-white people not wanting to face increased targeting for harassment.
  10. There are about 10 people who wont.
  11. Man, this thread is so on-brand for the Texags crowd. @markstanco pops in with the obligatory factually incorrect take (that is never retracted when it is immediately refuted), @dcar00 shows up to make sure he tells a brown person that his experience with racism in Texas is wrong, and @slorch gets to point out that guns aren't the problem, just the people (never minding the fact that we regulate ownership / use of dangerous objects all the fucking time). Just need @Cheeseweasel to make a 2 weeks joke and we can be all done.
  12. There may be a more elegant solution but what I would suggest is having a Maxif for each individual column (meaning all 200 maxifs are being calculated), then a simple hlookup or index/match so that only the dropdown stat is shown.
  13. When you say 200 columns, do you mean you have Stat 1, Stat 2, ..., Stat 200 for example? So that in your actual data set you are trying to figure out which Stat is the largest for a given city/year?
  14. Agreed, but if I am having a conversation at work and say "boy, loudmouthed black people sure are annoying" I expect to have a pretty short conversation with HR, followed by period of unemployment. I know you are not trying to imply otherwise, but not a great post by a poster who is otherwise pretty solid (UCLA takes not included).
  15. Interesting that this "less than 1% of the money goes to where it really needs to go" is ok and not socialism when it aligns with a cause you agree with. Now let's do this with literally every other form of spending that Republicans are against.
  16. I can only imagine the rage @JohnLocke must feel about FEMA and the SBA providing monetary assistance, food, water, and shelter to Texas as a result of the winter storm. I can't imagine a more clear-cut recent example of fiscal irresponsibility, and here you damn Texans are getting bailed out with my tax dollars!
  17. I think it should be Nash. Can you imagine the sound of heads exploding across the country?
  18. From the guy who pasted that the economy was "basically back to pre Covid" in November, this is a pretty funny statement.
  19. Is it your contention that nobody is offended by tEOT? This all just a supposition? I suspect that the vast majority of people posting in this tread recognize that at least some players and non-players are offended by the song. Whether people believe tEOT should be removed or not is clearly a debate, but I don't think people are worried about who "might" be offended. Using passive language in this instance is a way of diminishing the actual observations and feelings of actual people.
  20. This is bullshit and passive language. First, the word "cancel" itself is stupid because it means everything and nothing at the same time. Second, it's not about what someone "might" find offensive. It's about what some people do find offensive. If you don't care about that, fine, that's certainly your right, but at least recognize that instead of couching in "mights" and "what ifs".
  21. The common theory is that she didn't testify because she lied or was worried about perjury. What this post presupposes is that many sexual abuse victims do not want to testify for a number of reasons (not wanting to relive experience, worried about disbelief), and that the large amount of publicity around the trial, compounded with the fame and power imbalance between her and Kobe, would only have made these reasons stronger. Oh, and Kobe also freaking released a press release saying "Although I truly believe this encounter between us was consensual, I recognize now that she did not and does not view this incident the same way I did." I think your recollection is a bit spotty.
  22. At time of this reply, 12 rep over the 7 different "flavors" of rep. Don't know that I've seen such a nice distribution. Well done Hank.
  23. Thanks - didn't realize you were monetizing the CR separately.
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