They’re going to be leery of that because of Munich. Yes, it was ages ago, but it cost the state so much money, they’re going to be very cautious about any such endeavors.

My wife has an irrational fear of frogs. She’d agree with the frog part.

Yeah, the last time marriage meant more than a tax break was probably back when it was more like legal slavery, and even then it was expected that the commitment was more for the wife than the husband.

The whole thing is absurd. My mom divorced and remarried four times, so I decided I’d only be married once. When my wife and I married, we’d already been together for a decade. But I know that’s not common, and I don’t begrudge people getting married for tax perks. Which is why anyone should be able to marry whomever they choose.

Yeah, I kinda figured when the truck convoy started out there you guys had your own problems.

Oh, man. That’d be a book. Or maybe a chapter in an alternate version of Hitchhiker’s.

It always turns out to be the equivalent of a reality show host.

<sigh> In a country with a barely functioning (for the non-wealthy) medical system, it can still get worse.

Yah, you may be right. I’m at the limit of my materials science knowledge, here.

Conductivity is more germane to heat loss through the material. Borosilicate glass’ specific heat is also roughly twice that of steel, at around 0.830 J/g C to 316 steel’s 0.468 J/g C. Glass will absorb and retain more heat for longer;steel will absorb energy and heat up more quickly, and dump it just as fast.

I mean, we’re taking about millimeters of material; the quality of the cozy will have far more impact than the container material.

There’s a good chance for another major pandemic, and we’re passing the global warming point of no return.

For better or worse, the US was the biggest player on the planet; now that we’ve fumbled, I think the world is done for. Maybe China could have risen to take the US’s place, but they’re stumbling toward an economic catastrophe, India has their own problems, and Russia is exposed as a bit player. The EU could have been a shining beacon, but they’re struggling with their own rise in fascism. Who else is there? A South American country? They’re barely holding on to their own economies. Canada? Too small - I mean, big country, but not very big population (1/10th of the US). And the US is big enough that when we go down, we’re going to drag a lot of the planet with us. Shit, thanks to Russia and Israel, we’ve been edging into WWIII. Trump’s senile enough to press the button, I have no doubt, and he’ll be completely surrounded by moronic Yes-men this time, with no one to try to talk sense into him. Maybe a relatively quick, fiery end would be better than a painful spiral.

We’re done as a planet. Some creatures will survive, but humans have used up all the readily available low-tech surface resources - oils, coals, metals - so anything that evolves intelligence after us won’t make it past the stone age. And then, the sun will die.

At least we have more solid evidence to the answer to Fermi’s paradox. It’d be a bigger question if we weren’t rushing toward our own extinction.

Bullshit, “there’s nothing left.” Fucking idiots forget what a holocaust can really be.

There won’t be a Gaza, because it’ll be Israel. There won’t be Palestinians anymore. You think the destruction is bad now, you ain’t seen nothing yet. There will now never be a Palestine; any tiny chance was just extinguished.

Sad thing is, it’s the Palestinians in the Middle East who are going to pay for the dumb fuck voters in the US. The ones here will pay, too; only it’ll just be in more blatant bigotry and racism, not flat-out being murdered. And good luck getting their families and friends out; immigration was a huge talking point of the Trump team.

The extermination of the Palestine people is a high price to pay for the shocked Pikachu face that’s coming.