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Gore, Kerry and Hillary Clinton were not recorded calling the governor/secretary of state of a state they lost asking them to find enough votes to win. They didn't promote conspiracy theories about voter fraud and the election being stolen. And finally there was no mob rushing the capitol building when congress was certifying the election. So spare me the Republicans are just doing what Democrats have always done line, it just doesn't hold up to scrutiny. Al Gore lost the 2000 election because of 537 votes in Florida, not thousands of votes in a half dozen states. In both 2000 and 2016 the eventual President lost the popular vote. Contesting ballots is fine to some extent, and it's hardly a thing Trump or Democrats invented.

Watching my son take his first ice hockey practice as a Squirt (10U). He’s been playing for 4 1/2 years (he just turned 9). I’ve kept him down at the lower level because you’re technically supposed to be 9 to play Squirts. Squirts is when they play a full sheet of ice, and start learning the rules (icing, etc).

Since this topic is supposed to be about what we did today. . . I spent a good portion of my day cutting tree roots out of a septic leach field. I’ll let the image of a grown man pulling roots covered in his own crap sit with you for a bit before opining that the activity however disgusting and arguably pointless (since the leach field is likely beyond saving) was still somehow more productive than this thread.

Imagine if we had a dedicated politics thread for all political discussion? What did I do today? (well, yesterday). I harvested and trimmed 3 plants and my hands are screaming this morning. I need an automatic trimming machine.

Got an appointment for the Johnson & Johnson vaccine for Saturday morning. Excited to be one and done.

The backlash that they would receive for jacking up the cost wouldn't be worth the piddly amount of points they'd extract out of people. The cost will be exactly 1,150 points, it will become available around midnight, BV will get 3 of them across his multiple accounts, then be running a high after collecting 3 complete sets and unsuccessfully proposition his wife after midnight. He will then take another swing in the morning depending on how the children sleep.

Sorry, you're just gonna have to be on BPers 24/7 like the rest of us only guaranteed way to not miss it [or put a alert on this thread and Deals...which are the likely places for news to break]

Coin arrived today with Shuttle and GWPs.

Why would the gold coin require more VIP points? Just trying to understand your thought process is it more limited? The gold coin isn’t made out of real gold is it? Too bad it is not made out of lego since we all know it is better than gold.

never forget the Keychain insurance

What a stupid & ineffecient way to be a criminal.

Anal builds eh?

Lol, all I want is consistency (here he goes again). I have no idea how some people can agree with both of these articles. And I am well aware there are a lot of people who do.

No apologies necessary. EXCELLENT show!

Well, he did get his ass handed to him by the Dora Milaje...

My daughter said, "He needs a Wakandan time-out." lol

His hands.

There is no 'too early', I think most people don't understand: Every set gets a date when it releases. They may or may not change that date to an earlier or later date. You can technically say when a set retires right when it comes out. If you have the information from LEGO, obviously.

I know I would want out of that mess

just so ppl know, kohls is notorious for using garment bag to ship medium to small lego set, for large set, they typically just slap a label on the box and send it your way. I had some good luck by doing the store pickup tho so if you are keen on the box condition, making a trip to store is the way to go.

https://www.kohls.com/search.jsp?submit-search=web-regular&search=lego&PPP=48&S=5 Bigger exclusives like Assembly Square, Police Station, and Ideas Grand Piano are in and out of stock at Kohl's. Plus $10 Kohl's cash per $50 to spend April 12-25. And if you're a rewards member the e-mails I've gotten say double rewards so an additional 10% Kohls Cash that gets paid out monthly, but I'm only seeing the 5% so far.

It's fascinating. I knew of some of it, but not everything and want to do more research. The US media doesn't do anything other than sensationalize it and politicize it, when there are real effects. It's barely a ripple in Canada. Most important, as it's been noted, is that you can't undo it (yet). I found that the issue currently before the courts in BC has been delicately covered without blatantly picking a side, which I appreciate, but there hasn't been coverage in the underlying reasons for the increase. I suspect in 50-100 years, society will look back with a wtf were they doing.

It's a couple of issues - particularly in Canada - neither of which has anything to do with an adult's ability to make their own decisions about their own life/body. 1. Controlled Speech: “addressing [Maxine] by his birth name; referring to [Maxine] as a girl or with female pronouns whether to him directly or to third parties; shall be considered to be family violence under s. 38 of the Family Law Act.” 2. Non-Adult Medical Decision-Making: To summarize, there's a risk that a significant amount of young-women may mistakenly choose permanent, life-altering, irreversible damage and have the ability to do so without the consent of a parent, or proper advisement from a medical professional. Context/details below: The Concern: It seems to be, partially, a social phenomenon: There's an epidemic amongst teenage girls. Traditional gender dysphoria usually begins in early childhood (4-5). It used to be mostly young boys. It's shifted to 70% adolescent girls, a rise of 4400% from the previous decade (based on data in the UK). 65% of adolescent girls who have discovered transgender identify (without a prior history of it) have done so after a prolonged social media exposure. Trans identification is clustered in friend groups at 70x the expected rate. These statistics seem to indicate there's more to it than an environment of acceptance. We've yet to see a wave of adults come forward looking to transition affirming the current ratios among teens. The Risk: "When you stopped puberty with puberty blockers and go straight to cross-sex hormones, you absolutely guarantee that you will be infertile. When the gender clinicians pushed the parent to start her pre-teen child on hormone blockers, they were proposing that she put the child on a path towards infertility. What's more, even if her daughter did not start puberty blockers and instead waited puberty out and then started cross sex hormones, testosterone, this started all sort of risks of its own: endometrial and ovarian cancer, hysterectomy." This, of course, doesn't account for breast-removal, permanent facial hair (even if testosterone is halted), or other side effects. "a leaked 2019 report from the Tavistock & Portman Trust Gender Clinic in the UK, [...] showed that rates in self harm and suicidality did not decrease even after puberty suppression for adolescent natal girls. The report was so damning that a governor of the clinic, Dr. Marcus Evans, resigned. He told the press that he feared the clinic was fast tracking youths to transition to no good effect and, in some cases, to their harm." The Decision-Maker: Medical professionals can be discredited for doing anything other than immediately affirming the belief of the adolescent: "But the Affirmative Care Standard, which chooses between these diagnoses before a patient has even been examined, has been adopted by nearly every medical accrediting organization: [...] health professionals can assist gender dysphoric individuals with affirming their gender identity, exploring different options for expressing that identity, and making decisions about medical treatment options for alleviating dysphoria. Notice whose medical judgment is in the driver's seat. Hint: It isn't the doctors." Currently, adolescents are able to change their identities at High School without knowledge of the parent. (I don't recall if any of this applies to Middle Schools, too.) Soon, they'll be able to go get testosterone treatments, without parental consent or knowledge, during school hours. Eventually, they may even be able to do so at on-campus clinics. "Hay" Comparison: "We know that homosexuality can't be eliminated through socialization. [...] We don't have any similar weight of history arguing that we can't treat gender dysphoria." "Before gender therapy was in vogue, gender therapists practiced watchful waiting, therapeutic process whose goal was to help a child grow more comfortable in his or her biological sex. [W]atchful waiting was remarkably successful. Several studies indicate that nearly 70% of kids who experienced childhood gender dysphoria and who are not affirmed or socially transitioned, eventually outgrow it." The Sources: Dr. Littman published a study on gender dysphoria, but it was removed because "the conclusions of the study could be used to discredit efforts to support transgender youth" (social pressure not to publish science that goes against the hegemony). It was later republished after careful scrutiny; the results were confirmed. Irreversible Damage by Abigail Shrier was written using Dr. Littman's research as a starting point, conducting over 200 interviews. In one interview, a school representative told her "The role of schools has changed. Technically we are an educational institution, right? Reading, writing, and arithmetic--technically that's what we are. But schools have expanded to be the hub of a lot more social services. … Looking at schools as a hub for social justice, …" "Not that we're replacing family. But things that used to be the exclusive domain of family or society, we're asking schools to look at those a little more intentionally." Even the first trans person I watched react to Shrier's research acknowledged that a prolonged medical evaluation was necessary prior to medical intervention. Full disclosure: I've listened to the book. I haven't read Dr. Littman's studies or the other studies cited by Shrier. I haven't reviewed or even searched for credible studies with evidence for why Affirmative Care, etcetera is medically advisable (yet). This is one of many issues that I'm still looking into myself. But those are the counter-arguments.

After you take the red pill everything that the media spews out is nothing but propaganda. I don’t take any of it at face value.

That’s my fear. Long term changes to human behavior. Making us more reliant on technology. Less human contact and with extreme limitations. It’s a tragedy in the making. Too many people are willing to give up their freedom for a false sense of safety.

As we're having polite discourse, I have a question and am looking for an honest, serious answer. Why does anyone care what someone's sex is or if they're changing gender or identify with a different gender from birth or whatever. There are court cases around NA, including one locally for me, and while it's complicated and I feel for both sides, can't people just support how a person feels and identifies, even if a minor, instead of having to legislate it (see Arkansas). It seems similar to the old thoughts that you'll grow out of being (censored I guess, three letters: rhymes with hay) or you can unlearn it. Disclaimer: I have both left and right leaning views so that everyone can attack me! What did I do today? I walked to the playground with my son. He wanted to go to the sand pit and spent all of 45 seconds in it before he quit and went to the playground portion. Whatever.

I could post hundreds of examples of media theatrics, but will post only the first four from my large folder. I’m not trying to draw attention to the issues in the screenshots, just showcasing the power of the headline. Now remember that only 2 out of 10 read the article and 8 of 10 only read the headline. Big media has always known this, and use it to shape public opinion. Usually inside the article things can sometimes get fair, but when nobody reads it, does it even matter? It does not matter if you are left or right wing or somewhere in the middle. Like it or not, there is a path set out by big media for you to consume. It’s up to you whether you take the bait or not.

There was an international shortage. At the time N-95 masks were almost entire manufactured in China. Due to covid-19 China shut down production and shipping for a bit. (Perhaps hoarded a few masks along the way for their 1.4 billion people?) Hence why companies in the USA started producing them on an emergency basis. Today there are 10 companies manufacturing N-95 masks in the USA.

Compare it to last years numbers and the difference is insane. One side will say that the flu cases were all marked as Covid this year, the other side will say it's proof that masks help. Amazingly, countries like South Korea and Japan practice mask wearing every year in order to stop germs. Their numbers are low each year, and because it wasn't a huge change for them, they did well against COVID even with their much denser population.

Not that I do not believe in experts, I distrust the mainstream media. The media are supposed to do the research and summarize all of the information. But due to political bias and or sheer incompetence, the mainstream media have not been doing their jobs this past 5-7 years. They left out important information and or straight up fabricated "proofs" to satisfy their own narratives. This is why I have to go to the sources myself and do my own research. Here is an example of their incompetence: Nicholas Sandmann. CNN, NY Times, etc just could not wait to report and or mock bunch of white high school kids who seemingly had an altercation vs an old Native American in front of the Lincoln Memorial back in January 2019. They based their reporting on 1-2 short video clips. Anyone who watched the full clip of the event that was released a few hours later could clearly see that the kids did not start the shit with the old man. In fact, the old man was the one who approached and tried to start things up with the kids. CNN could have sent a reporter from their DC bureau there to do actual investigative reporting before defaming the kids. That would have taken, what, 1-2 hours to do?

Lol, no one said that. Many medical doctors are actually idiots who memorized a lot of terms in order to get a high paying job with lots of cultural esteem. Maybe get a second opinion. Wait, we're straight up a year into mask mandates and you're still questioning their efficacy? The surgical and cloth masks we wear in stores are to keep as much of our germy bits to ourselves as we can. In the hospital, where people have serious infections and are probably coughing up a storm and on oxygen, it's much harder to contain the germs, thus space suits for the workers. After working the election last fall, I made sure to exchange info with the other workers to contact trace when we almost certainly got Covid. But despite working in too close of quarters and having hundreds of people in and out all day, none of us got sick. Everyone coming in to vote wore a mask, only a handful didn't cover their nose. I worked with those same women on Tuesday they reported losing several relatives to Covid in the months since, I've been much more fortunate, only my sister in law ended up in the ER but recovered shortly after.

All I know is, I've had the healthiest Winter/Fall/Spring that I can remember in a long long time. I am tempted to wear a mask in common areas for a long time. Although, if I go to a concert, I may let caution fly.

This is like saying if you can't brush your teeth for two minutes, floss, and use mouthwash every time, you shouldn't do anything at all. Masks are a pragmatic response to the ideal solution.

yes, there's got to be logic involved...but not the kind you are using. Let's look at it from an accountant's perspective: A = Cost of ongoing production of existing set B = Cost of releasing new set (Manuals & Box Art, Marketing) C = Cost of licensing agreement D = Cost of R&D new sets I would speculate that C > A, B, or D Also That D is sunk costs Also I would guess that C is based on a duration and not number of sets produced There are other forces at work, ie LEGO cannot have 90% of their sets be HP...some semblance of selection must exist.

This finally happened: Which is great news, as it has already retired down under:

The Jung Kim minifigure isn't as handsome as it should be. Also they should have put an Appa X-wing pilot in the latest Luke's X-wing set. Sorry, Kim's Convenience fan here.

December 2035 Knight Bus

Went for a walk in the woods.

This is the way...

The "What did you do today?" thread

RIP DMX