Basilisk

The landscape company that maintains the condo I live in uses them exclusively to "clean" the paved common areas and every time they do, the dust blows up into the air, and then 15 minutes after they pass it resettles right back where it came from, while also leaving a fine film of dust on every flat surface in the apartment, as well as small piles of long-accumulated gunk in every corner and crevice. I can't help but think how much better and quieter this place would be if they just used brooms.

A truly great line from "The Ultimate Computer"

M4 to Daystrom: "I am great. You are great. We are both great."

I've used gummy bears as tokens and maps thrown together in 30 seconds with Sharpie on wrapping paper and it works fine too. Players generally are pretty happy with whatever you throw at them.

I'd still expect better than that from a product that a major company is expecting you to trade money for.

Free* speech.

*With purchase of speech of greater or equal value, at participating locations, some terms and conditions apply. Offer void where prohibited. No cash substitutions allowed.

Finally, the emoji sensory homunculus!

For some reason my phone always wants to use "it's" regardless when Swyping. I'm not sure if they just figured they're going to be wrong half the time anyway so they'll just default to the one they figure people will use more.

Sweetie seems fair right up until I needed to go back and reevaluate everything I've said and change half the words because the store system has made it's own decisions about what I've said.

(Swype seems fast right up until I need to go back and reevaluate everything I've said and change half the words because the Swype system has made its own decisions about what I've said.)

My parents did a lot of business trips when I was a kid and it was pretty common that we'd spend time at the airport where they had one of these in the arcade/lounge. I sank a lot of money into those machines. I've never really been very good at pinball and don't generally care much about pinball simulators, but this might convince me to pick this up, just for the sake of nostalgia.

Their arms are small, but beyond that there's basically nothing similar between them and an ostrich's wing. The muscular anchor points are not similar at all to winged creatures, who require significant musculo-skeletal connection to the breastbone even in mostly vestigial wings. You can see this in the ostrich skeleton as the large "blob" of bone in the middle of the rib cage. There is nothing similar in the T-Rex. Even more of a problem with this theory is that the T-Rex's popularity is in large part due to the fact that we've discovered a fairly large number of T-Rex fossils in good condition and not substantially disturbed... It's why we have famous models like "Sue" and "Black Beauty" that make such good displays in natural history museums. Unless you're proposing that a dozen different skeletons from several different regions with different ages all had bones shift after death to end up in the same position...

Our knowledge of what dinosaurs looked like is not perfect, but we've also come a very long way from the Magdeburg Unicorn or horned Iguanodons of the 1800s. Paleontology has largely moved past "puzzle piece" biology, where things are just haphazardly thrown together because they kinda look like they fit. There's comparison to other species - not just reptiles- to see what are comparable modern equivalents or to other contemporary animals. There's kinematics and musculature considered. Unless some fossil discovery is made that completely upends the evidence we have now, at least in the case of skeletal articulation of well-known and well-studied species like T-Rex, we can be reasonably confident that we've got it pretty close when it comes to what their skeletons looked like.

That's not an actual solution though. Not everyone is in a position to simply uproot like that, when you may need services that aren't available in small towns, or you might be caring for someone who can't move, or you might just be part of a tight-knit family or community and moving takes away more support than independence gives. Even if that's irrelevant, not everyone can simply find a job in a small town because every job doesn't exist in the same way everywhere. Think there's a lot of demand for administrative assistants in Irvine, AB? And that's not even counting the fact that while people can work remotely (assuming the destination has decent internet, which depending on how small & remote the town is is not a guarantee), there's plenty of companies whose policies have removed it because they need to justify their investments in real estate and middle managers.

Even if we assume a genie appears and gives everyone who wants it the opportunity to find fulfilling jobs that they can work from small towns, exactly how long are those prices going to stay low as soon as people jump ship from the cities, or worse, once real estate investment companies are able to create income properties in these same places?

And that's not counting the fact that it's expensive to move, and especially moving a long way. Even if you just rent a U-haul and chuck all of your junk into it, the truck costs, fuel costs, there's usually hookup fees for services, you may not be able to work during this time if you can work remote, or you may have to go without pay if you're between jobs... It's not an insignificant barrier to entry and that's assuming you're young and healthy and none of those are concerns. Moving away from major cities is potentially a workable solution for some people, but it doesn't solve anything and it doesn't help the people who most need help.

There are countless places on earth that I'm sure have seen as few or even fewer visitors - desolate rocks in the middle of the ocean, remote mountain peaks, areas made inaccessible due to vegetation or climate. Going to any of them would be infinitely cheaper and less difficult than going to the moon, and yet no one has, because unless you have a particular reason to spend the money and effort to get there, why would you?

I'm sure there are scientists who'd love to run some sort of experiment on the moon, but aside from that it's a lot of work for not much beyond bragging rights, and the US kinda got those by getting there first. There isn't a lot of political will to spend billions right now to test things on the moon that we can reasonably simulate here much cheaper with computers.

an episode that passes only because Beverly and Crusher have a quick exchange in a meeting.

Ok, I know this was probably meant to be Troi and Crusher, but in Star Trek it's not impossible, so I found it funny. Riker had the transporter duplicate, not Crusher!