Theres no way in hell the US will be anywhere close to first in developing stable fusion power.

Looking at the projects underway I agree with you, however the US was the first to produce a nuclear fusion reaction with a net positive energy result at the NIF in 2022. source The subsequent 5 events have increase net positive yields significantly with the 2025 experiment yielding more than 200% net energy gain.

To be able to create a energy net positive even on-demand has to be very helpful for research. I don’t know of any other country that is capable of doing that yet.

Do I have to bring my own brown shirt or will they be provided? /s

Many of these folks also watch prices of scrap metal. If it gets high enough, you’ll see lots of that disappear and turn into money in their pocket. Prices for scrap, especially steel is extremely low right now compared to a few years ago. Many of them are waiting on the price to recover to cash in.

Long ago I ran a Windows Media Center PC in the living room and used the hell out of it. When WMC finally went EOL, I look for alternatives and found Plex. I never got around to setting up a Plex box, and now I see it too is ready for the scrap heap. I think this is what getting old is. You plan on doing something and never get around to it. Time passes much faster up here in age.

If the ending of my story was too abrupt, and you wanted to spend just a bit more time with Touchdown Jesus, here’s the video a passerby caught of Touchdown Jesus burning. You can see the fire fighting vehicle on the left hand side, and the occasional flashes of lighting as the storm that started the fire rages on.

Not far away we had what everyone called “Big Butter Jesus” or “Touchdown Jesus”:

The “Big Butter” part comes from the region’s fascination with making butter sculptures:

The “Touchdown” name, for those that don’t know USA Football (Grid Iron), this is the same gesture the referee makes to signal a valid goal:

However, after being around for years, Touchdown Jesus is no more. I’m not making this up, it was struck by lightning and being made of fiberglass, burned to the ground.

said Sahakyan. "I think it will resolve a lot of issues because we’ll know exactly who’s in here for what reasons, even though I miss [my wife] dearly. I think we could have a faster process [where they determine] she’s not a radical, or tied to the crazies, let her out."

He’s rationalizing what’s happening. They are never letting her out. They are going to take her out of the country and she will never be coming back to the USA again. I wonder if that is what it will take for him to change his opinion.

I wouldn’t be so sure of that. trump is paying fast and loose with the standards of law and he has a history of going after his opponents. There are already grounds that can be exaggerated to strip Musk of US Citizenship. At that point a foreign national would be owning a company that has national defense impacts. The government could force a sale just like they are with TikTok.

Now he’s going the other direction to act like the good guy and fighting against Trump.

Who will believe he is the good guy? He pissed off liberals when he abandoned green initiatives and threw his lot in with climate changers. Then he pissed off conservatives when he had his war of words with the orange turd. Moderate Republicans that may oppose trump are put off by Musk’s antics and insistence of introducing internet humor into business dealings and products.

He has no supporters anymore and any group he’s trying to court wants nothing to do with him.

Are World of Warcraft gold farmers still a thing?

This is one of my personally learned lessons of wisdom that took me far too long to figure out:

“A lot of the time you just need to let people continue to be wrong”

I’m not talking about when you’re going in for surgery and your doctor told you he is going to amputate the wrong leg. I’m talking about when someone says something that is factually or morally incorrect. There is an infinite amount of wrong people in the world. You will encounter dozens of them on a daily basis. You would have an opportunity to personally correct quite a few of them. Don’t do it. Smile, nod, and walk away.

Lets say you want to correct them and in the best case you’re successful. They now know what they said was wrong. Most people really don’t like to be corrected, even if they were wrong. They are embarrassed, possibly shamed, and at worst, humiliated. What kind of interaction do you think you’re going to have with that person going forward into the future. Do you think they will embrace you as the really intelligent person that took your time to help them out? No. They will think you a pompous, arrogant, know-it-all. And for what? You spent all this time and energy on something you don’t even really care about. Your purpose in life is not to be “Defender of the truth, hero of logic” or anything. You’re just a regular person, and the guy on the subway does not give two shits that he mispronounced the word “nuclear” as “nucular”.

In the professional world its a bit different, but even then, most of the above applies. You have to be careful where and how you correct someone. Even if the ultimate outcome is for the good of the organization, you can alienate those that you need to like you for you to effectively get your job done. You can quickly develop a reputation as an uncooperative “Diva”. That is career poison and no matter how good your subject matter expertise, this reputation can forever limit your advancement.

So unless the outcome of something really and truly matters to the outcome pf your life or your job, and sometimes even then…let it go without saying anything. Let them be wrong, and leave them behind you never to be seen by you again in your entire life.

“The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best time is right now”

Results that require a long time to from work are ultimate started long before you need the results. However that isn’t always clear at the time back then. Sometimes it is and procrastination means you’re without the results today because you never started and the time has passed anyway. That doesn’t mean that you should simple discard the idea the results were needed for. You can still achieve the results, but delaying the start of the work now is the worst thing you can do. Starting right now is the best choice to move forward to get the results you want.

Overcorrection in policy is not uncommon in authoritarian regimes. I’d imagine because policy carries the threat of imprisonment, not just guidance.

“The Chinese government wants to promote traditional family values and liking danmei novels is seen as a factor in making women less willing to have children,” Dr Ge explains.

Eye Doctor <> Optometrist

Perfect example of why that is a bad approach. An Optometrist can measure your eyes for basic vision problems and monitor your retina issues, but you’d need an Ophthalmologist if you need surgery on those eyes for something the Optometrist finds.

Have you tried doing a full BIOS update? As in, download from the manufacturer. I wonder if that would overwrite the passwords.

We once did a side-by-side comparison of KitKats (we live right on the border) and the difference was stunning.

Bad comparison on that one. KitKat brand in the USA is an entirely different company that the rest of the world. So they aren’t even the pretending to be the same recipe.

I tried to like the Aldi chocolate bars but they leave this strange fatty coating in my mouth after eating them. I don’t experience that with other brands.

“Look at the silver lining! You were always worried she was cheating on you, now you know for sure she is so you don’t have to worry about that anymore!”

Several people have told me I should sue the builder, and I probably should, but I’d have to pay for a lawyer, and it would probably take months and months.

IANAL, but I’m wondering if for your situation you’d have more success with a whole string of Small Claims court. A quick Google search for your area says this:

“You can ask for up to $25,000 in most small claims actions in the Tennessee General Sessions Court.”

I’m betting nearly every one of your findings and fixes you had to pay for would be under that. There’s no lawyer needed to file them, as you can do them yourself, and for the builder to have to defend it, they’ll have to send their expensive lawyer to each court proceeding. If they don’t show, you could get a default judgment and just win outright with no battle for the legal judgment. Now, collecting may be a different problem though. You could keep one claim going all the time so you don’t have to do them all at once (and make it worth it for them to put a billable lawyer on it".

June:

TheDemonBuer v. DR Horton - civil suit from breach of contract “missing attic insulation” claim of $12,485

August:

TheDemonBuer v. DR Horton - civil suit from breach of contract “missing main drain connection” claim of $7,434

etc.

If you string this out long enough, one of two things will happen:

• You’ll eventually get paid for all the fixes you needed to begin with that you paid out-of-pocket
• DR Horton will actually show back up and say “fine, show us what’s actually broken and we’ll give you one single large check to go away”