Bill
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- Bill
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The age fifty thing is just a consequence of me making up a rule and seeing where it went. I thought it might be interesting to explore the idea of magic being easy to get. You aren't a born wizard like Harry Potter. You aren't an angel (more or les…
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I don't think we're disagreeing, really. There are things that I need know, which I might never even mention in the story, so that I can keep things consistent. For example, I'm putting together character sheets for the most important characters.…
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About the age of attempting wizardry, I figure there will be lore that gets out about the optimal way to do things, in story. Out story, you can be sure that some SOB will spot it if the story becomes popular. "But why wouldn't they wait to age 50 t…
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I've been thinking about the problem and staring at relevant numbers (example) on and off all day. My current guess is that in First World countries, once the initial shock of magic working wears off, the steady state will be that roughly five perce…
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@Rufus said: Assuming a society not dissimilar to ours, I would guess the percentage to be very low (people in their 50s are much less often risk takers, as compared to their younger selves). Those that do are either idiots or desperate. I…
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Looking back at what I've written, I see that I need to address something else. The way gaining magic works, fiftyish is your last chance of gaining magic with a survival rate of 50%. At age 85 the survival rate drops to zero. But what happens to th…
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Since I'm writing fantasy fiction, I suppose what I'm going for is plausibility rather than truth. I need to come up with a guess that's plausible enough not to break the reader's trance. As an aging, single man who would love to be a wizard, I'm su…
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Last month I had an incident where I felt very, very good -- better than I had in decades -- for no reason at all, along with no desire to sleep for about 24 hours. There was no way it could have been natural, so I decided to wean myself off the ant…
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@Clme said: There were zero immigration restrictions when the 14th amendment was originally written. It could not have had 'illegal immigrants' in mind, because our country did not start seriously limiting any immigration until over ten years af…
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@fenomas said: Also unlawful presence in the US is not in and of itself a crime; Sure it is. "criminal immigrants" is meaningless faction-speak. Sure it is not. They are immigrants. They are here in violation of our laws. Th…
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Ruling on whether the 14th Amendment should apply to the children of people here illegally isn't legislating from the bench. It originally was one of the post Civil War amendments and was aimed at ex-slaves. The authors never even considered it in t…
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They just ain’t making neo-Nazis like they used to
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@fenomas said: Vibrators are a social construct. Certainly in the sense that there are edge cases and the concept is a fuzzy set. Women, and doubtless some men, have been using electric toothbrushes and washing machines as sex toys for a …
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Trump doesn't give a rat's ass about Obama's citizenship. Any noises he has ever made about it were strictly for political gain. And Trump can't repeal the 14th amendment. What Trump can do is force into the courts and eventually compel the Supre…
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Trump isn't of the far right. He's more liberal than any of the post WWII Republican presidents. That's leaving Bush II out of the analysis. Bush II is a progressive--as opposed to a liberal--who made some religious noises for political reasons. Bus…
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Well, that gives it some more support.
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What radical right?
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Uncle Pat dishing some recentish history. I'm a little to young to remember any of that. It does keep the current lunacy in perspective.
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I've read that before. I'm suspicious. It sounds like one of those things that might be true but is too good to be real. (I'm still bummed that the vibrator wasn't really created by doctors to treat hysteria more efficiently.)
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It beats me. I suggest exorcism.
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https://i.imgur.com/x2JmP6x.gifv
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Bomb suspect was cash-strapped ex-stripper devoted to Trump
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I've experienced this thrill more than once, but it hasn't gotten old yet: My first calculator, which I received for Christmas 1976, had a memory that could store a single number and a square root key in addition to the standard arithmetic functions…
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@fenomas said: Geneticists have even become good enough to detect which parts of a given continent one's ancestors hailed from. 23andMe can detect ancestors from the various regions of Europe, and those barriers to genetic mixing were mo…
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@Rufus said: @Bill said: Transgenders are a tiny fraction of the population, and they are mentally ill. We have debated this before... We disagree... While the nature of transgender individuals is not necessarily fully…
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@Rufus said: Remember when Donald Trump campaigned on a promise to protect LGBTQ rights? Yeah... Good times... I read the article. It seems much ado about nothing to me. Most of the complaining is about transgender "rights." Transg…
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There are some nice artsy nudes in this reddit thread.
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While we are here, let's go through this one more time. Genetically distinct populations are caused by barriers to genetic mixing. When a single population is broken into sub-populations that get reproductively isolated, those pieces will begin to d…
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Hispanic isn't generally considered a race. It is an ethnicity. Spaniards from Spain are going to genetically map with all other Europeans. Mexicans are of mostly mixed race. Genetically, most will test partially American Indian and partially Eur…
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White feminism isn’t feminism. And it’s not forgivable