Manjushri

First off, I live in the USA and I haven’t seen a gas station where you could pump without paying first in at least 20 years. I’m currently living in one of the more rural areas of the country and every pump has a card reader so you can pay right at the pump without even going inside. I sometimes see old stickers on the pumps that point out that leaving without paying is a crime, but I cannot imagine how anyone could actually do this. The pumps will not dispense fuel until you pay.

This tells me that the whole purpose of the set up described in the article as a way for this security company to scam people. The technology to prevent driving off without paying is decades old. There’s no reason for this situation to exist.

Second…

The “stress and anxiety” from the situation led to the couple paying DCBL the debt in order to “just move on from it”.

This perfectly describes the business model of debt collection companies. Harass people until they pay whether they really owe any money or not.

They’re trying to kidnap what we’ve rightfully stolen!

Yes, Isaac Asimov, back in 1980, referred to it as a Cult of Ignorance.

There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”

Great video, thanks! I learned some stuff about cooking scrambled eggs.

.357 Magnum cum laude.

That’s how the conniving stuff gets ya!

…additionally using unbelievable amounts of power so the environmental concerns go right out of the window at a time where we should do everything to not do that.

Don’t forget that the enormous energy usage is driving up energy costs for absolutely everyone.

Residential retail electricity prices in September were up 7.4%, to about 18 cents per kilowatt hour, according to the most recent data from the Energy Information Administration.

That’s on a national basis too. If you happen to live in an area with a lot of data centers, your energy costs have probably risen more than that.

I can’t speak to the mindset of people who are superstitious. I’m just repeating what the alleged basis for the superstition was.

The belief was that when the first soldier lit his cigarette, the enemy would see the light; when the second soldier lit his cigarette from the same match, the enemy would take aim at the target; and when the third soldier lit his cigarette from the match, the enemy would fire, and that soldier would be shot.

It’s being the third person on the match who gets shot, thus why three on a match is bad luck.

Others believe that lighting three or more cigarettes on the same match will bring on bad luck.

This started in World War I as a basic safety precaution. Some soldiers sitting in the dark on either side of the front decide to have a smoke. When the first one lights his cigarette, the enemy across the field sees the match light. While the second man lights his smoke, the enemy grabs their rifle and takes aim. When the third man lights his, the enemy fires.

Most displays are likely to be replicas, I think. Few people would be interested in seeing a T. Rex hip bone in one display, half a triceratops horn in another, etc. Complete skeletons are a bit of a rarity so it would be tough to find all the parts of some species for all the different museums out there. Also, in order to build a complete display of a T. Rex or triceratops, you would likely use all replica parts because you would need to damage the fossils in order to connect them all together.

Finally, most of the actual fossils are valuable to researchers and putting them on display in museums would make them less available for study.

To be fair, anyone who uses their birthday for a pin or password is a fool.

RFK, is that you?

There is a chemical in your brain called dopamine which is an important part of how we feel pleasure. Use of recreational drugs and alcohol causes a rush of this chemical and that is part of the pleasure we feel from using them. The problem is that regular use of such chemicals causes us to have lower levels of dopamine when we are not using them. We end up feeling a desire for the drug or booze to get our dopamine levels back up.

Diets high in sugar, salt, and carbs also causes a dopamine rush. When you eat that food regularly, it lowers your normal dopamine levels, just like drugs and alcohol do, if not to the same level. That is why you feel that craving. Eating such food occasionally is fine, but if you do it to often, you can literally get an addiction to it.

Edit to add -

You mentioned that fast foods are low quality and bad for you. That is true, but but only in high quantities. Fats and sugars were high value foods to our ancient ancestors. Fats are very high source of energy. You get more than twice the energy from a gram of fat than you get from a gram of carbohydrates or protein. Sugars are easily digested making them a source of quick energy compared to other carbs, fats, or proteins. Eating these kinds of foods gave us a survival advantage over those who didn’t, at least until we learned the agricultural skills to make them easy to acquire. Now, many or most people can get such foods any time they want and though they no longer give us an advantage, and eating a lot of them is actually harmful in the long run, those ancient taste preferences still remain in our evolved programing.

Autotune is not driving up electricity costs for everyone whether they use it or not. AI is.

American households have seen their electricity bills rise 30% since 2021. This is contributing heavily to rising cost-of-living concerns across the country. At the center of these price hikes is the AI revolution, and the sector’s projected expansion means the increased costs are unlikely to level off any time soon.

The AI data centers sector, hungry for power, which accounts for much of the increased energy demand, is projected to undergo double-digit annual growth through the end of the decade. This far outpaces what the existing electrical grid and its operators are prepared to manage. Consumers are finding themselves footing the bill for the excess strain on the system. A study published by Carnegie Mellon University and North Carolina State University predicted an increase in household energy costs of 8 percent nationally by 2030, with up to 25 percent increases in select regional markets.

At some point, people will get sick of this AI nonsense and stop allowing the data centers in their communities.

Yes, as I said, “In other nations…”

Different countries write dates differently. In the USA, 11/20/25 is Nov. 20, 2025. In other nations, it’s written 20/11/25.

Follow them home, yeah, but then just get a shovel. Then every time they shit on your sidewalk, scoop it up and put it on their own porch.

That’s good to know.

A warning saying the show is nonsense would be reasonable. In my opinion, religion, or anything else that requires belief in something despite contradictory evidence is, by definition, nonsense.