We’re working on promoting that Stem Bolt. It recently got an excellent recommendation from Admiral Janeway.

Indeed. Lactose tolerance is a powerful mutation. The rest of us should fear them for their superior genes.

Edit: Queue rocking 90s X-Men cartoon theme song.

I can imagine it would be hard to maintain lactose tolerance with a dairy allergy.

At least he still outranks Ensign Kim.

“Follow my path and you’ll be fine.”

Later, at a Republic Tribunal:

“… and obviously no sane pilot on a training mission would ever consider attempting to navigate those obstactles without weeks of study in advance. And so I exhort the jury not to consider leniency, but to find the defendant guilty of first degree premeditated murder of their wingman pilot in training. The prosecution rests this - quite frankly open-and-shut - case.”

“When… This song… Is gone…!”

I think my favorite tale from this book is the one with the two belligerent assholes (who confront Luke and then ObiWan), being various forms of belligerent and assholes in other contexts. It’s surreal, but fitting.

Was reading this to my SO, and was given a correction for Quark: gets Rom to pay Quark for the privilege of returning Quarks cart.

I don’t hear about “The Vorkosigan Saga” anywhere near enough for how good it is.

A scientist gets trapped on a planet with only a barbarian idiot warmonger to help her survive.

Eight or so books later and we get to read about the not quite scandal across her space empire when she takes a new lover and her star romping space knight sons can’t quite figure out how to handle their new stepdad.

And a lot of star empire drama, ego, heroism, and compassion in between. It’s so fun, y’all.

Kindness can be learned. The difference between being genuinely kind and just constantly successfully mimicing what a kind person would do is - no difference at all, really.

Ultimately, I think people who started as natural assholes make the best kind people - beacuse we don’t just do what feels kind, but we have to examine the results of our attempts at kindness, and adjust if needed.

I love that episode!

… But… Yeah. It’s not good. It’s kinda great. But not good.

That looks exactly like my warbird tattoo. I’m starting to think all that extra money I paid my artist for a custom design was a rip-off.

Thanks!

That’s evil. I love it. I’ve used variants of:

“its-all-caps-AND.all.dash.separated”

Obviously I had to quit it beacuse, done well, it’s completely insufferable.

Nice. That’s a whole tale of joy, adorableness, frustration, and brilliance, all in a Wifi SSID.

I think we should bring back web rings, but nobody else seems to miss them.

Edit: I’m so old, I should probably link to what a web ring is: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webring

I’m bummed that no one in this thread has an exact duplicate post with more upvotes. Can we make it happen to my post, or is that too childish?

It probably wouldn’t work, but I would warn Martin Luther King’s event organizers or security detail.

I’m old enough that I could have lived in a world where Martin Luthor King Jr was still an active activist in my lifetime. It’s heartbreaking to think about what his loss meant not just symbolically, but in terms of how much better the entire world could have been with almost an extra half century of his influence.

I’ve given up huge piles of cash by choosing to not work for megacorps.

It’s worth it to me.

Confronted with the likelihood that we cannot achieve climate goals.

The current trend line sucks, but we’ve seen plenty of times in history what the ultra rich ignoring the plight of everyone else looks like. Someone please pass the “not with them” list to me to sign when it’s time to chop their heads off.

I wish I was joking, but I’m not. Seriously. I’m not with them. I would like to keep my head while we adjust course abruptly.

Edit: To be clear, I am not advocating. What should happen is that our climate, inequality, and injustice trends get fixed through peaceful cooperation. But our current crop of billionaires don’t show a lot of sign of either wanting that, or having any real awareness of where their current path, historically, goes. Which wouldn’t really be material to me, other than beacuse I’m at risk both from the climate, and from how guillotines historically kill a lot of bystanders.

I mean, that’s only reasonable. Obviously.