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2. Leftism and Physical Biology

Countless studies have shown that physical characteristics closely align with political orientation. AI facial recognition can accurately predict a person’s political alignment 72% of the time, outperforming chance (50%) and human estimation (55%) [3].

Taller [4] and more attractive [5] people are more likely to identify as Right-Wing and more likely to actively support Right-Wing parties, policies, and politicians. In America, Australia, and Europe, Right-Wing politicians are more likely to be physically attractive than their Left-Wing counterparts [6].

Men who are physically stronger are more likely to oppose wealth redistribution [7] and other forms of sociopolitical egalitarianism, even if they are poor themselves, and opposition to egalitarianism grows as men spend more time in the gym [8]. Similarly, men with more masculine facial features are more likely to support explicitly prejudiced ideas [9], and men who are better fighters are more likely to support warfare and hold "self-favoring” (non-Leftist) political beliefs [10].

In summary: Leftists are shorter and uglier, and Leftist men are weaker, less masculine, and less capable of fighting — characteristics that are not conducive to success in any human civilization.

 

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Scientists have long pondered the durability of ancient Roman concrete structures, which have not only stood the test of time but have held up under extreme conditions, assuming it came down to a unique mix of ingredients.  Volcanic ash from the area of Pozzuoli, on the Bay of Naples was believed to be a key element that led to the unique durability of ancient structures and kept them standing as modern concrete crumbled to the ground.  But a report released Friday discovered that it is not necessarily the ingredients that attributed to the strength of the Roman’s concrete but the mixing process. 

Scientists in a MIT, Harvard University study found that Romans actually relied on a process called "hot mixing" to whip up their hyper durable concrete.  "The benefits of hot mixing are twofold," MIT professor of civil and environmental engineering Admir Masic told MIT News. "First, when the overall concrete is heated to high temperatures, it allows chemistries that are not possible if you only used slaked lime, producing high-temperature-associated compounds that would not otherwise form.  "Second, this increased temperature significantly reduces curing and setting times since all the reactions are accelerated, allowing for much faster construction," he added. 

Masic was first alerted to the concept after noticing millimeter-small bright white minerals in the ancient concrete.  The outlet said these deposits, described as "lime clasts" and not found in concrete today, were once chalked up to poor mixing practices.  But the MIT professor took issue with this line of thought.  "The idea that the presence of these lime clasts was simply attributed to low quality control always bothered me," Masic told the publication. "If the Romans put so much effort into making an outstanding construction material, following all of the detailed recipes that had been optimized over the course of many centuries, why would they put so little effort into ensuring the production of a well-mixed final product?"

Masic and his team discovered that the white specs were actually calcium carbonate that had been formed after the mixture, which include quicklime, reached an "extreme temperature."  His team then ran a series of tests using modern and ancient techniques with and without quicklime.  The team are now working to commercialize the ancient practices for modern use. Masic described the findings as "exciting" and hopes to lighter-weight and longer-lasting concrete mixture will help reduce the environmental impact of cement production, the publication said.  Cement production reportedly accounts some roughly 8 percent of greenhouse gases.  

 

I guess science can be useful for the Ozone Layer. 

UN says ozone layer slowly healing, hole to mend by 2066

DENVER (AP) — Earth’s protective ozone layer is slowly but noticeably healing at a pace that would fully mend the hole over Antarctica in about 43 years, a new United Nations report says.

A once-every-four-years scientific assessment found recovery in progress, more than 35 years after every nation in the world agreed to stop producing chemicals that chomp on the layer of ozone in Earth’s atmosphere that shields the planet from harmful radiation linked to skin cancer, cataracts and crop damage.

"In the upper stratosphere and in the ozone hole we see things getting better," said Paul Newman, co-chair of the scientific assessment.

The progress is slow, according to the report presented Monday at the American Meteorological Society convention in Denver. The global average amount of ozone 18 miles (30 kilometers) high in the atmosphere won’t be back to 1980 pre-thinning levels until about 2040, the report said. And it won’t be back to normal in the Arctic until 2045.

133 days of the sun.

 

Pretty interesting thread. Later he states that they’ve cured blindness in mice and reversed aging in organs. Currently undergoing trials on primates.

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Astronauts Are Mutating. Here's Why

Story by Chris Littlechild • 42m ago

There are two things about which we humans, famously, have much, much more to learn: the depths of space and the depths of the oceans. There are a lot of good reasons for this, but they generally boil down to one thing: We like to take a hands-on approach to science wherever we can, and it's either impossible or far too expensive to reach these places.  In October 2010, Guinness World Records' award for the deepest point in the sea went to the Challenger Deep. This part of the famed Mariana Trench was measured, at the time, at 6.79 miles deep (10,935 meters). As the outlet reports, measuring techniques have constantly improved and this number has had to be revised. In short, enterprising experts continue to learn more and more about the most inhospitable environments.  Our knowledge of the vast expanse of space that surrounds us, of course, has advanced in a myriad of ways thanks to the hands-on experience of astronauts. The majority of us can only dream of traveling out into the wide, remarkable world beyond our own. Needless to say, simple survival requires all kinds of cutting-edge equipment, but it seems that returning astronauts' very DNA is changed by their experiences in space.

That dark, mysterious realm is visited only by the privileged few. What a privilege it is, too. As astronaut Reid Wiseman put it (via ScienceAtNASA on YouTube), "when you're launching into space, when the engine cuts out and you get to look back at Earth ... absolutely every sacrifice is worth it, every dream is worth it ... every bit of it is worth it."  The sacrifice of which Wiseman speaks, however, is all too real too. In a 2011 NASA interview, astronaut Charles J. Camarda was more than frank about everything else that becoming an astronaut encompasses. "Let me tell you what it is not like to be an astronaut," he said. "It is not all glory, games, fun, and adventure." With the long, grueling training, the time-consuming study, and the expertise required to be in with a chance in the first place, it may be a very different experience to the one many young would-be astronauts envisaged.  Then, of course, there's the reason for all the safety training: Space travel is, by its very nature, potentially very dangerous indeed. Camarda highlighted this tragic fact too, somberly noting, "I was training in Russia when we got the call that Space Shuttle Columbia broke up over Texas during Earth entry and the crew was lost. I lost seven friends."

On top of this, space travel has a physical effect on astronauts' bodies. It appears to mutate their cells. Here's how.  The August 2022 study "Retrospective analysis of somatic mutations and clonal hematopoiesis in astronauts," from Agnieszka Brojakowska et al (via Communications Biology), gives us an illuminating and rather alarming glimpse into this phenomenon. The researchers reportedly "obtained de-identified whole blood samples from 14 astronauts who flew relatively short Space Shuttle missions (median 12 days) between 1998–2001." Two decades of storage in freezing temperatures later, these blood samples provided some fascinating insights.  

The blood samples used here, the study goes on, were taken three days after the astronauts' return to space. The astronauts reportedly had not been exposed to any form of radiation therapy, but their DNA seemed to have some traits that had a tendency to appear after such. "The DDR gene TP53 was the most frequently mutated in this astronaut cohort (median age 44 ...)," the study stated, "reflecting a potential difference compared to the civilian population. Somatic TP53 mutations are uncommon in patients without a history of cancer therapy."  Every astronaut involved in the study, Newswise went on, displayed mutations in their DNA. Specifically, in the hematopoietic stem cells, which are crucial in sustaining the blood which has provided this fascinating insight. According to the outlet, these effects are more common in those who have been subject to radiation, such as that an astronaut may be subject to out there in space.

Newswise explains that these mutations are connected with higher chances of contracting cancer of the blood, as well as heart conditions. Per NASA, this space radiation is a unique danger faced by space farers, because the rest of us here on Earth (and even those on the International Space Station) are protected by the planet's atmosphere itself.  It certainly isn't a danger NASA is taking lightly. As the organization's own Ruthan Lewis stated in 2019, "radiation is always present, whether you're in orbit, in transit, or on a planetary surface ... from mitigation techniques to protection and enclosures, we're considering this in every environment astronauts will be in."  NASA's own Human Research Program studies the physical effects space travel has (and theoretically will or can have) on the human body. Monitoring the effects of such hazards as gravity fields will help to pave the way for safe possible trips to Mars and even beyond. These bold pioneers and their efforts may well be pivotal to the survival of the human race, so it's vital that they are protected along the way.

 

Actual footage of Chuck Yeager's NF-104 flight and crash as dramatized in The Right Stuff.  As should be clear from the fact of how much film there was of the flight, it was not some seat of the pants, unauthorized lark.  Also, Ridley had died years before.

 

 

 

Pluto's mountains.

Caught a glimpse of the green comet.

https://www.timeanddate.com/news/astronomy/green-comet-2023

 

On 1/7/2023 at 7:50 PM, Mlodj said:

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They built the structures using technology provided to them by Aliens.

Shhhh! Don't tell Algore.

https://dailysceptic.org/2023/01/23/temperatures-in-northern-hemisphere-due-to-fall-over-next-25-years-according-to-six-top-international-scientists/

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The novelty of replacing one’s "home key” with a microchip implant is gaining worldwide interest, but there’s another more compelling story under the surface. Why is this technology — an integrated circuit the size of a grain of rice — reviled by some and celebrated by self-proclaimed human cyborgs?

Arguably, William Shakespeare’s "Hamlet” offers the most elegant explanation: "Nothing is neither good nor bad, but thinking makes it so.” However, it would be prudent to tell Prince Hamlet that not all microchip implants are designed alike, and understanding the technological design enables one to better evaluate the competing viewpoints. Today, more than 50,000 people have elected to have a subdermal chip surgically inserted between the thumb and index finger, serve as their new swipe key, or credit card. In Germany, for example, more than 2,000 Germans have opted to receive these implants; one man even used it to store a link to his last will and testament. As chip storage capacity increases, perhaps users could even link to the complete works of Shakespeare.

Chip implants are just one of the many types of emerging technologies in the Internet of Things (IoT) — an expanding digital cosmos of wirelessly connected internet-enabled devices. Some technologists are worried, however, that hackers targeting IoT vulnerabilities in sensors and network architecture also may try to hack chip implants. Radio-frequency identification (RFID) chips are identifying transponders that typically carry a unique identification number and can be tagged with user data such as health records, social media profiles, and financial information.

RFID chips are passive transponders, which means the digital reader must be positioned a few inches away from the user’s microchipped hand to communicate. In contrast, near field communication (NFC) chips use electromagnetic radio fields to wirelessly communicate to digital readers in close proximity, much like smartphones and contactless credit cards. A benefit of NFC over RFID is international use, reasons Biohax: "With the power of existing infrastructure and the wide variety of services and products already supporting the NFC standard globally, one huge benefit of ours is that we overlap virtually any private or public sector already using NFC or mobile tech.”

According to a 2021 United Kingdom-based consumer survey by Propeller Insights on digital payment trends in Europe, 51 percent of the approximately 2,000 respondents said they would consider getting a chip implant to pay for services. This technology is especially popular in Sweden as a substitute for paying with cash. "Only 1 in 4 people living in Sweden use cash at least once a week,” writes NPR. More than 4,000 Swedes have replaced keycards for chip implants to use for gym access, e-tickets on railway travel, and to store emergency contact information.

The technology also may offer increased mobility for people with physically limiting health conditions, such as rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, and motor neurone disease, according to BioTeq, a UK-based tech firm. For example, "a wheelchair-mobile person can approach a door and the reader will unlock the door, avoiding the need for keys that the person may not be able to use for themselves.” BioTeq is also exploring providing microchip services for those who are visually impaired to create "trigger audible or touch-sensory signals” in the home. Despite these benefits, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists avers that the main challenges to chip implants are security, safety and privacy.

A general security concern with NFC technology is that it could allow third parties to eavesdrop on device communication, corrupt data, or wage interception attacks, warns NFC.org.  Interception attacks are when someone intercepts the data transmitted between two NFC devices and then alters the data as it’s being relayed. Like any device, these personal chips have security vulnerabilities and potentially could be hacked, even if embedded underneath the skin.

With regard to health safety concerns, a 2020 study with the American Society for Surgery of the Hand indicated that RFID chip implants may carry potential health risks such as adverse tissue reaction and incompatibility with some magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technology. Several social scientists also are apprehensive about the risks to privacy and human rights if the body becomes a type of "human barcode.” According to microbiologist Ben Libberton at Stockholm’s Karolinska Institute, chip implants can reveal sensitive personal information about your health and even "data about your whereabouts, how often you’re working, how long you’re working, if you’re taking toilet breaks and things like that.” Interestingly, the first person to implant a microchip in himself was professor Kevin Warwick of Reading University in 1998; he wanted to determine whether his computer could wirelessly track his movements at work.

To date, at least 10 state legislatures in the United States have passed statutes to ban employers from requiring employees to receive human microchip implants. The most recent state was Indiana, which prohibited employers from requiring employees to be chipped as a condition of employment and discriminating against job applicants who refuse the implant. Nevada’s legislation is the most restrictive — although not a total ban, as proposed in 2017, Nevada Assembly Bill 226 prohibits an officer or employee of Nevada from "establishing a program that authorizes a person to voluntarily elect to undergo the implantation of such a microchip or permanent identification marker.”

As the impact and influence of chip implants increases in the United States, it will raise complex questions for state legislatures and courts to consider, such as third-party liability for cybersecurity, data ownership rights, and Americans’ rights under the Fourth Amendment and the protection of sensitive digital data under the Supreme Court’s 2018 decision in Carpenter v. United States.

Microchips offer alluring benefits of convenience and mobility, but they carry potential cybersecurity, privacy and health risks. The onus cannot be on the law alone, however, to protect consumers. Instead, it is a shared responsibility among consumers to understand their data rights as part of digital literacy, and among technologists to promote cybersecurity-informed engineering at each phase of product development. Further, lawmakers must be mindful of the delicate balance between protecting the flame of technological innovation and advancement, while guarding against misapplication and abuse. As technology historian Melvin Kranzberg noted, "Technology is neither good nor bad, nor is it neutral.”

 

A New View of the Most Explosive Moon in the Solar System

Recent strange activity around Jupiter’s volcanic moon, Io, confused and excited scientists.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/25/science/io-volcano-eruption.html

 

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Io, the third largest of Jupiter’s moons, is caught in a pressurized, explosive dance.

Orbiting near Ganymede and Europa, two of the other largest Jovian moons, and the planet itself, Io’s mineral composition is constantly pulled and pushed by gravity, creating frictional heat deep inside the moon. This makes it extremely volcanically active — there are hundreds of volcanoes and extensive networks of lava flows marking Io’s surface.

"It’s being squeezed like an anger ball,” said Jeff Morgenthaler, an astrophysicist at the Planetary Science Institute.

Despite a number of close-flying spacecrafts over the past few decades — including the Voyager 1 and Galileo missions — as well as constant observation from Earth, there are lasting mysteries about the kind of volcanic activity on Io and how the moon’s fiery energy interacts with Jupiter and other nearby bodies.

Last year, Dr. Morgenthaler, who studies gases Io emits and the cloud said gases create around Jupiter, picked up signs that a different kind of eruption — a more powerful or more persistent one — was occurring.

 

 

"It’s an exciting observation,” said Ashley Davies, a planetary scientist and volcanologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory who was not involved in Dr. Morgenthaler’s study. "It’s showing that Io is certainly one of the most energetic bodies in the solar system, and you have no idea how it’s going to appear when you turn your telescope on it.”

 

On 1/23/2023 at 5:19 PM, lynched1 said:

Shhhh! Don't tell Algore.

https://dailysceptic.org/2023/01/23/temperatures-in-northern-hemisphere-due-to-fall-over-next-25-years-according-to-six-top-international-scientists/

 

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Otto Rohwedder gave the world an innovation by which all others are compared.  Rohwedder, a native of Davenport, Iowa, invented sliced bread.  It’s the greatest thing since …  Well, it’s the greatest thing, according to popular acclaim.  "Sliced bread is the standard of all innovation, past, present and future," said Ed Douglas, a businessman, local historian and county commissioner from Chillicothe, Missouri.  The world's first loaves of bread — sliced and packaged right out of the oven by Rohwedder’s unique innovation — rolled out of Chillicothe Baking Co. in 1928.  Sliced bread changed American consumer culture and household habits with shocking speed.

Humans began baking bread long before recorded history. It is enjoyed in myriad forms by all cultures in all corners of the world.  Bread literally fueled the rise of civilization.  "For 15,000 years the epic of grain has been one with the epic of man," author Heinrich E. Jacob wrote in his celebrated 1944 tome, "Six Thousand Years of Bread: Its Holy and Unholy History."  Yet it took a hard-luck hawkeye to challenge all known history and write a better version of the "epic of man."

Rohwedder had no background as a baker, engineer or inventor.  But he had a preposterous dream to make bread better, even as the baking industry belittled his vision.  "Like any paradigm-changing invention, people could not conceive of sliced bread at the time," bread industry executive Allen Wright said in the inventor’s American Society of Baking Hall of Fame biography.  Rohwedder outwitted 10,000 years of bread-making tradition — which is why sliced bread has entered the cultural lexicon as the ultimate superlative of innovation.  Television, said comedian Red Skelton in 1951, "is the greatest invention since sliced bread."  The comparison by the celebrated entertainer stuck.  Sliced bread is so mundane today we assume it’s as old as fire or the wheel.  We forget it’s a recent invention in the annals of mankind. We certainly forgot the man who invented it.

Otto Frederick Rohwedder was born in Des Moines, Iowa, on July 7, 1880. His family made its way to Davenport at some point when he was a small child.  His father, Claus, was born in Kreis Dithmarschen, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, in 1845. He arrived in Iowa in 1866 and worked as a stone mason contractor. He "designed the stone work on many of Davenport’s prominent business buildings of former years," according to a 1922 obituary.  Rohwedder’s mother, Elizabeth Margaretha Margaret (Jannssen), known as Margaret, was also born in Schleswig-Holstein and arrived in Iowa in 1868.  She and Claus wed the following year. They had four sons, including Otto, and one daughter. 

Rohwedder graduated from the Illinois College of Optometry in 1900 with a degree in optics. He ended up in the jewelry business, reportedly apprenticing in the trade as a teenager.  He operated three jewelry shops in St. Joseph, Missouri. The business struggled, by many accounts.  Nobody knows how or why, but at some point in his 30s, Rohwedder conceived the idea of devising a way to slice bread at a commercial level. He returned to his hometown of Davenport in 1916 and used the funds from the sale of his jewelry business to pursue his dream.   It was a disaster.  Rohwedder’s mission to rewrite the epic story of man and bread appeared to end when fire destroyed his factory in nearby Monmouth, Illinois, in November 1917 — and with it his prototype bread slicer and the blueprints for it.   Rohwedder suffered one other setback, according to Douglas. He suffered a respiratory illness that doctors said might be fatal.  "They told him to give it up and get his affairs in order," Douglas said.  He ignored the advice. Instead, he went back to the drawing board, recreating his invention and soliciting the financing to produce it.  His health improved. And so did his inventive fortune.

Finally, by 1928, he had a prototype — a machine that could slice and package bread right out of the oven.  It proved harder to convince people of sliced bread’s potential. The baking industry cast off Rohwedder as a crackpot, as preposterous as this seems in hindsight.  People baked their own bread at home or bought it by the loaf and cut it at home. The system worked well for thousands of years.  Nobody but Rohwedder thought there was a better way to sell bread.  "Few people in the industry believed that bread could be automatically sliced as it came off the assembly line," Aaron Bobrow-Strain wrote in his 2012 book, "White Bread: A Social History of the Store-Bought Loaf."  "Bread was too unruly … Most bakers actively opposed factory slicing."  Rohwedder "found no takers for the idea and had almost given up hope," the author added.

Yet Rohwedder finally found someone willing — perhaps equally desperate — to take a chance on his scheme to reinvent the staff of life.  His name was Frank Bench. He ran the struggling Chillicothe Baking Co. — and he was looking for a Hail Mary.  He ordered one of Rohwedder’s slicing machines on July 1, 1928, and touted the news in the local Constitution-Tribune on July 6.  "The idea of sliced bread may be startling to some people," the story read, attempting to reassure customers who were surely shocked by the concept.  "The Chillicothe Baking Company has installed a new multi-bladed bread slicer, which performs a feat which heretofore had been considered by bakers as being impossible — namely the slicing of fresh loaves."  Sliced Kleen Maid Bread, the first loaves of pre-sliced bread in human history, rolled out of Chillicothe Baking Co. a day later, on July 7, 1928 — which just happened to be Rohwedder's 48th birthday.   It was an instant sensation.  "Sales at the bakery shot up 1,000% in two weeks," Chillicothe tourism director Amy Supple told Fox News Digital.

Word quickly spread throughout the industry. Rohwedder’s records show orders for his machine began to flow in from across the Midwest.  By early 1929, he was selling slicing machines to bakeries and other businesses as far away as New York and Florida.  The impact of sliced bread on the American household is evident by public reaction in 1943, at the depths of World War II, when the government announced it would begin rationing sliced bread.  The Roosevelt administration had already rationed sugar, meat and coffee.  But sliced bread proved too much to handle. The news incited a vocal rebellion among American homemakers.  "I should like to let you know how important sliced bread is to the morale and saneness of a household," distraught mother Sue Forrester of Fairfield, Connecticut, claiming to speak on behalf of America’s housewives, lamented in a New York Times letter to the editor.  In 1928, the man who imagined sliced bread was treated as a crackpot. Fifteen years later, his invention was a necessity that people couldn’t live without, even in wartime.  He worked for the company for the rest of his professional life as sales manager of its Rohwedder Bakery Machine Division — a sort of Johnny Appleseed of sliced-bread making. He retired in 1951.  Otto Frederick Rohwedder died on Nov. 8, 1960 in Concord, Michigan. He was 80 years old.  He’s buried beside his wife, Carrie, beneath a humble headstone in Albion, Michigan.

The world continues to marvel at Rohwedder’s achievement. The phrase "the greatest thing since sliced bread" has become deeply ingrained in our language.  But it largely forgot the man.  "This is a very family-oriented community," Chillicothe Mayor Theresa Kelly told Fox News Digital. "We’re very proud to be the home of sliced bread."  "You know 1928 was just prior of the Great Depression and World War II. It was that Greatest Generation," said Supple. "And they were really great but humble people."  Chillicothe, Missouri, has recently rediscovered its history as the birthplace of the invention by which all others are compared. The community houses its visitors' bureau in the former bakery where sliced bread was born.  A large new mural touting it as the "Home of Sliced Bread" has quickly become the city’s most recognizable landmark and most popular Instagram attraction.  "This is a very family-oriented community," Chillicothe Mayor Theresa Kelly told Fox News Digital. "We’re very proud to be the home of sliced bread."   The state assembly declared July 7 to be Sliced Bread Day in Missouri in 2018.

The 2023 Sliced Bread Day Festival in Chillicothe is scheduled this year for Saturday, July 8. The community hopes that Rohwedder will be rediscovered and earn his place among the great inventors in human history.  Perhaps it’s asking too much. Bread, and now sliced bread, is so ingrained in human existence, we instinctively assume it’s always been there, like the oceans or the stars. Surely something so essential to life could not be invented by man.  "History celebrates the battlefield whereon we meet our death, but scorns to speak of the plowed fields whereby we thrive," influential 19th-centuryFrench naturalist Jean-Henry Fabre wrote philosophically of bread.   "It knows the names of kings’ **** but cannot tell us the origin of wheat. That is the way of human folly."

 

On 1/28/2023 at 9:31 AM, Mlodj said:

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I plan to have sliced bread later today. We were going to have a big breakfast, but decided we could make a half a dozen devilled eggs for the game instead.

 

I'm seeing BLT in my future, just before the game.

Maybe Rogers will retire and become bee keeper.

https://www.iflscience.com/why-some-himalayan-bees-produce-hallucinogenic-mad-honey-31952

 

Thirty is hot

Twenty is nice

Ten is cold

Zero is ice.

On 1/29/2023 at 1:04 PM, Toastrel said:

I plan to have sliced bread later today. We were going to have a big breakfast, but decided we could make a half a dozen devilled eggs for the game instead.

 

I'm seeing BLT in my future, just before the game.

Look at richy rich over here...

19 minutes ago, JohnSnowsHair said:

Look at richy rich over here...

Bacon & Eggs are the new Lobster Thermidor

1 hour ago, Arthur Jackson said:

Bacon & Eggs are the new Lobster Thermidor

 

 

Funny how all those celestial objects are visibly spherical.

 

I thought this was too good for the Flat Earth thread.