NewCharlesInCharge
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User ID: 89
NewCharlesInCharge
6d ago
Really? If the alleged victim in a sexual assault claimed that the accused used his penis to do something impossible, like he shot bullets out of it, I'm not allowed to convey to the women on the jury that penises do not work that way?
NewCharlesInCharge
6d ago
I just finished a thriller where Cesium 137 was at the core of the plot. The antagonists came into possession of many petabecquerels of the stuff, in a way reminiscent of the Goiana incident in 1987.
I checked with ChatGPT on the plausibility of attackers obtaining material this way. It's actually not that implausible, there are medical and food irradiation installations that contain such quantities. In the book the sources are in a war-torn region and become lost, which defeats the IAEA's ability to track such large emitters.
NewCharlesInCharge
6d ago
I wasn't an edgy America-hater, but I didn't feel viscerally that I had been personally attacked. In small-town Pacific Northwest I felt like big cities like New York got all the attention and we were an afterthought. I remember thinking that the inner city schools depicted on TV shows often looked much nicer than my schools. Now I'm sure in reality they were far worse to attend, but they also got a lot more funding and attention than Small Town High.
I'd never been to New York at that time. Since then I've connected through JFK but never stepped outside the airport.
I just didn't feel much kinship with such distant parts of the country. An attack on Seattle probably would've registered emotionally even though at that point I'd been on the ground in Seattle only a couple of times, always for school field trips.
I think my post-college civic self eduation instilled a better sense of myself as an individual contributor to and part owner of the great American project. I'd be on board with dropping bombs if a terrorist attacked a pelican in Myrtle Beach. But 22ish years ago I agreed with Kerry that the response should have been closer to a law enforcement action than a war.
Someone may be a very competent carpenter but if they also have a history of burning down houses then it’s a bad idea to hire them to build a house.
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