That if a racoon saw you swimming, it would swim out to you and sit on your head and drown you.

My fully adult mother actually feared this was something that could happen to her children, and she warned us of this “danger” every summer when we were young.

If the Soviets hadn’t cut corners and Chernobyl hadn’t happened in this first place, this is likely where we would already be.

Easy. Have nuclear power plants operate as government run and backed corporations (what we’d call a “Crown Corporation” here in Canada).

That way you can mandate safety and uptime as metrics over profit. It may be less efficient from an economic standpoint (overall cost might be higher), but you also don’t wind up with the nuclear version of Love Canal.

All coal from the Earth has a radioactive component to it. Burning coal releases more radiation into the atmosphere than a properly functioning nuclear reactor ever does. Fly ash from coal fired power plants contains 100 times more radiation than nuclear power plants emit.

The idiots on here apparently also think that burning coal somehow doesn’t create waste that will last for longer than humanity has existed.

To be clear — Mom’s “Depression Dinner” was in fact just greasy fried ground beef poured over mashed potatoes. No spices. I don’t even think she used any salt or pepper. Oily Gerbers would be a perfectly apt description!

Oh certainly changing the presentation, texture, and separation of the ingredients can make a big difference in a dish! I’d say the difference between “depression dinner” and Shepard’s pie is like the difference between cake batter and cake — they’re both made up of the exact same stuff, but one is a gloopy mess you’d probably not want to eat a whole bowl of, and the other is delicious cake you’ll want a second serving of.

I pretty specifically called out striving to create things like family or helping improve your community through volunteer works — which isn’t “capitalism” at all.

Each of us can always be someone better and do something more. That isn’t a bad thing.

You end by trying to put words in my mouth. I never said anything about the worth of anyone over anyone else. Striving for the betterment of oneself, one’s loved ones, and one’s community is a good thing — but the antithesis of that isn’t that doing none of those things makes you worthless. That’s something you came up with, not me.

Growing up my mother would occasionally make a dish my father enjoyed that she called “Depression Dinner”. It was mashed potatoes covered in fried ground beef with beef gravy poured on top of it.

I like mashed potatoes. I like using ground beef in a variety of dishes. And who can say anything bad about gravy? But mix those three together — ugh, no thanks. It was like baby food for adults. There was a reason why my brother and I took to calling it Depressing Dinner growing up.

The ability to “strive” is a learned skill that needs to be honed over years. It’s not really natural to most people — it’s easy to fall into a low-energy state and want to stay there because it’s comfortable. It takes practice and energy putting yourself out there and putting an effort into making more of your life.

If you’re happy with who you are and what you’re doing, then I’m not going to neg on your life. But are you going to spend the next ~50 years just gliding along, and not creating or building any value for yourself in this world (and that doesn’t have to be monetary value — building a family, and building up your community through volunteer works build value as well)? When you’re in the twilight of your life, do you want to look back and find you did nothing of significance with your life?

Maybe that doesn’t bother you. That’s fine. Just so long as 15 years from now you’re not some bitter middle-aged person complaining about people in the upper-middle class who get to do things you don’t get to do and who have more money and nice things that you do.

But none of that would be for me. So I put in the work, learned how to strive for the life I wanted, and got a graduate degree, built a beautiful family, got that management job (and the pay that goes with it), and spend my spare time volunteering (currently) with three different organizations. It’s a busy life and take a lot of time and energy — but it allows me to have people around me who love me, with the money to do and own nice things together, and to give back to my community to make it a better place. And when my time eventually comes, I’ll have hopefully left this world a little better off for the effort.

Chuck E Cheese was founded by Nolan Bushnell — the same Nolan Bushnell who was one of the co-founders of video game company Atari (at one time, the biggest player in the home console industry). He started it in part as a way to promote Atari games and cabinets.

So it was both — and the “entertainment centre” part was always part of its “core mission” from its inception.

Summary for those who don’t get the references:

• In Futurama (a show about a young man who gets accidentally cryogenically frozen until the year 3000), Fry finds the fossilized remains of his pet dog from the year 2000. Ultimately he assumes his dog had a good and full life after his disapperance, but in the epilogue we see that his dog waited for him in front of his workplace (Panucci’s Pizza) throughout the seasons, regardless of the weather, until he aged and died.

• In Full Metal Alchimist: Brotherhood, the Elric brothers visit an alchemist (Shou Tucker) who is known for having created a chimera capable of understanding human speech. While they study under him, they also spent time playing with his 4 year old daughter Nina and her dog Alexander. Upon returning one day they find Shou has created a new chimera capable of understanding human speech in order to satisfy his yearly alchemist assessment requirements; when the chimera indicates it knows who the Elric brothers are and wants to go out and play it becomes obvious that the chimera was made by combining Shou’s own daughter with the family dog. The resulting being is very sad and confused and doesn’t really understand what has happened to it, and just wants to be back to normal, but there is no way to undo . This chimera is the creature pictured here.

Ultimately, these are two of the most heart-wrenching scenes in animation.

(PS: Fuck Shou Tucker!)

Crazy and sad. Reading his letter, I couldn’t help but get the impression that he has no idea a) about the current state-of-the-art in drive media and filesystems, and b) that Reiser 5 seems like it’s never going to happen.

It’s almost like he’s been frozen in time for nearly 20 years. Reading his letter was like pulling out and reading an old copy of Dr. Dobb’s journal. He is where he deserves to be — he is the architect of his own situation — it’s just wild to think of how much he’s missed out on due to his evil actions. It’s quite literally pitiful.

An indirect sequel that used the same sets and cast (where it makes sense) dealing with the Demon Core could be interesting - but I don’t know if there would be enough there for a full feature-length film or not.

I suggested to a friend years ago that he keep all of hit used butts in a jar beside his bed. He came up with this idea that he should add some water to the jar.

The reminder every time he got up or went to bed that the black goop shit was the same stuff he was putting into his lungs every day eventually got him to stop. He couldn’t even look at the jar anymore — and certainly didn’t want to add to it. That thing was nasty.