Marty_d

Well, then so are opium, cannabis and magic mushrooms.

Well, picture #2 and probably #3 are far prettier than me, and even the lady with the fat lips in #1 is too... so I'm not going to judge. As to the injecting rooms, I find that a bit harsh. We don't know what shit people have gone through in their lives that led to them being addicted to drugs. It's a medical problem, not a legal or moral one, and it's bloody hypocritical for us to say that one type of addictive drug (eg alcohol, nicotine, sugar) is legal and another type isn't. If everything were legalised, produced in clean factories instead of basements and tested, there'd be less crime and premature death and the cartels would go out of business.

Out of all the pictures that would be available for World Naked Gardening day, you had to give us an obese bloke in a g-string?

We installed a couple of those Google Nest smoke detectors. Now when someone burns some oil it says, in a female very English voice - "There's smoke in the family room. The alarm will sound shortly. It's going to be loud." That fortunately gives you enough time to frantically wave a book or something under it to fan away the smoke, so you never actually get the alarm (which is loud!)

Is "kiss" a swearword?

I think Musk reckons his spaceships will transport 100 at a time, but in reality there'd only be enough room for him and his ego.

Elon Musk has plans for Mars. We can only hope that he and his best mates are booked on the first ship there.

That's because sexual preference and gender are two different things. I'm a male, I feel/identify as male, and I am attracted to females. For a gay man, they may feel and identify as male, be attracted to males, and in a relationship may be more submissive/"wife-like" (although that generalisation seems pretty fraught too, the power dynamic in relationships can be all over the spectrum), but that has nothing to do with wanting to be female - they are happy as a male.

That raises a deeper question. If a person is born and always feels that they are the opposite gender to their physical sex, and undertake corrective surgery so that their genders and sex align, is that really a "choice"? Kind of like sexual preference, which no-one except the truly ignorant considers a "lifestyle choice" anymore.

He might be using an Irish accent Peter. In that case minus the "u" would get you the right sound...

...And no, I realise this is not the music thread. It isn't Freddy Mercury crooning that one. Maybe this should be in the random thoughts thread as it was just something I was musing about in the shower today. But the gist of it is, the hook for most religions is that they offer you eternal life, for nothing more than your belief and a small financial gratuity. But they haven't really thought it through. What exactly would heaven be like, for you to be able to bear it forever? The common conception in christianity is a kind of hero worship. God and Jesus are sitting there and everyone is kind of sitting around them, basking in the glory and basically... doing nothing. Look, raising 3 kids and working full time, with countless home renovations and trying to build a plane at the same time, I get that relaxing would be nice. For about 2 weeks. After that, find me something to do or I'm just going to get up to mischief. The muslims make it slightly more interesting by giving the honoured few 72 virgins. (Is it heaven for the virgins, or hell?) So ok. That might be fun for a while. But after a few weeks, they're not virgins. Unless they get replaced? Then they start comparing notes, start complaining that you're not meeting their needs, eventually organise strikes... but anyway. Even if they were gorgeous, eager and easily satisfied, how long would it be fun for? Wouldn't you start wishing for meaningful work, or a decent shed to hide away in? I guess the point is that what makes the fun things in life fun, is that there's a limited opportunity to experience them. Holidays in France are memorable because they're only a few weeks. If they were for years, then it wouldn't be a holiday, it'd just be where you live. The stupid thing is, as humans we are aware that we only have a short time on this planet. So we should be doing something exciting and satisfying every minute of every day. But do we? How many hours to we waste in jobs we don't find fulfilling, housework, arguing with loved ones, worrying about money, about relationships, about all the distracting and boring shit that comprises 99% of our time? So death, inevitably, is what makes life special. We're alive for a mere flash of time between billions of years of not yet being alive, and billions of years of no longer being alive. But even in that short time, up to 100 years if we're lucky, we may get to the stage where we're ready to die. How, then, does the prospect of any sort of eternal life hold any appeal?

Q. How do you turn a duck into a soul singer? A. Cook it in an oven until its bill withers.

No, but they're better than the currant ones, which are a bit fruity.

Well, the current ones reflect headlights at night, which serves the purpose.

As in all things in life, there's nuance and shades of grey. If the parents knew of this behaviour and either showed a reckless disregard (making no attempt to stop the behaviour) or actively enabled it, like those idiots in the US who bought their son a pistol when they knew about his fantasies of doing a school shooting - then yes, they should be accountable and charged accordingly. But what if they didn't know? Kids are incredibly good at hiding behaviours. Most parents, probably including most of us (or our parents if some of us don't have kids) have had the wool pulled over their eyes at some point in their lives. If the parent had no idea of the behaviour, and in general was raising their kid in a reasonable manner, then I don't see how they're responsible for what the kid does. As to the idiot who T-boned the car, the job of his defense counsel is to get him off by any legal means available. So while they might be considering his dislike of being locked up, I will lay money that neither the prosecution, judge nor any sensible jury will.

Yes, they're all over the place.

Reverse mortgage is another option.

It's funny, I've never been able to put up with something on my wrist. Prior to mobile phones I never knew what the time was unless there was a wall clock somewhere.

The round blank face is reminiscent of the robot in the recent Lost in Space series - wonder if that's a good design choice??

That's true and I was thinking about electric aircraft the other night. Even now there's a swag of detractors over in Rec Flying with all the reasons electric aircraft will never work - based on what we know today. Future generations will probably laugh at us the same way as we laugh at those people who said "that'll never work" about all the things we use today.

That's insane. 450,000 before they did the brake pads, and even then they only did them because they were looking at something else. 200,000 before the first service.

May he be mistaken for a statue by every pigeon in New York.

I used a similar one for the deck, but it also has a free-rotating collar that prevents you from sinking the countersink too deep.

Maybe Ukraine should be targeting Putin's palace with a few drones. Even if they don't get the arsehole it would piss him off.

Not that we can see them now, with the bi-annual deck oiling they're as brown as the wood.