Hello, 2025 Forum
America rolled the dice on 2025.
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36 responses to “Hello, 2025 Forum”
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Happy New Year, everyone! Starting 2025 the right way—with some late-night Del Taco! There’s nothing like a classic Del Taco burrito and crinkle-cut fries to fuel those New Year’s resolutions (or recover from last night’s celebrations). Cheers to good vibes, great food, and all the taco nights ahead this year!
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Happy New Year, everybody. Yesterday was my granddaughters 6th birthday so that was the celebration. Wife and I crashed around 10. First New Years in Houston area. The amount of fireworks set off was astonishing. Started around 7 and continued on to about 1. And I thought San Antonio was excessive. Fortunately, it doesn’t bother my dogs.
Lucky food on the menu: pork and sauerkraut, black eyed peas. Rejected menudo.
How about you all: any New Years Day traditions?
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Speaking of rolling the dice:
Psychedelic therapy begins in Colorado, causing tension between conservatives and veterans
While research has shown promise for psychedelic drugs such as psilocybin and MDMA, also known as molly, in helping people with conditions such as alcoholism, depression and PTSD, the scientific field remains in its relatively early stages.“I’m very positive about the potential value, but I’m very concerned that we’ve gotten too far ahead of our skis,” [Nice! A Colorado metaphor!] said Jeffrey Lieberman, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University, who’s been involved in studies of psychedelic drugs’ therapeutic efficacy.
If it consistently helps PTSD sufferers, then why not.
Something like 23% of Americans take prescription medication for mental health issues. This doesn’t even cover those who are “self medicating.”
It’s a brave new world.
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@Rob1:
What (some) science says:
Efficacy and safety of psychedelics for the treatment of mental disorders: A systematic review and meta-analysis
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@Rob1: The way to avoid getting to far over our skis is to keep studying and expanding uses in controlled settings.. My inner skeptic wonders why Dr. Lieberman is concerned. (One of the stock questions I taught my students about analyzing research was “how does the person making the statement make their living; is the statement colored by employment concerns.”)
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One of the stock questions I taught my students about analyzing research was “how does the person making the statement make their living; is the statement colored by employment concerns.
A good metric for all sources including research departments. Objectivity is simply not a human trait. Or perhaps capacity.
I’m a fan of flooding the zone with data from reputable sources, then looking for trend lines, not absolutes.
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@Rob1:
Humans are subjective, by definition. Objectivity is a goal, and like all good goals, ultimately unattainable. -
A Tesla Cyber Truck has apparently caught fire (some saying ‘blew up’) in the valet parking drive of the Trump Hotel in Vegas. The Gods of Irony are now doing schtick.
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@Rob1: There was recently a fascinating episode of Radiolab that looked at the use of ecstasy and other psychedelics to reopen “learning windows” of the brain. The science on this is just so interesting.
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@CSK:
It seems Jabbar was US-born, or at least Texas-born. Bearing in mind the usual error-prone early reports. -
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@CSK:
Twitter now saying Metro is investigating it as an active crime scene. Also rumors of some injuries. And one video sure as hell looks like a bomb, not just the usual burning Tesla. This might be domestic terrorism. -
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The MAGAs are already saying that this and what happened in New Orleans are part of a deep state plot.
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@CSK:
A deep state conspiracy to run over partiers in NO, and force a temporary evacuation of a hotel half-owned by Trump. It’s brilliantly nefarious and all part of a plan to run over partiers in NO, and force a temporary evacuation of a hotel half-owned by Trump. Clearly this is all part of a nefarious master plan to run over partiers in NO, and force a temporary evacuation of a hotel half-owned by Trump. I mean, if you want to turn this country into a communist state, the first step should absolutely be to run over partiers in NO, and force a temporary evacuation of a hotel half-owned by Trump.It’s all so clear once you shove the icepick into your brain.
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Working on another day off wasn’t that bad. I was done in under four hours, and have little left for tomorrow (I hope).
Also, astonishingly, one of the managers in charge of the project showed up. Go figure.
And now, a moment of levity: Hail Science!
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Humans are subjective, by definition. Objectivity is a goal, and like all good goals, ultimately unattainable.
When people say, “let’s be objective,” they’re usually meaning “let’s go with my opinion” and they lose me right there.
“Objectivity” can be approximated to a more or less degree, but is never a final destination.
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@CSK: How much is he charging for seats and do the corporations that
paid protectioncontributed to his inauguration have enough employees in the region to fill up the arena or will they have to fly extras in? -
I can’t find any indication of the ticket price. Maybe he’s hoping those people will stay over and attend his inauguration.
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@Kathy: Greenlight dot com claims:
The expiration date of your debit and credit cards helps keep your accounts secure and allows banks to replace your card with the newest technology. While it may be a hassle to update your card information for automatic payments, consider it a small price to pay for protecting your accounts.Nov 16, 2023
I’m not seeing the connection between issuing cards with new tech or enhanced security with expiration dates, but that’s the story.
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@CSK: If he did fill the venue (color me skeptical) and they all stayed over and attended the parade the next day, at least there’d be a crowd this time.
Well, sort of a crowd anyway. 🙁
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I’m not seeing the connection between issuing cards with new tech or enhanced security with expiration dates, but that’s the story.
Every time I get a new card, the new one has a different CVV number. And, over the years, new cards have had chips, and the most recent was the addition of tap to pay. It would be expensive to roll all of these features out to every cardholder as soon as the tech is available, so it gets staggered into the new cards when the old ones expire.
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@just nutha:
@Jen:My problem is banks used to send new cards a month before the old one expired. Most no longer do this, especially with debit cards. So now I’ve got to figure out which branch to go to get a new debit card.
No big deal. We’re just drowning in work, and it’s only 97% of my expenses that go through the debit card that expired the day before yesterday…
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@Jen:
I forgot to add: the CVV number is becoming largely useless, at least the one printed on the card itself. My two credit cards rely on a virtual card number for online purchases. The card number is different from the physical card, and the CVV is dynamically generated on the phone app, good for only a few minutes.
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