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For anyone invested in the " vs. " argument, here is a medieval painting of St. George and the dragon. I will not be taking further questions at this time.

Not posted for agreement, if you share from my post please leave my commentary intact, etc. This came up in a and writing group on Facebook. I disagree with it, but it's a worthy topic for discussion.

There's nothing magical about IMO: like any other part of , they should be dropped into the story when they're useful and left out when they're not. Give the readers enough to understand the world, without multiple paragraphs of exposition or "as you know, Bob" dialog.

I live in and spend as much time as possible in the . When people are talking about mountains—as the characters in my current work do a lot—they throw numbers around. , map , and time all matter a great deal when you're planning a hike. Since they're in a mostly unmapped world, they need all the information they can get. Qualitative details like , , and matter at least as much, so they talk about those too.

Number soup is boring, but as a seasoning rather than a main ingredient, numbers can really help add flavor. Readers who know mountains will recognize the way my characters talk, and those who don't will hopefully pick up on the authenticity. Anyone who wants to challenge my numbers at a con is welcome to do so, but I try to make sure they need to bring their A-game.

I understand that when it's time to pay up, he can be a real bastard.

When I am , everyone who makes a claim "according to ," or similar phrasing, will have one hour to produce their . Those who fail to do so will be used as for whatever comes up.

And *yes*, this message is aimed at least as much at my leftie friends as my right-wing foes. I expect that kind of petty stupidity from them. You? Do better.

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No matter who you are, or what else you have to say, if you refer to one of two major as the "Democrat Party," you're a shmuck and I really don't care about your opinion. There are no exceptions to this rule.

This is very well done, like the rest of the episodes. Great , impeccable —or history of paleontology, in this case—and a story about predator-prey conflict that doesn't end the way you expect. I recommend the entire series. youtube.com/watch?v=OH57rtnKCE

The Crystal Palace don't look like anything that's ever lived on Earth, but they do look like something that *could* have lived. In retrospect, they're a lot more believable than the upright tail-draggers that dominated for most of the following century! So it's good to see them brought to life, even briefly. Somewhere in the ...

Send innocent to concentration camps. Let mass off the hook. Par for the course.

bbc.com/news/articles/cy0w1p0w

Note: I cannot prove that Dr. Moore knowingly and wilfully caused the death of even one person, much less the three or more that is part of the legal definition of mass murder in the United States. But I'm as sure of it as I am that the sun will set tonight.

Rick Astley and Trent Reznor must never be allowed to meet. If they do, they'll mutually annihilate in a shower of gamma rays that could wipe out all life on Earth.

"Of course I don't want and forces to draw an occupation dividing line through Denver, but just doesn't seem like he really wants to *earn* my support, you know?"

Brought out from a discussion elsenet: would Earth now be warm enough to support large, today? This is a fair question, because as bad as global warming is—and it's going to get worse—we're still nowhere near the hottest times of the .

The answer is, it was *generally* warmer than the present day, but went up and down considerably, as you'd expect over such a long stretch of time—about 175 million years from the first dinosaurs to the impact. Dinosaurs as a did fine the whole way through, although of course with plenty of various groups dying out in the meantime.

Also, the planet has always had warmer and cooler regions. Many large dinosaurs lived comfortably in polar regions that had comparable to the cooler parts of the temperate zones today. The idea that non-avian dinosaurs exclusively inhabited steaming jungles or baking deserts has been embedded by generations of paleoart, but it's just wrong. If the impact hadn't happened, they'd still be thriving.

That being said, in particular seemed to prefer warmer environments, so their range might be a lot more limited now than it was then, and it's possible the ice age(s) would have finished them off. Other famous giants like , , and would still be widespread, and smaller ones like ("raptors") would be as numerous as coyotes and wildcats are in our world.

When I criticize , I am not criticizing all , or all . If this concept makes you uncomfortable, think really hard about why, and what you might be able to do about that. Protip: whining in the comments on ' posts isn't it.

"Yeah but somehow we lost technology we had in the 70s to get past the Van Halen belt and haven't been back since... Give me a break"

"No no, Van Halen is a rock band. Van *Heusen* makes belts."

Best response to lunacy ever: "When I want your opinion I'll ask Trump".

"['s] mission emphasis on prediction and management seems designed around the fatal conceit of planning for the unplannable." — , page 675.

This perfectly expresses what happens when you put government in the hands of people who think everything happens according to divine will.

documentcloud.org/documents/24

The currently trendy obsession with being a "" is poison.

Buddy, the vast majority of throughout human —past, present, and future—are not kings. If you think you are, or can be, you don't understand how people function. We're not either. We're . We're born, we live, we work, we die. Nobody but our friends and families will ever know we existed. When they die too, we will be completely and utterly forgotten.*

The ones who are kings? Or , or , or knights? Shitheads, by and large. Even the "good ones" turn out to be pretty bad when you look closely. need the , but people don't need rulers. This is a lesson the world learned through millennia of blood and pain. Those who want to discard that hard-won knowledge are scum.

If that's what you want to be ... okay, thanks for letting us know what you are. We won't forget it.

love to talk about Protecting The Children, but also think hundreds of dead kids is a "modest number."

npr.org/transcripts/1255015991

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