mr_overalls

Sometimes the brain’s auditory cortex can 'misfire' and create sounds or voices that feel 100% real, even when there's no outside signal. It’s actually a documented medical phenomenon.

Comparing this to Dachau suggests you’re feeling a massive amount of psychological pressure. Usually, when the mind is under extreme, prolonged stress, it can start to externalize internal thoughts as voices or 'beamed' messages. It might be worth talking to a professional about the distress this is causing you—they might have ways to help mute those signals.

If we're talking about objects in the asteroid belt, the internal consistency varies wildly. Most smaller objects are indeed rubble piles: boulders, pebbles, and sand-like grains, down to dust. As you'd expect, they're very weak structurally. Notably, the OSIRIS-REx probe was nearly swallowed by its loose material during the sample collection on Bennu.

Some of the other large, iron-rich asteroids like Ceres, Vesta, Pallas, and Interamnia are more like protoplanets than rubble piles.

Besides the concern for structural integrity/stability, they also have reasonable amounts of water ice, volatiles, metals, ad other resources needed to supply an outpost.

It's just astounding to see a scientific superpower destroy itself intentionally.

Nah, the businessman was probably in a more urban area, and he likely came into contact with a person (or contaminated item) who had recently been in the extremely rural area of outbreak.

Aren't multi-stage rockets essentially "lifting fuel into orbit"?

Russia has has something 130,000 troops positioned just outside Ukraine's borders and in Belarus. They have tanks, missile systems, amphibious landing ships, medical units, established supply lines, etc.

They actually invaded Ukraine in 2014 and took Crimea.

I mean, the possibility of an invasion is not exactly far-fetched.

This. I live in Madison, Wisconsin (aka, the "Berkeley of the Midwest") where tattoos and facial piercings are absolutely the norm - even my kids' daycare teachers openly sport them.

When I return to my small Mississippi hometown, only "rough" people openly display tattoos, and generally only a small minority of men are not clean-shaven with short haircuts. Male jewelry is minimal, things like facial piercings are heavily frowned upon, etc.

Regional norms can be very different.

The United States is still the only country in the developed world without a system of universal healthcare.

Breathlessly comparing the USSR's economic policies with the raising of taxes to cover such a fundamental service betrays a staggering ignorance of economics and history.

Also TMI (and let's be honest: mega-creepy) I can tell when women are menstruating with about 90%+ accuracy if we share small-ish indoor space for a few minutes. (As confirmed by female family members.)

It's not so much an obvious smell as a perceived "sharpness" that feels related to the sense-modality of smell, but is not exactly equivalent to it. I wonder sometimes if it's a pheromone-based phenomenon.

Speaking of "the public" as a single entity is about as useful as approximating a curve with a straight line - i.e. unless it's the most trivial case, it's oversimplified to the point of being doomed to failure.

The public is comprised of people with vast differences in cognitive ability, education, and scientific training. Most members of the public, even in highly educated countries, are easily fooled by a wide variety of logical fallacies, emotional manipulation, and statistical misdirection.

> they are definitely black hats

Both intelligence agencies and cyber-criminals can be considered threats, but they are quite different. Intel agencies would present a serious threat to confidentiality, but are very unlikely to threaten the integrity & availability of business systems.

Not saying you're wrong, but. . . who actually knows what actual top-grade INS is doing these days? Those kinds of capabilities would probably be Top Secret or SCI.