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I mainly have the US in mind, but can be whatever country suits your fancy. Among US states/territories, I'd say that by not having a flag at all, Mississippi is (a) significantly outdoing their old flag (a modified CSA flag), as well as (b) outdoing half the other states in the US. But some...

A failed state would have a weak government. Communal interests would be more free to pursue their goals. Please tell me.

Have you ever been on a submarine? What's your favorite type of submarine? Instead of building 3 Zumwalt-class stealth destroyers, should the US Navy instead have just built 4 or 5 Virginia-class submarines? What are the pros and cons of including submarines in carrier strike groups? Discuss...

A recent AI paper (and video) claims to be able to clone your voice after listening to it for just several seconds. Though it certainly does not work quite as well as claimed, it is an impressive (if scary) algorithm. Which brings us to a hot topic we haven't discussed much in the OT: AI. It's...

Do you drink coffee? How do you like it prepared? Do you care about the bean variety, grind size, roast level, etc? What are your favorite espresso beverages? What's your favorite cafe or coffee chain?

What weird, interesting, or unimportant abilities do you have? Can be stuff like musical abilities, magic tricks, solving Rubik's cubes, individually moving one eyeball while the other remains still, unimportant knowledge, or really anything. Me: I can light a match with one hand. I can name...

A "landmark" paper appeared in Science this month, making a bold entry into the "Great Divergence" literature--the long-standing debate about what, if anything, was "special" about the West that caused so much of modernity to begin there. The paper's entitled "The Church, intensive kinship, and...

I didn't have much going on this weekend, so I did a little information retrieval project--I wrote a short scraper that can do a traversal of the Off-Topic section to grab metadata. I wouldn't want it to be a burden on the website, so I added a random delay of several seconds between every...

A few days ago, I learned of "CanCon," a portmanteau of "Canadian" and "content." In short, CanCon refers to a system of quotas the Canadian government imposes to ensure ~50% of stuff broadcasted in Canada is Canadian. "CanCon" also refers to content that is certifiably Canadian, as per some...

A few of mine:

We're watching the so-called "genomics revolution" play out in real time. High-throughput sequencing and genome-wide association studies (GWAS) are shaking up our knowledge about how humans work. I'm curious about the ideological impact. Most of us know various flavors of the old human nature...

In short, the thesis of Ta-Nehisi Coates' latest essay latest essay is that Trump is the "first white president" in the sense that whiteness requires the presence of people of color--especially Black people in the case of the US--against whom whites can define themselves. Continuing from this...

Hey everyone, In January I made a thread requesting aid in planning a trip to Australia, though plans have since changed and now I'm instead going to Spain in mid-December to early January. This will be around December 18th to around January 3rd--I don't have plane tickets yet and these dates...

Howdy everyone, I'm going to Australia in about a year (December and January) and I'm trying to figure out what to do. I'm planning on seeing things in New South Wales, Victoria, and maybe Queensland, but don't have a lot of plans. I'll probably be traveling with approximately 3-5 relatives...

Applying butter then toasting (using toaster oven) is the correct answer

Basically, I want a thread where OTers can share some of their favorite and most interesting sources of information. Regular publications, posts, or a series from some source is mainly what I have in mind. The information could be pretty much be anything, like news, science research, music...

I liked this article, despite the other OP, so here's a new thread! The article is about programs to prevent urban homicide, specifically "Ceasefire" programs. Here's a brief excerpt from the article: https://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-gun-control-debate-ignores-black-lives...

There was a thread on him 4 years ago and he's come up in some of the circumcision threads, but I wanted to hear new OT opinions and focus on the scientific aspects of the case. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Reimer (I believe the wiki to be mostly accurate, but it doesn't dispute the...

When liberals point out how badly conservatives are losing on the issue of gay marriage, they’ll usually refer to increasingly lopsided public opinion polls or point out how much momentum the movement has in its electoral and judicial victories. But both sides tend to overlook the increasingly...

Recent conflicts with my cable company have inspired me to see how CFC feels about them.