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9/11: Never Forget

Previously:

• Harvey could be Ted Cruz’s time to shine. So far he hasn’t
• Is Ted Cruz human? An investigation
• Ted Cruz is now likeable, The New York Times wants you to believe

And then...

• Republican senator Ted Cruz caught liking pornographic video on social media
• For One Hot Second, Ted Cruz’s Official Twitter Account Liked a Porn Video
• Ted Cruz Likes Adult Movie On Twitter With Woman Who ‘Vaguely Resembles’ His Wife, Heidi
• Ted Cruz "Likes" Porn Video On Twitter
• Ted Cruz Just ‘Liked’ A Hardcore Porn Video On Twitter
• Why is US Senator Ted Cruz trending for porn?

Update: Somebody fell on their sword:

• Ted Cruz blames staffer for 'liking' porn tweet

Ted Cruz trivia:

• Ted Cruz helped defend Texas ban against sale of sex toys in 2007
• Snopes version of above
• Before Twitter porn controversy, Ted Cruz didn’t think masturbating was a laughing matter
• Even The National Review Doesn’t Think Cruz Needed To Pull Campaign Ad Featuring Porn Star

Japan Is No Place for Single Mothers (archive)

Much longer read:

The First White President (archive)

Don't like to do two in a day but eh:

5 Denver Health nurses suspended after opening body bag to view genitals

Denver nurses ogled dead patient's genitals

Denver Health nurses suspended after opening body bag to see man's genitals

These are just some nurses that eventually got caught.

Would you, RN/Dr. Soyluser, grope a stiff?

Woman trapped in window trying to retrieve poo after Tinder date

Woman On Tinder Date Gets Stuck In Window Trying To Retrieve Her Own Poop

Replacement window

Something something something what even is this timeline

Looking for this article about high dynamic range:

Netflix confirms HDR compatibility with Samsung Galaxy Note 8 and LG V30

Found this article with some nice historical and technical details:

Believe the Hype: HDR Is the Real Deal

HDR seems like a bigger deal than 4K for games with moody atmospherics or stealth mechanisms, as well as certain films. I doubt it will die and recede into the background like 3D did.

I'm usually not much of a writer, but by a strange and incredible turn of fate, I have a lot of time on my hands now.

Just the other day, my boss (a petite brunette with perky breasts and a great ass) called me in to her office, telling me she wanted to have a discussion. I knew what that meant, since she was always walking by my desk shaking that sweet ass in front of me. especially after the look of lust she gave me the day before when I slapped it as she walked by.

So finally, after three weeks, I was finally going to get a taste of of that hot bitch!

I went into her office, closed the door and drew the venetian blinds that looked out into the bullpen where us peons sat.

She looked up and said, "Please sit down. I hope you don't mind if I record our interaction." Sweet! Now she wants to make porn with me, I started getting quite sexually aroused as she started the webcam.

I said, "You look so hot today baby! I've been looking forward to this from the moment I met you, you sexy little ho!"

She replied, "I understand. It's was inevitable, almost from the day you started working here. And finally the moment has come."

I got up and started opening my pants. She slid back from her desk as I dropped my pants and began pulling down my underwear. "I've been wanting to get between those sexy legs so bad!" I said, starting to breathe heavily.

She stopped me by saying, "This isn't the right place for this."

I agreed, "Let's go into the ladies room so I can bend you over the sink, you sexy slut!"

My boss had other ideas. She said, "I've reserved a conference room for us, so put your pants back on and let's go."

That sexy bitch didn't have to ask twice! The image of her spread-eagled on the conference table was making me so hot!

We exited her office and walked down the hall toward the large conference room adjacent to the HR department. I checked my phone to make sure I had enough free space to video the "coming" encounter, just like she wanted.

We entered the conference room and I was surprised to see two burly security guards already there. I said, "Wow, honey! All three of us at once? You do love the cock, don't you?"

My boss paled a little. Obviously, all her blood was going to her loins, in expectation of the fun to come.

"We're just waiting on Leslie now," my boss said, referring to the head of HR. Today really was my lucky day! I was going to get to fuck both of those hot babes!

"Woo-hoo!" I exclaimed as Leslie walked in, looking sexier than ever. I started unbuttoning my shirt, when the security guards grabbed me and forced me into a chair at one end of the conference table and stood over me.

I said, "Ooh! bondage games! I love those! let's see those sweet pussies, girls!"

The women sat down at the other end of the table and then the meeting took a turn I never expected.

As I said, I have a lot of time on my hands now. Which is good, because both of those hot bitches are definitely going to call me soon!

No doubt this is the question on everyone's mind these days! Or, I am a conceited bastard who thinks everything is about me, and the bans applied to me are really about me, and not about the random imposition of power!

Whence aristarchus? Interesting, my recent experience with mod bombing had my karma reduced to almost single digit. Now I am not privy to the inter databases as someone like The Mighty Buzzard is, for some reason, but I could tell that perhaps several of the spam mods (-10, you know!) were not called for, were in error, and should have been rescinded immediately. This was not the case, and after a campaign of posting "no comment" to current articles, either my spam mods were rescinded or my fellow soylentils responded to my mayday call, and restored my karma. But since my spam mods were not immediately rescinded, I felt it was apropos to spam mod the most visible face of the right-wing bias, and although I have no evidence to suggest such, the spam modder of me, The Mighty Buzzard.

  Those of use who are mere Soylentils get some idea of how things go down. If I rip Runaway1965 a new one over some stupid thing he has posted, I can expect to get several down mods, in that or other threads. Same thing if I have to, once again! correct the obviously rebutted khallow. Now, I am not suggesting, and I do not know, that these fine Soylentils which whom I have obvious disagreements, are down modding me just because I disagree with them. But the pattern persists.

So, after we have entered upon the "Spam mod aristarchus four times", and "aristarchus spam mods The Mighty Buzzard once" situation, things have been, well, "fluid". My karma has gone back up to the max. But curiously, it does not stay there. I seem to dip in to the low 40's, and then back up to 50, depending on where the sun is shining on the earth. Well, that is as may be. But if a majority of Soylentils are so opposed to my posts, I can only assume that my time here is wasted. Except, of course, my education of khallow and insulting of Runaway, and dismissing of jmorris, and . . . spam modding of The Marginally Brossander! Well, I was workig on a real journal on Ethics for Soylentils. It may not see the light of day, if the current tyranny of the spam mod admins continues.

Aristarchus, out. Love you all, authentic Soylentils!!!

The Saga continues. I submitted a lot of very fine articles on Charlottesville, and its aftermath. Many of these were disallowed, which is fine. But that all of them were seemed a bit of a bias on the part of the editors. So I started a brief campaign where I posted "No Comment" to new articles. This got me spam-mod-bombed (hey, a new Soylent word!), and my karma fell to depths I did not know were possible. So far, so good.

          So, I made fuss, or a journal entry, explaining the situation, and calling all good solylentils to come to the aid of their site. And come you all did. Some actually said they would mod me up, for no reason, which while nice, seemed a bit irrational. Appreciated, nonetheless. And so my karma has recovered. Some of this might be due to admins revoking the spam mods that were place on me. But they give no notification, and if the post in question has fallen off my "info" list, I really have no way of checking.

    And then there is the question of punishment. If someone spam modded me, and it was not a fair spam mod (and I assure my fellow soylentils that I would never spam you, in any pure and simple sense), then they should have been put on probation, having their moderation privileges revoked for a month. This has probably happened to us all, it happened to me, when I accidentally spam modded something, was banned, and made the case the the "spam" mod was too close to the "troll" mod, and so was restored. But this leads us to the topic at hand: what the heck is a spam-mod?

    So, as the drama about the spam-modding of yours truly was being played out, the Celestial (sorry, Guardians of the Galaxy 2 just hit Redbox) The Mighty Buzzard took it upon himself to adminsplain what constitutes a spam mod-able post. Yes, crass commercialism is spam. Rushstatus https://soylentnews.org/~kapilsingh/journal/ is spam. We all have no problem with this. But the other part of the guidelines for what is spam is decidedly subjective.

Spam can come in many forms, but it differs from a troll comment in that it will have absolutely no substance, is completely undesired, are detrimental to the site, or worse.

The Mighty Buzzard kept suggesting that my protest posts fit this category, so I had no choice but to mod his assertion of this as spam, since it had "absolutely no substance, was completely undesired, and was detrimental to the site, and worse". So I spam modded The Mighty Buzzard. He had it coming.

      Wait a sec, and think about this. I spam modded one of the admins of the site. I am a lowly soylentil. I barely can remember my password for the site. And I spam mod the person who seems to be, by his own admission, responsible for rescinding spam mods? Is this anything but a symbolic action? To TMB's credit, he asserted he would not do so, but left it to the editors. https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?noupdate=1&sid=21277&page=1&cid=559394#commentwrap Nice reclusal, but only in the confidence of the exact same outcome. And his confidence was confirmed.

    So now the Mineorgy Bacculumard has succeeded in having me mod-banned. As I said, my karma is restored, and perhaps higher than ever (another thing admins never let us see), but I am banned from moderation for a month, just when TMB, in a typically random attempt to fix the moderation system, upped the daily mod points to 10! And even worse, both Eth and Runaway made posts that, for almost the first time, I would have modded up! Oh, the irony! So where do we go from here?

    The suggest path is that I email admin, and explain how my spam mod was all a mistake, which admittedly does happen. But it did not in this case. TMB was repeating the basis for suppressing certain viewpoints on this forum, and I must maintain that this does constitute a post of "absolutely no substance, was completely undesired, and was detrimental to the site, and worse". We pretend to be a site that values free speech above all. But when TMB can make his own subjective determination as the the value of another soylentil's post? He needs to be spam-modded.

    So I am non-violent philosophically, long existence on earth will kind of make that point to you, but if anyone else feels like living dangerously, you could spam mod The Mighty Buzzard, just to make the point. Would not have any effect on his ability to do the wonderful coding he does to keep us all up and foaming at the mouth, but it might make the point that we, the few, the proud, the Soylentils, came here because we wanted a site controlled by its members, not some corporate entity or administrative elite. I, for one, do not want to think our volunteer editors have become exactly what we fled when we left the other site.

    Welcome your comments, but I will not be able to mod them up, so take that as a given, if I could.

Yours,
aristarchus of Samos

Boy Scouts 'Exploring' Co-Ed Programming Provokes Girl Scout Ire

Girl Scouts Accuse Boy Scouts of Recruiting Girls, Souring Century-Old Friendship

Editorial: On their honor, the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts should settle their boundary issues

Parents, Don’t Let Your Girls Join the Boy Scouts

Lots Of Girls Want To Join The Boy Scouts. What's The Problem With That?

I can sense film scripts being written about this.

Space travel is dangerous. We all know it. How did the old joke go? NASA == Need Another Seven Astronauts.

One of the big issues that space agencies have with manned space flight is getting folks to the target, perform whatever tasks (e.g., search for evidence of life on Mars, explore the oceans of Europa, build a temporary moon base on the surface and survey for lava tubes, water ice and other resources for a permanent base, perform geological surveys of asteroids, etc., etc., etc.) are required and returning those same folks safely back to Earth.

But what if we took a different angle and weren't so concerned about returning people safely? We could send older folks, those with terminal diseases, those with spinal cord injuries (who needs to walk in micro-gravity?) and those who just want the glory and adventure of advancing human knowledge and helping to make humans a space-faring race.

I'm 50 and in relatively good health. I don't want to die, nor do I want to throw away my life, but I'd jump at the chance to go to Mars, the moon, the asteroid belt or the Jovian satellites, even knowing it was a one-way trip.

Given that even Martian gravity is just 38% that of Earth and anywhere else we might go is much less than that, physical strength isn't so important. A space-farer would just need to be healthy enough to survive the acceleration (~3Gs) to get into orbit. After that, acceleration to reach other points in the solar system (given current technologies) would be much, much less.

So I'm going to set up a straw man for argument's sake and ask if you soylentils feel as I do, or are you just cowardly pussies who care nothing for adventure and advancing the knowledge and reach of the human race?

I, for one, would welcome the opportunity to die doing so.