sethboy66

Yep, Mumble is the most common, and there are still a couple groups that use Teamspeak.

Discord caps at 100 people in a call while I've seen good Mumble servers handle over 800.

IIRC undercovers have, in the past, taken drugs to 'fit in' and keep their cover. The guidance to undercovers is probably 'try to avoid it' but the directive of 'don't get caught' and 'try not to die' probably override that.

Actual video of CIA agents experiencing low-light photonic emissions in the visual spectrum.

We are indeed more sexually fluid than most species and given it's "most" and not "all", this isn't unprecedented. It's also not a new phenomena, in Ancient Greek and early-mid Ancient Roman societies queerness was quite common. In fact homosexuality was so prevalent that that the Romans didn't even have a word for heterosexual/homosexual; instead one was either dominant or submissive (e.g. giving or receiving) with the assumption being that most were bisexual and would take partners as they saw fit.

The UN taskforce report clearly states that there are more slaves now than ever before.

His comment clearly doesn't go against that. He specifically states that that statistic arises from the fact that there are far more people alive today than ever before and the percentage (he also bolded that word) of slaves is lower than in the past.

Capitalism is inhumane. The profit margin somehow justifies the human cost.

There is no manifesto of capitalism which states that profit margins justify human suffering. Nearly all capitalist countries ban slavery altogether, while some few have it de jure banned but de facto legal (at least in some cases), and I don't know of any that have it fully legalized but I'm sure they exist.

In the end, slavery isn't caused by capitalism; slavery had been a thing for millennia under various controlled markets, state or otherwise. With how prevalent it has been since the dawn of time one could only conclude that it's human nature that will exist under any economic model and must be constantly fought against with every tool we have.

For example of other modern economic models that have benefitted from slave labor you can look at the USSR, that had obligatory labor written right into their constitution from the very beginning. On top of obligatory labor they forced 14+ million people into forced labor via the gulag system from the 30s to 50s. Most people think that the gulags were primarily to control political dissent, but released soviet documents from the time period shows that they were specifically devised by Gosplan for slave labor.

Dental problems aren't about them looking good; teeth used to kill. Dental disease used to be the 5th leading cause of death. Your great-grandparents aren't the best bar for dentistry in the past as modern dentistry began in the 18th century.

I have personally written code for quantum computers to save time due to algorithmic complexity; I was a college student at the time.

So if their usefulness is stuck in the unknowable future then I'm a time traveler.

Yeah, the reptilian archetype doesn't have as much variation as one would like. People also said that the blue brute from Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country and Krall from Star Trek Beyond looked like Drazi/Narn, but I don't see it.

I don't think you've quite understood '/s'. The author was not serious with his post and indicated this fact with '/s'. By definition it is sarcasm as that's what the author defined it as.

There is a photo on the page that shows the horizon from a landed position, that's the one he's referring to.

It links to, and is displayed, here; with no indication that it's an artist's take on what it would look like. It seems to be D. Mitchell's stitching work from this Venera-13 clear-filter panoramic transmission with added perspective from the color-filter panoramic transmissions.

ME: A 12 yo Navy brat living in Italy, on vacation at a Palermo resort.

The waiter (addressing a table of 10-13 yo kids): I can take your order while drinks are self serve; soft drinks are over there, wine and whisky to the left of that.

ME: Wine it is then.

I don't know what the legal drinking age was at the time (mid-2000s), but if it was above 13 it certainly wasn't really enforced.

I don't understand your reply; I think you misunderstood my comment. OP is from Ireland (Europe), I'm saying that he is the one with Euro-identity bias, not you. From his locality within Europe, American shops appear 'rundown' in presentation, and there's an implied suggestion that this is a uniquely American thing (within the global North-West). With that comes the bias that since he's in Europe, the rest of Europe (or global North-West in general) would share this perspective.

I've had this same bias myself, having grown up in Italy I had assumed that was generally representative of Europe and there were many things I thought of as purely American that were actually common in parts of Europe.