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Don't think so. Haven't been bringing people to this place in a long time.

Can't say I blame you.   

In any case, Permatex here seems to be better than the usual noob.  I still hate him, of course, but that doesn't mean I don't like him.  Tentatively speaking.  He could still turn out to be another ratchet-jawed DUMBSHIT like everyone else on the interbutt supermarket.

Oh, I'm an atrocious asswipe as often as not, but I'm glad to be a cut above the sewer.

I used to interact with a young woman from Mumbai, as Bombay is called now, online.  I think we were both looking for someone outside our own culture to interact with so we could feel worldly, or something like that.  In any case she said that the streets and public transit are not at all safe for women there.  She has to be very careful not to make eye contact, as it is taken as an invitation to rape, and random groping of women on busses is not uncommon at all.  Apparently the women usually do not react, as reacting can provoke worse.

This is purely anecdotal, and based on what I was told by a young woman who was decidedly dramatic, so I am not claiming it is anything like authoritative, but it does indicate that even if Mumbai is better than Delhi it's still got a lot of problems in those respects.

[and a heritage of mistrust of govt.]

i don't see what the failing of the typical explanation is, i.e. the self-reliance required by a frontier society, and a heritage of mistrust of govt.

Bolded part is utter goo and drivel.  The American public worships the government.  Part of that worship is pretending to despise it, which they do poorly.

Americans worship all manner of things that don't actually exist.  Government is pretty much #2.

The other part is drivel too.  People on the frontier need tight communities.  There's room for hermits and mountain men, but they're dependent on the communities that they trade with and those communities were way more in one another's business than any modern American would be willing to put up with.

Effect on the murder rates with guns or the total figure.

What possible difference does that make?  If you're dead, you're dead, whether you are shot with an illegal gun, stabbed, strangled, whatever.

Because there probably isn't a rate from a time when there are no guns in recent years, which pushes me towards the Lost cause column again.
It's now half one, I have to get up for work in five an a half hours.

There has never been a time in America in which there were no guns.

Except for her entire history pre Columbus.

It may not be protection, but at least it is revenge.

Egad. I'm not sure what to think of how my innocent little recipe thread has turned out.

It tastes different than a traditional potato leek soup because the potatoes are chunks, not smushed into the soup, the creaminess comes from the milk and the butter instead.

Hippies should be leaving the Sanskrit alone.

Maya is the term used in Hindu and Buddhist schools of thought to describe 'the illusion of permanence' not that 'nothing exists'.

Yeah, just look what they did to the "singularity" concept.  It went from "the point in the future about which and after which you can no longer make accurate predictions", to "AI Jesus".

The 'illusion' is that the physical world appears on the surface (to our very limited physical perceptions) to appear one way. However, we know from SCIENCE that, indeed, there's lots of shit going on that is very different to how it seems. 

Never listen to physicists.  They're just making that shit up.  Fucking cat is DEAD, do you hear me?

Is that Hippies?  I thought it was Sci Fi writers. (the singularity that is)

I think with joint ownership, like in Fleetwood Mac, there's a lot more motivation to work things out.  Dissolving the band means everyone is fired.

Meanwhile for the horny Dentist firing the woman doesn't mean he's out of a job.

I have a friend who does web page design.  One of her clients is a barber shop/hair salon.  My friend is white, but she's also a contractor for them, she doesn't work in the business itself, she just makes their page and keeps it maintained.  Every employee in the place is black.

Is that racist?   Perhaps, but the place caters to an exclusively black clientele, black people have different hair than white people and even if there are white hair stylists who specialize in black hair having white people working in the place would lose them business and interfere with their business environment.


As far as Fleetwood Mac yes, it was addressed, that's where the album Rumors came from, them trying to work it out.  I don't know about lawsuits, I know they had a joint ownership model, not a sole proprietership, which makes things work rather differently.

No- i get it. A band is also a small business. I understand all that. If i break my arm the band doesnt play for 6 weeks. If pete breaks his arm the band doesnt play for 6 weeks. That all makes sense. Being sexually attracted to a bandmate and having them find out by me telling them i want them out of the band doesnt. If anything i just suck up my feelings or address the problem and try and work through it. Or go on tour- as im sure that would kill any attraction. Bands dont really go through lawsuits though unless theyre signed.

I'm pretty sure Fleetwood Mac broke up over sexual attraction.

OK, I figure sharing a recipe is a good way to say hi.  I always find this one tasty.

This is for making in a 2 and a half gallon pot.

1 Gallon milk
2 large leeks
1 pound butter
approx 5 pounds potatoes (I don't measure them that way, I cut them until they reach a certain point in the pot, the same level as the milk reaches)
soy sauce (added to a certain color, I'll describe that in more detail in the recipe)
3 tablespoons powdered red pepper
1 clove garlic

Chop potatoes into roughly 2" cubes until they fill pot a bit less than half way, wash and then cover with water and gallon of milk, put on medium low heat

mince garlic and dice leeks, sautee in 1/4 lb butter with pepper powder over medium high heat until leeks and butter start to brown.   Stir often.  Once brown add to large pot.

Add soy sauce until there are consistent swirls of darkness but stop before the color of the soup fully changes.  Cover and cook for 1 hour.  Do not allow the soup to boil. 

Add remaining butter and cook until it is melted, stir thouroughly before serving.

cream can replace the butter in the soup to good effect.  Irish reds work well for the potato, russets are a bit starchy.

The again, where exactly does it end for small business? What if you don't want to employ someone who's black because you're a racist piece of garbage?

On one hand, its their business and it may fail or succeed based in the small choices they make and the relationships they build or fail yo build.

On the other hand they're a racist piece of garbage.

This guys sounds like an asshole who needs to get his monkey brain in check and/or get laid.

If your business only has 5 or 10 employees and they are all white, that's not going to trip any discrimination detection algorithms unless you live in an area with a disproportionate amount of black people.  You can't say you didn't hire any of the qualified non white applicants because they weren't white, but that doesn't mean anyone can catch you or that any of those non hired applicants have grounds for a suit as long as those hired were of equivalent qualification.  You can say you didn't hire them because you wouldn't feel comfortable working with them, and the fact that is because they are black is irrelevent.

The, perhaps awful, part is that if you are a racist running a small business you shouldn't hire blacks.  Even if you are a benevolent racist who wants to do the right thing but is genuinely uncomfortable around blacks you shouldn't.  You'll hurt your own productivity and they'll notice pretty quickly which will cause a hostile work environment.  And if you ever admit your discomfort you will never be able to fire them, even if they do bad work, without facing a justified discrimination lawsuit. 

The good thing about small businesses is that they are much easier to influence.  That dentist has a small number of clients, if all the friends of that woman and her husband stop patronizing him, that is a significant chunk of his business.  On the other hand if she worked for a corporate consortium of some sort and was fired for this (which would then be illegal, I believe) her friends and family would represent no financial threat.  A dentist who never hires black people is less likely to get black clients, how much that matters depends on the community the racist dentist is in, but the less it matters for him financially the less of a problem it is anyway, because there are less black people being unfairly denied a job.