Fondots

Has there ever been a repeat mass shooter?

I don't have hard data, but probably not. Most probably don't get the chance. If they don't kill themselves and aren't killed by police, most of them are probably facing decades if not life in prison or even execution.

At least if we're talking about the sort of "classic" mass shooting scenario where a lone wolf type walks into a soft target like a school and opens fire indiscriminately.

If you open up the definition a bit, you might find some examples, though I don't really like doing that because they really seem like different kinds of scenarios to me.

You could probably find a couple gang or mafia types who have taken part in more than one incident where multiple people were shot. Same for certain terrorist/guerilla groups and such.

The beltway sniper attacks took place over about 6 months, though most of their attacks individually wouldn't count as mass shootings

After the Boston Marathon bombing the bombers shot an MIT police officer and then later had a shootout with police. Not mass shootings, and you could probably argue that everything that followed the bombing was just an extension of the original incident.

The shootings in Maine last year might count, since they took place at 2 different locations, but again you could probably argue that it was all part of the same incident.

That's what I can think of off the top of my head. Nothing that I'd personally feel comfortable labeling as "repeat mass shooter" but they are incidents that kind of lean in that direction that show that they may not be just one-off events and that the perpetrators may try to continue if not stopped immediately.

I feel like I've also seen a few cases where it was discovered that the shooters had plans to commit other attacks. We'll probably never be able to say conclusively if they actually would have followed through with those plans if given the opportunity.

Houses also have thermostats

Also, on Earth we already have situations near the equator where there's not really a significant change in the weather from one season to the next, or near the poles where for parts of the year days are considerably longer/shorter than elsewhere on the planet, we also have people living in scorching deserts and frozen tundras, at high altitudes with thinner atmosphere, etc. and despite all that variation we don't really see major differences in how quickly children mature.

The differences could be even more profound on other planets of course.

There have also been studies where people have lived in caves or bunkers without natural light, clocks, or other cues about the time or day/night cycle, and it's been found that we stay pretty close to a 24 hour circadian rhythm (usually slightly longer actually, but within a few hours of that target,) so it seems like that's something that might be hard-coded into us. Of course those studies have been done on adults who have had decades to acclimate to a 24 hour cycle, so it's plausible that kids raised in a different environment would naturally adapt to a different cycle, but since we're probably not going to be sending unaccompanied minors to the stars, those same kids would probably be raised by adults who are used to a 24 hour schedule and would raise those children in the same schedule.

You might see some divergence from that over the years and multiple generations, but if there's a 24 hour clock present, and people decide to stick to that, I suspect that would work just fine. It would probably come down to whether it's more beneficial for people to be in sync with the rest of humanity, or to be on the local cycle. My money's on the former, since we probably aren't going to need to worry about hunting for sustenance or avoiding predators, or other such things that our circadian rhythms evolved for.

Something we can't really account for though is if different gravity would affect how quickly children mature. It will almost certainly have an effect on how they mature with differences in height and muscle/bone density, but I don't think we can really say if it will change how quickly their brains develop, when they begin puberty, etc.

There's other factors that could play a part as well of course, the composition of the atmosphere, the intensity of radiation from the star you're orbiting, diet, exercise, different mutations that could arise over the generations.

The house behind my parents has had a string of terrible tenants. Loud assholes, people who let their dogs run loose, people with unruly kids, etc.

Otherwise a pretty decent neighborhood.

There was a younger dude living there for a while, kept kind of weird hours, but my parents never thought much of that, figured he was going to school, working night shift somewhere, etc. Mostly kept to himself, never bothered my parents in any way, always dressed professionally, etc.

He was probably the best neighbor my parents ever had in that house.

Then one day cops raided the place, turns out he'd been dealing a lot of drugs out of there and had a punch bowl full of cocaine sitting out on the kitchen counter.

Some of the other neighbors apparently had noticed some pretty sketchy characters coming and going from the house, they must have entered from the front door though, because my parents never really noticed anyone.

My parents would still take the drug dealer over pretty much anyone else that's lived there.

Couldn't tell you how many I had as a little kid, but I've probably gone through about 2-3 a year since I was about 16

One time I treated myself to a pair of Oakley's i found an an REI garage sale, thinking maybe more expensive sunglasses would hold up better or I'd keep better track of them.

They got dropped and stepped on within about a week

We also don't have any particular reason to think that it will

Other planets are going to likely need 2 calendars.

They're of course going to need to keep track of the local day/night cycle, seasons, etc.

But we're also going to need a universal calendar to keep things in sync between different planets, and that's probably going to be the Gregorian calendar or whatever earth is currently using.

If you're born on another planet, and that planet goes around its star 18 times, or spins on its axis 6000-some times, that doesn't mean you're biologically an 18 year old adult, that planet's year and days could be significantly longer or shorter. So things like people's ages are going to have to be figured in equivalence to earth years.

We'll also need a coordinated time/calendar for interplanetary travel/commerce/communication. If Mars needs something delivered from the Europa colony by X time/date, and to deliver on that Europa needs materials from some remote asteroid mining outpost by Y time/date, they need to be in agreement on what that all means. Mucking around with mars years and days vs jovian years and Europan days, and whatever passes for days and years for an asteroid tumbling around in the belt is sure to lead to headaches. Better to have that all working on one system, and since humans across the federation/empire/whatever are already keeping track of earth years we might as well just use that instead of coming up with a third system for everyone to keep track of.

I think what qualifies as "large" really depends on the space you're putting it in, what you're used to, and how old you are.

When I was a kid, unless you were rich, there's a good chance the TV in your living room was a CRT in the 30-40-ish inch range. I bought myself a 50" TV for my room when I was 18 with money I saved from my first job as one of my first big purchases for myself,and with the bezels at the time it was probably closer to a modern 55 or 60 inch tv in overall size. That thing seemed huge to me, especially given how small my bedroom was, even though it's probably pretty standard these days.

So to me, 50" is kind of the benchmark for where I start calling a TV "big" even though I have a 70inch in my home now, and if I were filthy rich I could have one that's over 100" now.

Politicians lie and use all kinds of weasely doublespeak bullshit all the damn time, it's pretty much their signature move, everyone knows it, it's been the punchline of countless jokes, no one likes it, but anyone with half a brain understands that it's part of how the game is played and how you get the morons that make up a lot of this country excited to show up and vote for you.

So why are Kamala and so many other democrats so bad at just doing that when it counts?

How many undecided idiots does she think have fracking as their big tentpole issue, who are saying "gee, you know, I kind of agree with everything else she's saying, but I don't know if she agrees with me that fracking is the greatest thing since sliced bread, so I guess I'll stay home on election day or maybe vote for the guy who's skin looks like it was stained orange by fracking chemicals"

Compared to how many people in her base who are strongly against fracking, and feel that by supporting it she is just plain not listening to them and who may choose to stay home on election day because they feel so alienated and hopeless about the state of politics in our country.

How hard is it to just say nothing about these kinds of issues? Or if it's something you absolutely have to comment on, why not just dance around it and say some vague bullshit about making fracking safe?

Play the fucking game, and play it to win.

I know she's in the pockets of megacorporations that support fracking, her record speaks for itself for anyone with half a brain who cares to look into it, most people aren't going to look into it though.

I don't support fracking, but I also know if Trump wins then it's game over, and oil and gas companies might just start a fracking operation from my bedroom and dump their waste in my dog's water bowl just because they can, and since we'll be living in a fascist dictatorship hell scape, there'd be no clear path forward to do anything about it.

If Harris wins, fracking stays more or less as it is now, and there's a path forward, even if it's a narrow one, to get a better candidate next time around.

But like I said, a lot of people are idiots who refuse to see that bigger picture, they'll see Harris doing shit like this and just lose interest and not show up on election day or throw their vote away to some third party because they think they're making a stand.

My mental health is pretty solid, but it's in spite of capitalism. I do pretty well at managing stress, I don't have any real mental health concerns or other issues. I'm physically pretty healthy, have a decent head on my shoulders, and am lucky enough to work a job thats very secure and for me is pretty enjoyable and pays well enough that I'm not struggling in any significant way.

But damn-near every ounce of stress or anxiety I ever experience has to do with money. What if I lose my job, what if I have a health problem, what if I need a new car, what if my house burns down, etc.

Big one-time infusion of cash or a decent enough raise would eliminate just about every source of stress I have.

Poland and Hungary have historically been very close allies since the middle ages, lots of shared culture, history, they've faced similar struggles over the years, and generally they've always held each other in pretty high regard. They each even have a little poem about how much they like each other

Them polish version translates to something like

Pole and Hungarian brothers be,
good for fight and good for party.
Both are valiant, both are lively,
Upon them may God's blessings be.

The Hungarian Version

Pole and Hungarian — two good friends,
fighting, and drinking at the end.

Unfortunately there's been a lot of tension between them in recent years over the war in Ukraine, and their relationship has been deteriorating.

I don't know, I've met a decent amount of Canadians over the years, never got any bad vibes from us. I think the problem is America has more than our fair share of assholes, so they approach us a little skeptically, but if you show you're not an asshole, I think they like us just fine.

Of course, my biases should be disclosed. Most of the Canadians I've met have been from roughly the Toronto area, plus a good handful of French Canadians.

Couple of the officers at the border when I went to Montreal were kind of dicks, but I think that's more of a universal feature of border crossing and customs officials around the world. Once I was there though no one gave me any shit.