Tuesday Open Thread

by: Colorado Pols December 26, 2022 at 11:17 PM MST

“The best way to escape from your problem is to solve it.”

–Robert Anthony

notaskinnycook says:

December 27, 2022 at 9:46 AM MST

Alva, your dates have been off for the last couple of days. It's the 27th. Just how much eggnog did you imbibe on Christmas?

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- JohnInDenver says:
  
  December 27, 2022 at 9:48 AM MST
  
  the way I’m reading it, Alva publishes the open thread after I go to bed the night before. Today’s for example, is December 26, 2022 at 11:17 PM MST
  
  I suppose the task COULD wait until midnight … but does it really make that much difference?
  
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- Colorado Pols says:
  
  December 27, 2022 at 10:32 AM MST
  
  You've uncovered one of our site's little peculiarities: our system clock has been about 50 minutes slow since 2013. When we posted this thread last night it was actually after midnight, and we figure reality is what matters most.
  
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  - notaskinnycook says:
    
    December 27, 2022 at 1:31 PM MST
    
    Well, that clears up that mystery.
    
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    - Colorado Pols says:
      
      December 27, 2022 at 4:40 PM MST
      
      That's what we do. We clear up mysteries.
      
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      - notaskinnycook says:
        
        December 28, 2022 at 12:27 AM MST
        
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  - DavidThi808 says:
    
    December 28, 2022 at 6:37 AM MST
    
    Easy fix
    
    Right click the clock in System Tray at right end of task bar, choose Adjust Date & Time, then Additional Date & Time Settings, choose Set the Date and Time, then in popup choose Internet Time tab, choose Change Settings, from drop down menu another Sync server from drop down menu, choose Update Now and then OK.
    
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    - DavidThi808 says:
      
      December 28, 2022 at 6:38 AM MST
      
      I posted the above at 7:33 MST and it's marked as 6:37MST so you're now off by 55 minutes slow.
      
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DavidThi808 says:

December 27, 2022 at 11:44 AM MST

Free speech is not in peril in America

Like those law students, all Americans can now relax in homogeneous spaces where they hear plenty of speech but nothing that might confound them. Whatever objectionable ideas or information they do encounter will arrive safely filtered through the congenial viewpoint of their chosen cable-news channel, social-media group, newspaper or Substack writer. They can duck the work of hearing alien arguments and sharpening their own ideas or even adjusting them—the kind of work that turns diversity in a pluralistic democracy into a source of resilience rather than a fatally fissiparous weakness.

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- JohnInDenver says:
  
  December 27, 2022 at 12:57 PM MST
  
  The Economist, using at least a ten-cent word in the context of “free speech,” providing an alliterative and vocabulary-building WIN with “fatally fissiparous”
  
  inclined to cause or undergo division into separate parts or groups.
  
  “she was unsuccessful in holding a fissiparous membership together”
  
  Biology: (of an organism) reproducing by fission.
  
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