Speaking of being old and inflexible...

I've been a runner for at least 35 years - not a very good one, and not a hard-core dedicated lifestyle runner. But I run several times a week because I like it. But I recently sprained my ankle and now I can't run because the stupid thing won't heal. It feels fine and then I go run and it feels fine and then the next day it hurts again.

I didn't sprain it running, though.

I sprained it sitting in front of the computer.

I have this habit, always have, of sitting on one ankle or the other (when I'm not wearing shoes). It's never been a problem before, but one day I got up from my chair and my ankle hurt from it.

Is this how the rest of life's going to go: one day, some trivial thing I've casually done all my life is going to cause a major injury ?

I would prefer that TV series writers reduce the amount of time spent doing backstory for every main character by about 50%. More going forwards, please: less time looping backwards to manufacture emotional importance for present-day actions. If the present you're writing isn't interesting enough on its own, why are you writing about it?

Thanks.

P.S. I am not crank.

In a previously undisclosed secret mission in 2017, the United States successfully extracted from Russia one of its highest-level covert sources inside the Russian government, multiple Trump administration officials with direct knowledge told CNN.

A person directly involved in the discussions said that the removal of the Russian was driven, in part, by concerns that President Donald Trump and his administration repeatedly mishandled classified intelligence and could contribute to exposing the covert source as a spy.

No story that ever started like this ended well...

Chinese media is claiming that while investigating the far side of the moon, the country’s Yutu-2 lunar rover stumbled upon a unique “gel-like” substance of unknown origin sitting inside a small crater.

What we know so far: Yutu-2 made the discovery during its eighth lunar day on the moon as it zipped through an area riddled with small impact craters (a lunar day lasts 29.5 Earth days; this one was from late July into early August). A member of the rover’s team noticed a bizarre, colorful luster in one of the mission’s recent images, so the team directed the rover to study it more closely. The only real details China has released so far is that the material is “gel-like,” and that is exhibits an “unusual color.”

In his upcoming memoir, newly appointed Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie G. Bunch III describes the private tour he gave President Trump of the National Museum of African American History and Culture...

...

Trump greeted him warmly and expressed his wife’s enjoyment of a tour she had with Sara Netanyahu, wife of the Israeli prime minister, according to Bunch. Then they went into the galleries.

“The president paused in front of the exhibit that discussed the role of the Dutch in the slave trade,” Bunch writes. “As he pondered the label I felt that maybe he was paying attention to the work of the museum. He quickly proved me wrong. As he turned from the display he said to me, ‘You know, they love me in the Netherlands.’ All I could say was let’s continue walking.”

I grew up in a conservative family. The people I talk to most frequently, the people I call when I need help, are conservative. I’m not inclined to paint conservatives as thoughtless bigots. But a few years ago, listening to the voices and arguments of commentators like Shapiro, I began to feel a very specific deja vu I couldn’t initially identify. It felt as if the arguments I was reading were eerily familiar. I found myself Googling lines from articles, especially when I read the rhetoric of a group of people we could call the “reasonable right.”

These are figures who typically dislike President Trump but often say they’re being pushed rightward — sometimes away from what they claim is their natural leftward bent — by intolerance and extremism on the left. The reasonable right includes people like Shapiro and the radio commentator Dave Rubin; legal scholar Amy Wax and Jordan Peterson, the Canadian academic who warns about identity politics; the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt; the New York Times columnist Bari Weiss and the American Enterprise Institute scholar Christina Hoff Sommers, self-described feminists who decry excesses in the feminist movement; the novelist Bret Easton Ellis and the podcaster Sam Harris, who believe that important subjects have needlessly been excluded from political discussions. They present their concerns as, principally, freedom of speech and diversity of thought. Weiss has called them “renegade” ideological explorers who venture into “dangerous” territory despite the “outrage and derision” directed their way by haughty social gatekeepers.

So it felt frustrating: When I read Weiss, when I listened to Shapiro, when I watched Peterson or read the supposedly heterodox online magazine Quillette, what was I reminded of?

Electric vehicles are everywhere now. It’s more than just Leafs, Teslas, and a wide variety of electric bikes. It’s also trains, busses, and in this case, gigantic dump trucks. This truck in particular is being put to work at a mine in Switzerland, and as a consequence of having an electric drivetrain is actually able to produce more power than it consumes. (Google Translate from Portugese)

This isn’t some impossible perpetual motion machine, either. The dump truck drives up a mountain with no load, and carries double the weight back down the mountain after getting loaded up with lime and marl to deliver to a cement plant. Since electric vehicles can recover energy through regenerative braking, rather than wasting that energy as heat in a traditional braking system, the extra weight on the way down actually delivers more energy to the batteries than the truck used on the way up the mountain.

Oh yes, very clever.

What are you going to do when you've carried all of the mountain's top down?

Where's your fancy perpetual motion dump trunk then, smarty pants?!

Trump on Crimea and Russia...

And the other was in Ukraine, having to do with a certain section of Ukraine that you know very well, where it was sort of taken away from President Obama -- not taken away from President Trump, taken away from President Obama. President Obama was not happy that this happened, because it was embarrassing to him, right? It was very embarrassing to him, and he wanted (INAUDIBLE) Russia to be out of the -- what was called the G-8, and that was his determination. He was outsmarted by Putin.

He was outsmarted. President Putin outsmarted President Obama. Wait a minute. And I can understand how President Obama would feel. He wasn’t happy and (INAUDIBLE) for that reason.

...

I know you like President Obama, but it was annexed during President Obama’s term. If it was annexed during my term I would say, ‘Sorry, folks. I made a mistake. Sorry folks.’ President Obama was helping the Ukraine. Crimea was annexed during his term.

Now it’s a very big area -- a very important area. Russia has its submarine. That is where they do their submarine work and that is where they dock large and powerful submarines, but not as powerful as ours and not as large as ours, but they have their submarines, and President Obama was pure and simply outsmarted. They took Crimea during his term. That was not a good thing. It could have been stopped, it could have been stopped with the right, whatever. It could have been stopped but President Obama was unable to stop it, and it’s too bad.

This is where the scene cuts to a shot of Trump on the couch, holding a 1/2 empty bottle of vodka and giving the camera that "KnowWhatIMean?" look.

Ramon Torres had been a U.S. citizen for nearly ten years when he was detained for four days on an immigration hold – despite having a U.S. passport, a Louisiana driver’s license, and a Social Security card, and despite that fact that a court ordered his release.

Torres’ ordeal began in August 2018, when he was pulled over and arrested on suspicion of driving while intoxicated. Torres, a naturalized U.S. citizen since 2009, was carrying multiple forms of identification, including his driver’s license and other security credentials. Torres was booked at the Ascension Parish Jail, and the next day the Parish Court ordered his release.

But Torres wasn’t released. Instead, the Ascension Parish Sheriff’s Office placed an “immigration hold” on Torres on the suspicion that he was unlawfully present in the United States.

The basis for this suspicion? He had a Latinx name and brown skin. Staff at the sheriff’s office explained that they had a policy of detaining all Latinx people for immigration review.

cleek and the two go to bed.

The following morning they come to the lake and discover that it is now completely full. The man says: "We must have got something wrong after so long". He goes away, and Kneale and Rimmer return to the bridge. On the bridge there is a small hut where the two watch a small boy playing. Rimmer and Kneale decide to investigate further, and they discover that the boy is a man, but that Kneale is the first of the women to speak to him. The others follow and hear Kneale asking the boy for her hand. He accepts her hand and the three have a peaceful meal together.

They are then taken somewhere by Rimmer. It is a strange place. There is a strange fountain of crystal (or rather, the water at the fountain is crystal) where they see the image of the man who made the bridge. After seeing it Kneale decides to get back and asks Rimmer and Kneale to stay back. They return to the bridge where Rimmer sees a woman approaching Kneale and asks her if she wants to sleep with him. He says yes, though...

Source: Talk to Transformer