[Loughla]

I was at breakfast this morning and overheard a conversation at the table next to me.

This conversation was about how a recent thunderstorm had small hail accompanying the rain. And then that this small hail was the leftover seeds from "the jet planes spraying that stuff to control the weather."

Direct voting on issues terrifies me.

[Yeul]

Yes the American system is based on the admirable but false idea of the intelligent citizen. It probably worked a lot better when all the voters were wealthy land owners.

[bitnasty]

Worked better for who?

[throw10920]

...and yet it works better than any other system in existence.

The only people who want to dissolve the US system are those who wish to take advantage of a weaker system for their own benefit.

[yencabulator]

What kind of American exceptionalism is that? There are countries significantly more democratic and happy than USA.

[throw10920]

> What kind of American exceptionalism is that?

This is emotional manipulation and not an argument.

> There are countries significantly more democratic and happy than USA.

Red herring. None of those countries are near the size of the USA. Policies and governance systems are not scale-invariant, and there are many naive ideas that sound good on paper (and may work for small groups of people and/or short timescales) but do not stablely scale to 100 million+ people.

[jh00ker]

I was at a coffee shop a couple weeks ago and I heard two guys going on about how the moon landing never could have happened because it seems impossible. They didn't have any supporting data. They just kept saying things like "all the footage looked so totally fake." My favorite was "and how did they even get back to Earth? I don't remember ever seeing video of then launching a rocket off the moon, do you?"

SMH

[orbisvicis]

The astronauts drew straws, and Sandy Koufax had the bad fortune to draw the short straw. He would stay behind to roll tape while Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were to return home. The two astronauts would remain suited for the ascent. Buzz Aldrin would monitor the instrument consoles while Neil Armstrong was to remain tethered to the open hatchway in what was later termed "a daring attempt" to recover the film canister thrown by Sandy Koufax. Unfortunately Neil Armstrong was unable to recover the canister. He described it whizzing past his gloved fingers merely inches away during the docking maneuvers with the command module. No one knows what became of the footage. To this day it is likely tumbling around the cold dark expanse of space, perhaps as a new lunar satellite.

... and that's why we don't have footage of the lunar ascent.

[orbisvicis]

As for his heroic efforts, Sandy Koufax was posthumously inducted into the baseball Hall of Fame, and to this day continues to be known for the "shot that went around the moon".

[bee_rider]

Eh, I guess, although I’ve also heard some pretty wild things by elected officials. What can we do?

[bloomingeek]

I'm a boomer, the best thing is for my generation to die out. We are the most selfish and ignorant generation ever in modern times. And yet we had access to the most information! My kids don't like me to talk like this, my reply is always, "prove me wrong". (I'm referring to the mess we have caused the world, not necessarily the mankind helping accomplishments.)

[bee_rider]

Ah, well don’t be too rough on yourself. My parents are boomers, they are allright, I’m sure you are too.

I won’t say your generation didn’t make some mistakes politically. But in any group it is the kind and introspective that feel guilt about the group’s negative actions, while the selfish just go on happily being selfish. You don’t have to make up for the selfish folks who happen to have been born around the same time as you, but if you want to, live a long happy kind life.

[Loughla]

Isn't what we're seeing with boomers just the natural progression? Heroes die before they become villains or whatever that saying is.

Millennials are already getting roasted for being kind of shitty, and they also wanted to change the world. That sort of thing?

(And yes leaving gen. X out was intentional - the ones that I know tend to complain about being a forgotten generation, so I thought it was funny)