I knew an H Jay.

Your stylization is more correct than mine.

I’ve heard people pronounce it as “galli-PO-lease”

I submit: Gallipolis, Ohio.

The pronunciation of Lebanon you called out may sound like it came from a hayseed, but it’s closer to the way people in the country of Lebanon pronounce it than the mainstream American pronunciation.

You won’t believe where Kanorado is located.

My first thought went to Spike from Cowboy Bebop.

Now I’m wondering: was Spike based on Bugs?

That would be the laryngeal nerve. It’s been with us vertebrates for a long time.

I take your, “for zero reason,” to indicate that it’s silly that it’s so long in a giraffe. And it is, because it connects the larynx and the brain, two bits that aren’t very far apart. You’d never design it that way from scratch.

But the laryngeal nerve’s length has a reason: it loops around the heart and it developed in our fish-like ancestors. At that time, it wasn’t silly for the nerve to wrap around the heart, because fish don’t have necks and thus the nerve was about the same length whether it wrapped around the heart or not. As necks developed, evolution found it easier to lengthen the nerve than to reroute it. So here we and giraffes both exist, having much longer laryngeal nerves than you’d engineer if you were making us from scratch.

This is true of an enterprise/company union. Industrial unions tip the seesaw to the other side.

except Noah; wtf was that

I’m going to hazard a response to what you found wtf:

Aronofsky’s Noah is told with a Jewish perspective on the story. In Jewish tradition, Noah is a notable person, but he is not admirable. In Genesis it states that Noah was righteous in his generation. Rashi, a leading rabbi in the Middle Ages, said in regards to that statement: “Others, however, explain it to his discredit: in comparison with his own generation he was accounted righteous, but had he lived in the generation of Abraham he would have been accounted as of no importance.” (https://www.sefaria.org/Genesis.6.9?lang=bi&aliyot=0&p2=Rashi_on_Genesis.6.9.2&lang2=bi)

Jewish sages, too, have long criticized Noah for accepting God’s dictate that he will destroy all life on earth without argument. That’s in contrast to Abraham who, when God said he would destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, argued with God and got him to agree not to destroy the cities if there existed ten righteous people in the cities.

So Aronofsky shows Noah as a religious extremist who does what God says without question. It’s a sometimes ugly portrayal, but it fits with an interpretation of Noah that sees him as the best the world had on hand, but not the best that mankind can be.

I did not expect to see a Dane Cook reference today.

I’m partial to Christ Chex myself.

Terry Pratchett’s DiscWorld series.

Chili and cinnamon rolls. Are you from Kansas?

See Deuteronomy 22:5. From what I can tell, Dennis Prager treats the bible as a foundational document in his life. The thought process probably comes from that verse.

The article is about direction, not position.

The report is even already way off regarding Slovakia, who just elected an authoritarian with sympathies towards Russia. Romania is a bit shaky too, they have very little trust in the democratic government, and could probably easily be swayed by a populist who says what they want to hear.

The article uses the report to show that Slovakia and Romania have improved relative to their prior measurement. It is silent on their positions relative to other democracies.