No, I dont think so, but I have been DM’d by one or two people who weren’t participating in the discussion, they were reading or just following along; my (and other similarly minded folks in said discussion) arguments apparently got them to at least somewhat reconsider what they believed. It was only ever a handful of times over the years, but I think it still fits the premise of your question.

Now granted, this was mostly on like 2010’s “Christian creationist verses basically all of science” rage-bate Facebook groups (as was the style at the time). I have no way of confirming these people were being genuine, but also no real reason to doubt them. Most of the messages I got were people learning for the first time that Evolutionary Theory wasn’t “anti-Christian.” That the vast majority of Christians and Christian denominations weren’t actually Young Earth Creationist or necessarily against the concept of the theoretical foundations of academic biology. Heck, one or two of them didn’t even know that the overwhelming majority of Chritstians are not biblical literalists. They had been taught that most of the fields of science were basically a (insert boogeyman here) plot to destroy Christianity or god or something.

Again, these weren’t the people I was “debating” but rather just curious onlookers watching me, an insufferable 20-something edgy-atheist (again, as was the style at the time), dunk on people who had absolutely no intention of doing anything other than move the goal post to protect sky daddy.

JFC. Last week, my therapist asked me if I knew who Hasan Piker was… it was surrreal… like the internet broke containment and entered real life.

I’m in therapy for stress and anger management… sometimes politics comes up. My therapist is a middle aged wine mom from the suburbs who literally has one of those “Coexist” bump stickers on her Toyota Prius. I told her I disagreed with him on some stuff, but that I’m probably not his audience. She told me she was watching more of his clips on YouTube. I didn’t know what to say to that.

Lol. Fixed.

I just got back to the states, we also went to that museum but didn’t get the amount of time I’d have liked for the visit. It was family vacation; I was negotiating with like seven other people for what we saw and for how long. Next year, I’ll be back in the UK for about a week (sadly, it’ll be mostly just London) and have already carved out plans for a day trip out to York just for the Railway Museum.

No body:

This Owl: “GLORY TO YOUR HOUSE! TODAY IS A GOOD DAY TO DIE!!!”

Closed borders do seem to cause a lot more problems than open ones.

I don’t want to hype it up too much, but the Expanse show is really great… IMHO some of the best sci-fi television in decades. I’d say it’s easily up there with “Battlestar Galactica” (the RDM or “re-imagined” series) and “Farscape” as a triumph of what I’d guess you would call “post-9/11” science fiction story telling. Most fans of the books would tell you to read them first, but I think either is fine because both are great (I read them as the show was airing and it was awesome all the same). My favorite character in both the books and TV series is hands down Amos Burton… Wes Chatham is the actor that plays him; he has said in interviews that he read the books before filming season 1, fell in love with the character, and it really effing shows. From the writers and show runners to the actors, costuming, and set design… they took great care to be loyal to the books while creating something new at the same time.

Haven’t seen these mentioned here, but the “Old Man’s War” series by John Scalzi is great as are “The Expanse” books by James SA Corey. I’d highly recommend those to anyone, but especially those looking for grounded and hard-ish sci-fi that doesn’t lose the reader or become overly technical.

I highly highly recommend Old Man’s War to anyone looking to get into sci-fi novels for the first time, Scalzi really takes care of his reader and his writing is a delight. The Expanse books are awesome whether or not you’ve seen the TV series… the show runners really took care with the source material and, ask any fan of the books, it is a great adaptation. The show hits the same plot points of the books while getting there in new and interesting ways. Further, the show created a new character in Kamina Drummer who immediately became a fan favorite of both show and book lovers (she’s an amalgamation of a couple of book characters and becomes her own thing that really adds SO much to the story and world building).

Oh god… and Floridians are just dumb enough to vote him into statewide office.

Well, you see, he was the governor… one of the priorities while being the governor of New York State is to hate New York City.

Green bean casserole.

A Buick Roadmaster Estate Master…thing cornered like an ocean liner… floor it and like in fifteen minutes we’d be doing 60 mph. Every ten minutes we’d have to get out and pledge the sides… because of the ‘wooden’ sides.

Just switched to Linux for my daily driver laptop!

To be fair… the bar is far more fun than the grocery store.

Hey everybody! Get a look at Money Bags over here being able to afford to go to the dentist!

(kidding, low key jealous… please marry me so I can have benefits/health coverage)

Oh yeah, totally non-fatal fire, just a church and two homes burned to the ground.

Seriously… the fact that Rachel Ray is the only one to made it out of Oprah’s influence with any kind of wide-spread appeal is crazy.

I was so tempted to try their service, but it was always in the back of my mind, inside the part of my brain that was conscious during marketing 101 class in college: “What’s the long term business model here? What happens after they have everyone’s genetic identity?” Then it dawned on me like ooooohhhhh that’s the plan… no thanks.

The automotive manufacturers General Motors and Chrysler were partially nationalized in the wake of the 2008 Financial Crisis as were several banks… these were less a full government takeover and more of a government guided restructuring, but the government owned large stakes in these companies. Before that, the only full nationalization of anything substantial was the bankruptcy of the Penn Central Railroad and subsequent establishment of Consolidated Rail (branded as ConRail) the US’s only national freight rail company.

Conrail was later privatized into what is now the private companies CSX and Norfolk Southern. The collapse of Penn Central was the largest bankruptcy in history until Enron in the 1990’s. Amtrak, our national passenger rail corporation, is also a nationalized entity created around the same time as ConRail, for similar reasons, and is still nationalized (although the Trump admin wants to privatize it).

As the article states, it’s a VERY recent discovery. I like to pull it up whenever folks try to tell me that “people being trans is a new fad” or that “tHeRe’S OnLy TwO gEnDaRs: pEnUs aNd vAgInA.”