As did seeing your notification for me. Nice to hear you still check in occasionally.
I totally understand that. Sometimes it seems like Groundhog Day on certain topics around here. I don’t even read the Politics forum anymore because of that. I think part of it is that in real life, changes happen so slowly that we literally have years to talk about them on the board. There are only so many ways you can frame your opinion before it becomes tiresome.
I am happy to see you back and I hope you continue to post, even if you feel you have to cut back some. I’ve always found your posts to be of value, and the way you always speak plainly is appreciated.
I’m not sure how they go about recruiting mods, but I always thought @John_Mace would have made a perfect Great Debates mod. He was always doing what he could to steer OPs into an actual debate, rather than an argument, without crossing the junior mod line. I, too, hope he’s doing well.
For what it’s worth, I also enjoy your blunt style. I miss your cat meme avatar as well.
On the topic of other missing posters, what happened to @RioRico? He was quite active until May 2020 and then all of a sudden … radio silence. I hope the big bad COVID didn’t do him in.
Hey cool, @Spice_Weasel! I am another one trying to write a book (actually more than one) and it is difficult at times! Glad to see you are still here!
The closer the “last seen” date is to the “last post” date the more I fear the worst, as with Scotty the Kid, Kobal2, John Mace, and Slash1972, especially if there were numerous recent posts leading up to their sudden absence.
Good work on the Internet sleuthing. From RioRico’s last 10 or so posts, I didn’t find anything really suspension-worthy so I had discounted that as a possibility. And the link to the warning is a broken one from the vBulletin era, so now I’ll never be able to find out what exactly incurred the wrath of the mods.
I was about to post about him too. From various posts, he is an astronomer specializing in solar astronomy. Living in Huntsville. I’ve been wondering what’s happened to him for a while.
He’s probably still jumping up and down with glee about the James Webb Telescope. My sister works up at Marshall Space Flight Center and said it has been pretty ecstatic up there.
Unlikely that would have caused him to go silent almost 2 years ago. More likely he is involved in the Parker Solar Probe, although there’s no event of that mission at that specific time. It’s possible he may have realized that following the Dope was taking too much of his time and quit cold turkey.
