April Fools’ Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Friday, April 1, 2022
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118 comments
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
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In an overview of books about Trump in The Guardian, the reviewer describes him as an “obese, superannuated popinjay.”
Perfect.
I just read an article where somebody was quoted calling the DC Trucker thingy
and man that started my morning off better than expected.
ETA: h/t Balloon Juice
Wait a minute… A public inquiry into a mass shooting and the police response? What the hell, it’s like Canadians actually expect their govt to do something about mass shootings.
Photographer captures picture of space-walking astronaut… from the ground.
No one should be surprised as everything TFG touches, dies.
Trump’s Truth Social App Plummets in Traffic, Sees 93% Drop in Signups Since Launch Week
The article goes on to note the signups for Gettr and Paler, both of which, are but microbes in the world of internet traffic.
Russian convoy stopped by 30 people with quad-bikes and home-made drones.
Where are Eddie and WR? They need to scoop up the movie rights to this! 😀
@Sleeping Dog:
Loser.
@OzarkHillbilly: I’m not a big defender of the police but I have to wonder if this really proves much, given the absolute avalanche of guns pushed out into the population these past few years and the subsequent rise in murders.
@Sleeping Dog: Just confirmation that this was a typical Trump scam, which is a kind of Cargo Cult lite thing. Rather than build a sham in order to get people with wealth to drop some off on him, he gets the money just by proposing to build the most amazing thing in the world, then builds the crudest of shams, declares bankruptcy or simply lets it die, and walks away with the money.
@MarkedMan:
In the not too recent past, I had occasion to conduct business with various chiefs of police. At a trade show one year, I was in a conversation with 3, one I knew, the others I’d just met.
Recently there had been a couple of high profile civilian killings by police and that came up in the conversation. I asked the question, did the number of guns on the street and prevalence of people carrying them, make the officers’ job more dangerous. All agreed that it did, the oldest who was a few months from retiring, went on to say that when he was a young patrolman, the possibility of an armed individual was there, but he worried more about getting hit by passing traffic when conducting a traffic stop at night than being shot. All believed that the prevalence of guns contributed to the number of civilians shot by police.
@OzarkHillbilly:
“Canada, you did it again! You even managed to ruin this! Why? Why do we even let you be a country?” Barney Stinson.
@Mu Yixiao:
When I read the story initally a few days ago, the first thing I said to my wife is “Someone is going to make a great movie about this group when all is said and done, and I would go see that movie.”
@Mu Yixiao: Revenge of the nerds.
@Sleeping Dog:
So far as I can tell, all of the right-wing social media — including Trump’s grifts — believe in the “build it and they will come” theory. None of them seem inclined to do the work to become a real social medium. A simple example: I’ve never seen any of them included in the collection of share icons at a web site. None of them seem to be among the available choices when setting up a site on WordPress. Twitter and Facebook (and lesser social media setups) aren’t just about their users jotting down random thoughts. They’re about making it easy for the users to share things from other sites. But that’s a lot of work.
@MarkedMan: Pre covid the biggest threat to cops was vehicles. Covid is #1 now with vehicles being #2.
The bureau of Labor Statistics says being a cop is no more dangerous than being a carpenter and if I had to bet I suspect we get hurt a lot more often. Hell, it’s more dangerous to be a crossing guard. (again, that whole stupid driver thing)
I’m not saying they don’t face dangers the avg American doesn’t, just that those dangers are wildly overblown and are used to justify behaviors we would never accept from anybody else.
@Sleeping Dog:
Obviously. A bad guy with a gun, or a suspected bad guy with a gun, will be shot by cops. The more guns in the environment the more people who’ll be shot by cops. 1 + 1 = 2.
What a shock. Deficit hawk Joe Manchin, who is desperately desperately desperately desperately concerned about the deficit, has just announced he’ll torpedo Biden’s proposed minimum tax on people making 100 million dollar a year.
Because apparently the only proper way to decrease the deficit is to take health care, food and schools away from poor people.
@Michael Reynolds:
Yeah, but the interesting thing was 3 chiefs admitting to a civilian that it was true and they did so in no uncertain terms. The conversation that followed was interesting as well.
@wr: And can we just head off the nonsense that he is motivated by his conservative voters? As if taxing millionaires and billionaires would have been a tough sell to the average Joe.
Well, Trump says he has no interest in being Speaker of the House, a possibility that some of his more avid fans have suggested.
Of course he’s not interested. Being Speaker involves work.
@CSK: Of course there’s just one reason it was put forward. It’s the only remotely conceivable way he could become president again prior to 2025, though it would require Joe & Kamala both vacating their offices more or less simultaneously.
@Kylopod:
Oh, yeah. I believe the plan was to make Trump Speaker, then impeach Kamala and Joe, so that Trump could resume his rightful place in the Oval Office.
@CSK:
Of course impeachment itself wouldn’t be enough–they’d also need 2/3rds of the Senate to convict, which they know ain’t happening. I think even Trump understands that. The only conceivable plan is assassination, or else just hoping that by some miracle they both croak.
Bruce Willis has been diagnosed with aphasia and is retiring from acting.
A form of brain damage that makes communication difficult.
Not the greatest actor by any stretch…but fuq…he sure has been in some damn entertaining movies.
Die Hard, the greatest christmas movie ever. Red, with Mary-Louise Parker. Pulp Fiction. The 6th Sense. Armageddon.
Not to mention his breakthrough in Moonlighting.
Really sad news.
@Kylopod:
Oh, but wait till they see the EVIDENCE!* It’s conclusive. it’s devastating! we’ll get all six thirds of the Senate to convict!
*I’m sure they can conclusively prove both Biden and Harris are Democrats.
@Daryl and his brother Darryl:
Damn.
Okay… Hudson Hawk is on the playlist for this weekend.
@Kylopod:
“…they’d also need 2/3s of the senate to convict.”
I think the Trump Fan Club is assuming that a red tsunami wave will sweep the vast majority of Democrats out of the House and Senate this fall.
@Daryl and his brother Darryl: One play I would have liked to have seen is Misery with him and Laurie Metcalf.
@CSK:
If they want to wallow in reinstatement fantasies, they hardly need the Speaker scenario. Mike Lindell has made this very clear. I only brought up the Speaker scenario because there at least the mechanism for him to become president again prior to 2025 actually exists in reality, however unlikely it may be that everything falls into place. They don’t need unlikely when they’re perfectly fine with impossible.
@CSK:
One of the problems with living in a deeply red or deeply blue congressional district is that it is easy to fall into the trap that everyone thinks like your friends, particularly if you have no idea how parties and elections work.
I present to you…. The Dyson air-purifying headphones.
(One step closer to Power Rangers)
The best argument for admitting Ukraine into NATO now, is that who in the West would want even the possibility to fight against Ukrainian troops?
@Mu Yixiao:
April Fools day isn’t till Friday.
@Sleeping Dog:
Quite so. Pauline Kael made herself a legend in 1968 by remarking that no one she knew (in Manhattan) had voted for Nixon.
@wr:
There are issues with the “billionaire tax”. Primary among them is that it doesn’t tax income (which is what the 16th Amendment allows). It seeks to tax “increase in assessed value”–unrealized income vs. realized.
The second issue is that it would essentially require a full audit & assessment of assets every year–which is a logistical nightmare, and one of the reasons that other countries which have tried what Biden is proposing ditched it.
Here’s a pro talking about the issues (this is from last year).
It should also be noted that, unlike how the headlines push it, the mega-rich would only be taxed on “income” (increase in wealth), not on total wealth–so it’s going to be a lot less than people think, and it won’t come anywhere close to solving the budget problems we have.
There are plenty of other loopholes that could be eliminated and complexities that could be simplified to get more in taxes from the ultra-wealthy without the problems that Biden’s plan has.
@Mu Yixiao:
While that may be true, the exact same people will find faults with all of them if they get proposed. “Experts” are mostly paid for their work, certainly in the tax area. I would be skeptical of the expert opinions of those paid by billionaires to help them avoid taxes.
@CSK:
Misleading story bordering on urban legend. It’s true that she once remarked (in 1972, not 1968) that no one she knew voted for Nixon. However, contrary to what is often implied, she never suggested she was surprised by Nixon’s victory. And the ’68 vs. ’72 distinction is important here, as the former was a close election whereas the latter was a blowout. The whole point of the story as it’s normally told is that she was living in such a bubble she actually believed McGovern was winning. The fact that her social circle included no Nixon voters may be interesting in itself, but the frequent claim that it led her to delusionally believe a guy losing in a blowout was actually winning is pure horseshit.
@Kylopod:
The whole quote, according to Wikipedia, is: “I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Nixon. Where they are I don’t know. They’re outside my ken. But sometimes when I’m in a theater I can feel them.”
That’s far less memorable than the misattribution.
@Kathy: Thank you for the whole quote. I didn’t feel like looking it up again. I should add that there are plenty of people I know where I have no idea who they voted for in the most recent election, and Kael may have been the same way. I don’t think she was saying (though her wording is ambiguous) that it was a fact that only one person she knew voted for Nixon, simply that she’d only confirmed one person she knew to have done so; there could have been others whose vote she was in the dark about.
@Kylopod:
I never (nor said) I thought the story meant Kael thought McGovern was winning. I thought it meant what it said: That she didn’t know anyone* who voted for Nixon. That’s all.
*Okay, one person.
@CSK:
That’s fair. The story has just been so misleadingly told for so long that I think it’s important to clarify that she wasn’t making an electoral prediction. Even when the quote is presented more or less accurately, the idea that she was surprised by Nixon’s victory is often implied. That was the case with a NYT article last year, which presents the story in the following way:
Even though the paraphrase of Kael’s statement is basically accurate, the two paragraphs that follow make it clear the writer was assuming Kael was saying she was surprised by Nixon’s victory, as it immediately compares her statement to the reaction of voters who allegedly were surprised by election results that didn’t go according to their preferences.
It’s kind of like if you accurately quoted Al Gore saying he “took the initiative in creating the Internet” without clarifying that you aren’t furthering the legendary belief that he claimed to have invented the Internet.
@Kylopod:
Gore seems to be a good sport about it.
He appeared in an episode of Futurama where his head (see the show) chairs a global conference on a climate emergency. He gives himself a grand introduction, including “Inventor of the Environment.”
He was on another ep as well, but playing himself as VP and overseer of the space-time continuum, as is stated in the Constitution. That one also featured Nichelle Nichols and Steven Hawking.
Those Ukrainians are getting cheeky. From Yahoo.
@Kathy:
From what I’ve seen, few politicians are so insecure they can’t make fun of themselves. In fact it’s often been a sort of rite of passage that you go on SNL to meet your impersonator or otherwise participate in self-deprecating humor. Even those who are privately bothered by it usually know how to suck it up, because they think it’s seen as a positive trait by voters.
Obviously, Trump is an exception. Palin was borderline; while she did go on SNL with Tina Fey, it was clear she was pushed into it by her handlers and was extremely uncomfortable the entire time. It was one of the most awkward moments I’ve ever seen on the show. Toward the end of the campaign McCain returned to SNL with Fey, but the real Palin was nowhere in sight.
For the past 19 months or so, I’ve had pretty consistent tachycardia arrhythmia–my heart kept adding beats, because it’s generous, and then later taking them away because it’s fickle. When it wasn’t doing that, it was racing up to 130 bpm’s just for shits and giggles.
A few blood tests, two heart monitors, and enough nagging my doctor to tell me that I’m not about to drop dead, and I was just put on a beta blocker.
Two hours after taking it and, my God, I had no idea what peace is. No more troubles catching my breath. No more heart about to escape out of it’s chest. No more thoughts of “is my heart going to start again, or is this extra long pause a little too extra long?” I could weep.
@Kylopod:
Trump wasn’t sufficiently secure to laugh off the ribbing Obama gave him at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in 2011, either.
This is the sure sign of an arriviste. You’re supposed to treat these things with aristocratic good humor, even if you’re seething inside.
@Mu Yixiao: “There are plenty of other loopholes that could be eliminated and complexities that could be simplified to get more in taxes from the ultra-wealthy without the problems that Biden’s plan has.”
That must be why Joe Manchin is rushing forth with so many ideas about how to get more in taxes from the ultra-wealthy.
Oh, wait — he isn’t?
Can’t imagine why.
@Mu Yixiao: “Here’s a pro talking about the issues (this is from last year).”
I actually clicked your link. And this is what the wise man had to say:
“Then too, incentives do matter. If you tax long-term wealth creation, it stands to reason you will get less of it. If you tax entrepreneurship, you will get less of it. Most of all, if you make an heir pay taxes on a deceased individual’s long-term gains, you are taxing that deceased person’s discipline, patience, careful planning and faith in the American capitalist system. ”
In other words, you can’t tax rich people — not even dead rich people — because they are the people who count in this society, not the grubby little parasites working for wages. We should tax the hell out of them, because they don’t have the discipline, patience, careful planning and faith in the American capitalist system — if they did, they would be rich to, instead of nasty little takers. Now let me invest your money!!!
He’s just another parasite sucking up to the rich. Like Joe Manchin.
@Kathy: “He appeared in an episode of Futurama where his head (see the show) chairs a global conference on a climate emergency. He gives himself a grand introduction, including “Inventor of the Environment.””
I believe his daughter was a writer on the show…
@Neil Hudelson: I’m no where near as bad off as you, but I can’t go to sleep on my life side because I can hear my heartbeat and the irregularity keeps me from drifting off. Thump…thump…thump…thump……..thump…thump……..thump.
@wr:
Heh. Thanks for doing the background. As I said above, most tax experts are paid by the wealthy, and you should be suspicious of their motivations in the advice they give.
@CSK: Some years back Trump did appear at a Comedy Central roast of him. I remember one of the lines: “When Donald Trump is bangin’ a supermodel, he closes his eyes and imagines he’s jerking off.”
Seth MacFarlane claims Trump didn’t seem too bothered by that line. But that shouldn’t be surprising. I don’t think he’s stung by being called a narcissist, when they’re essentially propping up the myth of him as the awesome superman who’s always scoring with the ladies. It was later reported that he only agreed to the roast if they didn’t make jokes related to his wealth.
I didn’t see his 2015 appearance on SNL, but I assume it was softball as hell; that’s the only explanation for why Trump said Darrell Hammond was a much better impersonator of him than Alec Baldwin.
@Kylopod:
Well, it makes sense that Trump wouldn’t be bothered by a joke about using a woman as a masturbatory tool, because he’s never loved anyone but himself.
I read Michael Cohen’s Betrayal, and Cohen reports that when Cohen thought that the Stormy Daniel affair should be kept from Melania, Trump shrugged it off and replied, “I can always get another wife.”
Bravado? Maybe, but I doubt it. To Trump everyone’s a disposable commodity. Perhaps especially a trophy wife.
@wr:
This part is absolutely right:
“Then too, incentives do matter. If you tax long-term wealth creation, it stands to reason you will get less of it. If you tax entrepreneurship, you will get less of it. ”
But what we should take from that is: If you tax excessive capital accumulation, you will get less of it.
@Daryl and his brother Darryl: And the 5th Element, which is just so much fun (Chris Tucker really steals the show). Sorry to hear this.
@Kathy: And there’s a problem with that?
@OzarkHillbilly:
Yes. It would totally expose trickle-down economics as a sham.
@Kathy: DOH! What ever was I thinking???
In other “Have You Had Your Laugh For The Day” 10 seconds,
thank you Rex Chapman.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Reminds me of the time I got off my car at home with a half-consumed cappuccino in one hand, and some trash in the other. I went on to dump the coffee in the trashcan. Then the trash, too. Why hold on to it?
Back on topic, the flip side of taxes are subsidies. There’s a belief that the more you subsidize something, the more you get of it. We saw this is not true with the Paycheck Protection Program. But the feeling is out there that if you subsidize poor people you get more poverty. the opposite is often the case.
@Jon: I think it’s unfair to compare MAGAts with the fans of Insane Clown Posse.
Give poor people some extra money and they will spend it on things they need, fueling the economy. Give rich people money and they will horde it because wtf else are they going to do with it? They already have everything they need, and everything they could ever possibly want.
Hey, I voted for McGovern in 1972; it wasn’t only people known to Pauline Kael. I never had any reason to regret that vote. In 1968, I voted for Eldridge Cleaver and have had some second thoughts.
@OzarkHillbilly:
I think the “subsidize the poor and you get more poor people,” actually means “give poor people money and they won’t die of starvation, or diseases exacerbated by malnutrition and lack of access to healthcare and stress over their condition, and then you get more poor people.”
@Kathy: https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/fb7f4411-4778-4e74-8c98-47f96273bbe7
A. Fools and this forum are easily parted (by a day)
In some states there are laws against April Fools pranks started in March.
@Kylopod: Let’s do the time warp again…
So, fighting a war at the sight of the world’s worst nuclear accident turns out to be not such a good idea. Who’da thunk it?
Dr. T, I see what you did there.
Molly Tuttle and her band played in Portsmouth last night. That young woman has magic fingers, it is amazing the number of notes that burst from her guitar and her fingers never leave her hands.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Now I wonder who gave the orders to operate in the exclusion zone and dig up the ground? Half a world away, and people know that it is unsafe to enter that area, except for short times under specific protocols.
Besides having its share of Covid deniers, Ruskie troops must not believe in radiation, cause they can’t see it.
@Sleeping Dog: Because of artillery, digging in is the first thing troops do when taking up a new position. So whoever decided that attacking and possessing Chernobyl was a good idea (to control the power generation I assume) is the person who needs a good slap upside the head.
‘Magnetic turd’: scientists invent moving slime that could be used in human digestive systems
Everybody who had “Magnetic Turd” on your April Fools Day headline card, raise your hands.
Hahahahaha!!
And here I just thought everyone got up earlier than usual.
Some hoax, eh?
Test for timestamp.
What the hell is going on?
@Jen: @de stijl:
Okay, cue the theme from The Twilight Zone.
Doo doo, doo doo, doo doo, doo doo….
@de stijl: Dr. Taylor pulled a fast one on us. On Wednesday, he posted that day’s forum had disappeared (link). He has resurrected it on today’s April Fool’s day forum.
I much prefer this over the strangeness that others are posting. Jamie Oliver had a “placenta burger” post that had me gagging.
@Jen:
Well, that just ruined my breakfast for me.
@CSK: My apologies. It did the same for me.
@Jen:
Thank you, but I’m sure I’ll recover.
So…do we get a real April Fool’s Day forum, or what?
@CSK:
This is all I’ve got. Sorry, but I’ve got a zoom call with my friend who moved to Hattiesburg in a couple of minutes.
BTW, nice prank, Mein Host!
Russia’s Brain Drain
Well, that was interesting…
Apparently Hattiesburg is all that and a bag of chips. Who knew?
Maybe Ozark can ‘splain the appeal to me.
@Flat Earth Luddite:
I’ve heard from several people that Hattiesburg is quite nice. It has two universities, which can attract a lot of amenities.
Mexico has a similar day to April Fools’, but it’s on Dec. 18th.
Years ago, a paper ran a gag piece on Volaris. The feature was the (then) low cost airline would acquire A330s for transatlantic flights to Europe, using the low cost model and offering low fares. The whole thing was appropriately absurd.
Damn me if not a few years later Iceland-based WOW Air started doing just that, with A330s, albeit from Iceland to North America, and offering connections to the rest of Europe. For that matter, so did Norwegian Air but with 787s.
WOW went broke, and Norwegian pretty much scaled back to regional operations within Europe. So, the whole thing still is appropriately absurd.
The model can work full service, as Iceland Air shows. Low cost, never mind ultra-low cost, might work with smaller planes. We’ll say as another airline bases in Iceland, PLAY, will attempt just such a thing.
Amazon warehouse workers vote to unionize.
I’ll be interested to see how this plays out.
Okay. This photo is funny.
@Mu Yixiao:
At the risk of sounding stupid…why is it funny? It’s a guy dressed up like the American flag while clutching two bags of ice.
What am I missing?
@CSK:
It’s Vanilla Ice.
And the picture shows: ice, ice, baby.
@Jon: Again, I will note my objection: it’s demeaning to Juggalos to compare them to MAGAts.
@OzarkHillbilly: I wonder if is really a fighting a war at a defunct nuclear plant or more of a lack of paying attention to details on the map sort of a thing. Still, both are equally bad, I guess.
@CSK: I had a chorizo and egg english muffin for breakfast. I’m glad I’m reading the forum last today (but as I us).
@Mu Yixiao:
Oh okay. I’ve heard of Vanilla Ice, sure, but I doubt I’d recognize him if I fell over him. Still, the hilarity eludes me.
@Flat Earth Luddite: Sure. But remember who’s telling you it’s all that and a bag of chips. (Not that I don’t suspect that SWMBO would find it quite nice once she adjusted to the climate–assuming that would happen.)
@Mu Yixiao: I don’t get it either. There’s nothing funny about Vanilla Ice. I guess the Ice, [Van. Ice] Ice, baby part is clever in sort of a geezerish “okay boomer” sort of way, though.
@CSK:
His big song was “Ice, Ice, Baby”
(And… having to explain the joke, it’s no longer funny)
@just nutha: And yes, I’m the guy who, when his friends take him to a comedy club, asks “when are the people who tell jokes coming on.”
@Mu Yixiao: Be open to the possibility that it wasn’t as funny as you thought to begin with. Sorry. 🙁 [Wishing I could make the emoji with the teardrop in one eye.]
@Mu Yixiao:
Reminds me of a relative who attended a costume party wearing a 3-star general’s uniform, adorned with small, lit leds, including a bright red one at the center of each star. When asked what he was supposed to be, he answered “General Electric.”
@Kathy: “Damn me if not a few years later Iceland-based WOW Air started doing just that, with A330s, albeit from Iceland to North America,”
They sure did. A good friend spent several days and a lot of money trying to get home from Reykjavik when the airline shut down hours before her flight…
@Mu Yixiao: I laughed way harder than I’d like to admit. I recognized who it was and the look on his face struck me as funny.
Humor is of course subjective.
Also not a boomer I was rather young when the song was released.
@Mu Yixiao:
I know it’s his big song. But the photo just didn’t strike me as particularly funny. Different strokes for different folks. That’s all.
I’ve seen two items this morning saying the new target at RW sites is sports, particularly sports fans. I don’t know if it’s a problem with too many Blacks, acceptance of gays, kneeling, whatever. And I don’t know how seriously to take it. But I’ve always been puzzled how conservatives manage to maintain even a 35% or whatever it is following. They hate on LGBTQ, minorities, people who wear masks or get vaxxed, immigrants, school teachers, people who don’t like having guns around, Democrats, anyone in favor of reproductive rights, city dwellers, government workers, college professors, medical personnel, journalists, and apologies to everyone I forgot. Now they’re going after Disney and sports fans? How can there be anybody left they haven’t attacked?
@Kathy:
I’ve flown Iceland Air many times. Both for vacations there and for work. The fares were ridiculously cheap comparatively. I could fly non-stop MSP to Reykjavik for a couple hundred bucks roundtrip. (And the work trips were free after reimbursement.)
I don’t know how they did it. Super competent multilingual cabin folks and pretty top-notch service at a bargain rate. Are they state owned? State subsidized?
A comparable flight to Heathrow on another airline was multiples of that fare. Not exactly comparable as the flight time was slightly more and included the layover at JFK, but if you do math, the flight to Reykjavik was ridiculously cheap. Either everybody else was super over-charging, or Iceland Air was running at a huge loss.
—–
BTW, if you have not been, Iceland is stupifyingly stunning. Get out into the boonies or along the coasts and prepare to have your mind absolutely blown by the simple raw beauty. The sky. You will feel insignificant.
@gVOR08:
I know what you mean, but I think the kind of people you’re speaking of–the MAGA loons, to be precise–constitute a far lower percentage of the populace than 35.
@gVOR08:
Keep in mind that RW tollosphere is mostly bots controlled by a pudgy 30 yo living in his parents basement.
Tuesday is going to be ugly for Wisconsin.
@gVOR08:
I used to hang with a guy. Pretty good dude. Our politics did not agree, but whatever. In company, I never bring that up.
After Kaepernick and the knealing stuff, dude went off and would not shut up. Disrespect. Un-American. Parasites… racial shit. Wouldn’t watch NFL games on principle. Would proudly tell every random stranger he met the what and the why of it.
Told him straight up do not point that energy at me. I have no interest in debating this with you. Please stop. I will walk away if you continue harping on this. Let’s talk about our current Vespa re-builds instead. Anything else. I do not want to hear that from you. Red line. I am not going to listen to that anymore.
Dude would not stop. Possibly could not stop. He was too far gone into performative perpetual grievance and self-righteousness. Fox News rots your soul if you let it into your heart. Former friends start to look like enemies. Quasi-cultish a bit, in a way.
@Flat Earth Luddite: I’ve never been there. not sure why I would go.
@just nutha: Well for starters it’s not defunct. There were 4 reactors but only one blew up. The other 3 are still in operation. I know I know, you’re thinking the same thing I am. I know there is a new town set up especially for the plant workers and that they rotate out after a specified length of time. Still couldn’t pay me enough.
@Mu Yixiao: I’m so sorry for you and your state. 🙁
@OzarkHillbilly: I didn’t know that about Chernobyl. With that perspective, attacking the site makes some sense. Not enough sense to do what the Russian Army did though. I’ll stick with lack of paying attention to the details, but not paying attention is something all armies seem to do with astonishing regularity.
It strikes me there aren’t 90 minutes flight time between SLC and Denver. The flight diverted after the windshield cracked.
What ticks me off is the statement from Delta: “Out of an abundance of caution, the flight crew diverted into Denver and the plane landed routinely.”
It’s not an abundance of caution. It’s plain common sense. Odds are a cracked cockpit windshield will hold for months, but there’s a chance that it could blow out (remember the pressure differential inside vs outside the plane), and a bigger chance it would leak enough air to decompress the cabin.
Aircraft windshields don’t regularly break or leak, no, but they don’t crack, either. If one cracks, it’s serious.
I answered my office telephone yesterday. Like, the thing that sits in the far corner of my desk and has a handset and sometimes makes beeps. I looked up and there was a name on it I knew so I picked it up. It was the receptionist telling me I had a package in the other building and they were locking up. May be the only time I’ve ever answered it. Don’t even check the voice messages. Why do they still exist?
Exactly. As I said earlier, “Because of artillery, digging in is the first thing troops do when taking up a new position. So whoever decided that attacking and possessing Chernobyl was a good idea (to control the power generation I assume) is the person who needs a good slap upside the head.”
I sold off my 2,000,000 ruble investment today. My IRA made a 26% profit on the trade. Not bad for less than month. I wish I’d have had the guts to go much bigger. I spent $18,400 buying it after commissions, and sold today for $23,300.
26%
The Dow Jones was up about 2.7% in the same time period.