Mate, if those two got any closer together, that LIGO would be detecting the birth of a new black hole somewhere in the Sol system.

I used to love Church: a dinner of Taco Bell burritos, a wooden pew, and the word of Christ. Clench, lean 15 degrees to the left, relax your sphincter and PUSH! The silence that is golden will last about 10 seconds before the retching and piling out the doors brings an end to today's sermon. That's when you snatch the collection plate and bolt out the back door.

I lost a major source of income when I became an atheist.

Did you know Taco Bell delivers? At least in Seattle they do. I have to wonder what life choices lead to the terminus of hauling two dollar food between source and the customer 25 miles away. Yeah, that $5 tip will more than pay for gas, upkeep, insurance and oil changes on that riced-out K car you've been driving since The Pet Shop Boys were still popular.

Also, "...blahblah whining and such..." -- look, if I want unfair criticism of a job well-done, I'll ask my clients to pay up. That's primo Gonzo humor you're tut-tutting and you paid exactly nothing to enjoy it. Y'know who else was a cheap ingrate? HITLER! Why ya gotta by like Hitler, Moonsammy -- IF THAT IS YOUR REAL NAME. I have my doubts on this topic, by the way.

Hey, what's Bob up to? I always enjoy a cheap laugh at the expense of the less fortunate.

(seriously dude -- I can hold 1:1 with a Clydesdale for an hour and have enough left in the tank to draw a standing ovation at Centurylink Field.)

I WANT MY MONEY BACK!

If there's going to be a fart in a video, I want a pavement-cracking ripper louder than a ship's horn. I want a blast radius. I want weeping men and shrieking women. I want people 200 miles downwind to think Bhopal fucked Chernobyl and the offspring came blasting out of that woman's ass like The Four Horsemen riding out of Hell. I want sermons written about it. I want it commemorated in legends as epic as a Viking saga and as long-lived as The Canterbury Tales. I want it spoke of only in whispers. I want the Alpha Centuri LIGO to peg so hard that the aliens look at it and mutter, "Ohhhhhh, fuck..."

This was none of those.

This wasn't a full-on fart, it was an asterisks on a turd. This was a "tee-hee" fart, not a "OH JESUS FUCK -- EVACUATE THE WEST COAST AND CALL THE ARMY!" butt-blast. I'd be ashamed to call this one of my own; I'd wrap it in a blanket and dump it in front of the SPD station down the street so our Boys in Blue could take one look at it, sadly shake their heads, and forswear their sacred duty by tossing it in a dumpster.

Mordhaus, you promised me a fart video and you gave me two monochromatic outcomes of butter and corn syrup consumption babbling on; waddling parentheses around a feeble "pbt".

SIR, I DEMAND BETTER OF MY FART VIDEOS AND I -WILL- SEE YOU IN COURT!!

(I farted)

Don't get me wrong, I want all electric vehicles on our roads; but your lord and savior made it harder to buy Teslas https://fueleconomy.gov/feg/taxevb.shtml by allowing the tax credit to expire during his term

"Tesla vehicles purchased after 12/31/2019 are not eligible for these tax credits."

Hmmm who was president in 2019? Dunno. Dems are working on a plan to restore the credit to Tesla and GM, but I assume it'll be killed by McConnel and Manchin


Even WITH the tax credit, it's a hard buy for most of us. I just finished paying off my first new car @ about $25k, but I DO make trips longer than 250 miles in a day somewhat regularly. So even the $40k model wouldn't do for me. $52,000 is simply out of my price range. Shit, even 40k is too much for me. SHIT even 35k is too much for a person without a car payment as of a few months ago. No thanks.

I'm gonna ride this car until the wheels fall off, I get 43mpg and I'm satisfied with that.


Tesla stock meanwhile seems to vary wildly. Go get some boring mutual funds brother. Easy come easy go, they say.

I have a friend who is a Beavis-and-Butthead level pyro. He loves blowing things up, and he feels that little things like forewarning may spoil the surprise. He has many claims to fame, but this is among the most notorious:

In the mid-90s, at the place we've been camping for 30+ years, he poured an entire can of Red Dot Smokeless gunpowder down an anthill, then lit it. This was cool for all of about three seconds when it hissed and sputtered like a little volcano. It was far less cool when the gunpowder-packed anthill suddenly went off like Mt. St. Helens. Dirt and REALLY fucking pissed off biting ants blasted high in the air before raining down on the heads of the unwitting spectators, and promptly taking their revenge.

There's nothing quite like being showered with burned, angry biting ants to round out a weekend. Jeff thought this was funny as Hell, because he'd scampered out of range when he realized things were going to go very wrong -- things ALWAYS went very wrong -- and had taken shelter upwind. Later, as in 4:00am the next morning, he set off a stick of dynamite in a creek for an encore, also without warning. And after the booming echoes settled down, the only sound for miles around was this maniacal, hysterical laughter echoing in the impenetrable dark.

To this day, if he starts laughing, I RUN.

My condolences on your loss(es), Ant.

Right after Jackass came out, a couple of friends-of-a-friend decided to stage their own version of the movie -- with a hornet's nest. They found the thing hanging from a tree at the edge of a field and it was not remotely on the small size. Also, this was in late August and the queen had already flown away, leaving the drones to slowly starve to death. Thus, the enormous number of stripey-stripey sting-stings were already good 'n' pissed-off.

They were about to get moreso.

So chowderhead A and chowderhead B have a brilliant plan: they're going to shoot this enormous ball full of astoundingly-irate murderous insects with a shotgun while they're filming it. If you're hearing banjos playing and luke-warm cheap beers being cracked open, you're about in the right frame of mind.

Places, everybody!

The stage is set: on one end, at what's decided to be "minimum safe distance", are our erstwhile David Attenborough/Jonny Knoxville knock-offs. At a decidedly NOT minimum safe distance away is the arthropod version of the T'sar Bomba. All we're missing now is a Mossberg, enough idiocy to think this can end any way but badly, and a camera. With far too much alacrity for what's about to happen, all three are provided.

Aaaaaand, ACTION!

* BOOOM! *

At first, surprisingly, nothing happens. This period of stasis lasts roughly a picosecond. Then, unsurprisingly, things start to happen and they happen far more quickly than the Chuckle Brothers planned on. This plays out in three acts:

Act 1: "Hey, uh, why is the nest still there?"
Act 2: "Uh-oh..."
Act 3: "FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK!!!"

Hubris takes many forms, and schadenfreude takes twice as many, but both combined were statistically zero compared to the number of hornets involved in this fiasco. Had the two Mensa escapees who irked said hornets thought this thing through -- stop laughing -- perhaps they would have arrived at the conclusion that 1. a shotgun slug is not the preferred load-out when dealing with a ball made out of wasp puke and 2. being the only two things visible within a 20 mile radius of the ball made out of wasp puke pretty much negates the mystery of who the hornets are going to sting the ever-loving fuck out of.

With their plans in ruins and the nest not, our heroes decide to quit the field. This is the first smart thing they've done since looking at that big ball of wasps and deciding it was redolent with untapped hilarity. The hornets are having none of this white flag nonsense, however, and they decide to quit screwing around and really inflict some pain. It's a quarter mile back to the car and the hornets are going to make them pay for every inch of it.

The final score:
Hornet losses: meh, they were all going to die in a few weeks anyway.
The chucklenuts: 23 stings, a dropped shotgun, and three minutes of footage that they took in the pre-YouTube era and thus is lost to time.

Moral:
Hornets are not toys.

I wish we had this in the US:

1. At 18, you go into two years of national service, PERIOD. Unless you're in a coma, you're going. And you're going to go someplace you're not from and be on a team with people you're not used to so that your millimeter-wide view of America gets forced open to a mile.

You will be evaluated for mental and physical wellness. If you're suffering from mental illness, you will get help. If you're struggling with weight or other physical issues, you will get help.

You will be helping out in communities that you are not used to seeing: rural, inner-city, black, white, Latino. You will meet gay people, hard-core religious people, prisoners, entrepreneurs, carpenters and mechanics. You will get to know their world and help them understand yours.

2. After your two years, you have some choices:

- You can go into the military and strengthen those skills you've shown an aptitude for.

- If you want, you can attend a trade school, fully covered.

- If you want to go to college, your first two years will be covered if you get a AA/AS. Should you go for a four-year degree, your first three years will be covered.

Imagine what kind of nation we'd be living in right now has this been done in 1990.

The U2 required more than a mile of runway to land and it was not just about slowing down, it was actually very difficult to navigate to a (static) runway.

I have no clue why anyone would think a U2 could land on a carrier.

I see no reason why it could not take off from a carrier.

My dad, who lived in Berkeley about 5 miles east of the fault at the time, used to say "one day, everything East of the San Andreas will fall into the ocean".
He wasn't wrong.

Most republicans CLAIM they believe multiple ineligible voters voted and had their votes counted despite ALL evidence to the contrary and not a single case of non citizen Democratic voting nor a single case of Democrats voting twice, but many from Republicans including one guy who murdered his wife to use her vote to vote for Trump and a judge who cast his dead wife's ballot, then there's the multiple Republican candidates who collected ballots from the elderly and filled them out, casting votes for themselves by the thousands, and the fake ballot boxes set up by Republicans that continued after secretaries of state demanded be removed because they are specifically prohibited by law (and that allowed Republicans to sift through votes and discard Democratic ballots). Republicans do not care about securing non Republican votes anymore, Trump removed the last vestige of that patriotic civic feature from your group. Today's Republicans want to discard over half the legal votes for no reason besides they aren't for their candidate, liar.

Remember when Trump admitted that if every citizen voted, no Republican would ever be elected again? That's an admission they can only win by cheating straight from the cheater in chief's mouth....an admission that legal voters don't vote Republican, only by denying millions their constitutional rights AND cheating AND gerrymandering can Republicans win at all....Trump said it.

Let's have 5 cases of actual, prosecuted Democratic vote fraud cases from the last three elections, I can show you hundreds of times more than that from Republicans....thousands more. Liar. I know for certain you couldn't come up with two if I gave you one as a freebie.

There are no Democratic fucker laws, but hundreds of Republican fucker laws that discourage and block legal votes from poor and black areas and people, you claim it's to secure the vote against frauds while you have zero evidence any ever existed in the populations these laws target, blocking and denying millions of votes to fight a crime that doesn't exist except in Republican circles and Republican delusions. You believe they're all Democrat votes, so you don't care if they're legal voters being disenfranchised, liar.

Denying a legal vote has exactly the same effect as allowing an illegal one....which party wants to deny legal votes, Bob? Hint, it's the same party caught thousands of times recently casting illegal and/or tampered with votes AND discarding thousands of votes for Democrats. Liar.

Provide ID for free in the communities you insist must have them, not only available at the DMV 25+ miles away with no bus service going there, then and only then would it be even partially proper to enact laws to require them, or require a free voter ID that every citizen has the same access to and the same difficulties getting, so no online application, no phone application, stand in line at a DMV at least one county removed from your address. Republicans blocked a national voter ID, because it's not about ID, it's about denying legal voters in Democratic populations.

All illegal votes were Republican illegal vote frauds for Trump, every single one found. If illegal voting was a real concern, voting laws would target Republicans, not Democrats. They absolutely don't, and recordings of Republican leaders prove it was never about illegal votes and always about suppressing Democrat voters. Liar.

The true question is how are Republicans getting away with election interference at a massive scale, rigging elections nation wide while dishonestly claiming they're "securing the vote" but really they're securing it in Republican gerrymandered districts for Republicans, not ensuring every legal vote counts but instead denying any vote they question....which are only Democratic votes despite the long history of Republican frauds, rigging the system so they're "winning" elections with 10% fewer votes than their opponents, and threatening murders and civil war when y'all lose. Crybaby liar.

Republicans absolutely don't want an honest vote system in place because republicans cannot win honest, fair elections. Democrats tried dozens of times to pass laws securing elections, creating physical records of every vote, securing machines against tampering, even creating a (free) national voter ID, etc...Republicans obstructed every one without considering them at all because not allowing democrats a victory is far more important to y'all than securing elections or making them fair or honest.

I am certain. Science doesn't lie, and I don't have to take someone's word, I can examine data, understand chemistry, and see short and long term trends. The data is undeniable, the only thing wrong with what the media tells you is they paint FAR too rosy a picture. You would think, based on media reports, that if we did stay at only 1.5C above pre industrial levels all is fine, that's nonsense. Truth is 1.5C is where they theorized we lose all control and skyrocket up from there to....nobody knows where, but hot. I think we are on track to 1.5C before 2030, and the feedback loops are already kicking in now. Does that mean we die in 2030? No, but it means our collective fate is sealed and completely out of our control.

I do plant trees, I already have solar, I drive well under 4000 miles a year, in fact I haven't driven anywhere but the grocery store in the wife's car in over 6 month when my car broke, and I don't miss it, I don't have AC, and yes, I need to get on my bike more, for my weight and blood pressure. My money IS where my mouth is, and I still was willing to put it on the line....you aren't.

A big difference is, if somehow I am wrong, what I do is still proper, cleaner, safer, and actually cheaper. Your ideas and ideals lead to detrimental, polluting, dangerous, and more expensive actions and processes even if miraculously they don't lead to our extinction this century.

Are you snatching up cheap uninsurable coastline in Florida and Louisiana? Are you selling off your water rights because they're a dime a dozen? Are you short selling produce and grains on margin? Are you doing anything to risk your money based on what you say?

Your turn.

Edit: I don't do mobs. I prefer people who think for themselves.

After walking 500 miles in two weeks he had to walk another 6 miles because his bus ride was canceled when he got to the lighthouse.

Such nonsense.
Biden did not approve, nor is he helping build this pipeline. He chose to not sanction one Swiss company helping build the last 90 miles, but is still sanctioning Russian companies involved, and is likely to block it's certification and insurance (by banning any insurer from using international or US banking) without guarantees the Ukrainian pipeline won't be abandoned.
He decided not making Germany go dark was a better plan, not alienating a long term ally and strategic partner that we are trying to repair our severely damaged relationship with.
He also decided putting Russia in bed with the Chinese, their other option for selling their gas, was not a smart move.
He is clear, he is against this pipeline and is still sanctioning many Russian companies involved in it's construction.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/18/politics/us-nord-stream-decision/index.html

Those grapes must be really sour today @bobknight33, they've got your yummy tears flowing like a firehose....keep em coming. So yummy, you guys.

Edit: I'm curious why America SHOULD hold veto power over international projects approved by all involved countries on other continents. Should we stop pipelines because Putin says so? He could stop hacking them and just tell us to quit. It seems ridiculous that we are telling Germany they can't have more natural gas, and telling Russia they can't sell it.
For clarification, I'm against it for ecological reasons, yes gas produces less CO2 than coal and oil, but produces way more methane which is >25 times more destructive per molecule in the short term. 11 billion could have built any number of wave/tidal generation facilities that run 24/7 without a new source of greenhouse gases.

Its not where you start in life its where you end up.

White privilege is a false statement. Its really middle class privilege. Its about education not skin color. There are plenty of poor whites as much as there are poor blacks.


Those in the back mostly without fathers.
All knowing Newt, What is the fix?

Economic hardship of those kids would be lesson if both parents were present.


Finally JOBS or lack of them are mostly due to government policies ( Fair trade / Free Trade) have decimated job opportunities for All Americans, especially low wage and entry jobs.


Make policies that bring jobs back to America. Passing bills that take tax dollars and make roads or such only create short term jobs.

Trump was right Lower business tax rates to compete on world stage stimulated economy and America started to flourish.

Sadly Biden/ Democrats want to move tax rate up which will slow down growth, if passed.


Learn???
My dad started working at 14, His dad never got passed 8th grade.
My dad went bankrupt, had a chronically ill wife ( died in early 40s due to it) and 4 kids.

He never left. He worked his ass off.

Also he broke his back in 3 places and crushed his right hand. He left the hospital to sign a house mortgage, knowing he might never work again.
With a healing back and crippled hand he drove 50 miles each way in a stick shift car for 3 years like this just to keep a roof over our heads.

I paid my own way through college, Same for my sister.

My dad says If you want it bad enough you will find a way.

So don't tell be about white privilege bull shit.

What about Black lawyers, Drs, and ball players?
They make way more coin than most white people. Do they have white privilege?

The person making minimum wage likes it enough to stay, else he will find a better paying job.


Should fines, penalties be smaller for poor people , yes.

Wouldn't a P-90 be a better choice in a small space like that? I mean, with an AR-15 you'd have both a limited area to swing the barrel and would be more likely to shoot your driver than the dudes shooting at you.

See, I'm Davey Crockett kinda guy. If you're gonna defend yourself, better to do it when your attacker is a few miles away and not well-shielded against gamma prompts. Also, everyone loves a good firework show, so win-win!