You know how usually you only find parking at the roof of a parking deck?

To me, this is just rearranging the deck chairs on the titanic. I understand why some Christians and Christian organizations are trying to fight these culture wars, but it is completely futile. What difference does it make which flag is flying when the culture has basically completely rejected biblical Christianity. The moral decline that is happening is the bad fruit that comes out of that. If you chop off the fruit and branches, they will just grow back because you haven't dealt with the root system.

There are a lot of parallels between advertising and copyright. Buy wholeheartedly in to either, and you end up sort of failing to accept the reality of their flaws.

Advertisers think they have a big problem whenever someone circumvents their ads. They panicked when VCRs came around and allowed people to record shows and fast-forward through ads. They panicked when DVRs came out and let people digitally skip through ads. And they are panicking now, with more and more people getting fed up and putting ad-blocking software on their computers or devices.

Copyright holders think they have a big problem when someone tries to circumvent their system, too. They worried about libraries giving people free access to books; but at least a physical book is pretty much limited to one person at a time. They freaked out about cassette tapes being easily copied with a dual cassette deck. They freaked out about people sharing MP3 music over the internet. They freaked out when DVDs came out with CSS protection which was circumvented almost immediately. They continue to freak out by pushing for ever more and more drastic DRM schemes, that are generally circumvented quite rapidly.

The general theme in both advertising and copyright is escalation; a sort of arms race. The problem is that that solution doesn't actually improve things for anyone, in either case. Ads get more and more offensive and annoying, more and more people block/skip them. Copyright gets more and more locked-down, more and more people circumvent it. In both cases, as the "legitimate" side squeezes harder, it ends up making the user experience better for those who circumvent it "illegitimately". See, for example, this good old comic from The Oatmeal:
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/game_of_thrones

The web with adblock software is a massively better experience than the web without it. A pirated 1080p movie or TV show lets you skip the previews/commercials that are often unskippable on a DVD. And on and on.

This arms race doesn't have a good future. Creators and distributors must start wracking their brains to come up with whole new ideas, or at least variants of the old ones, that break that cycle and ensure that "illegitimate" users/viewers don't have a better experience than legitimate ones. I'm sure not holding my breath though.

Pilots were really lucky on many accounts:
- Fuel was most likely on the low side being that it was the end of their mission meaning that the airframe was able to recover a bit better than if it was loaded with fuel.
- That he got his gear up fast. This in my mind was key, it reduced drag and let the the plane get off the deck much faster than if they were still out.
- Good training and lighting fast mental and physical reflexes. They recognized the situation immediately and went into recovery mode. This is in part why you don't post 40 year olds landing on ocean platforms... its a young mans game.

The pilots interviewed afterwards:



As for what happened, H/T to Ohforfoxache from LiveLeak for the following:

What went wrong
The one-inch wire ropes laid out across a carrier's flight deck — known as cross deck pendants — are programmed to release a set amount of cable as the aircraft's tail hook drags them behind the plane, to absorb the force of a landing before spooling back up.
Below deck, a purchase cable is attached to each side of the deck pendant to absorb the force of the landing plane, controlled by an arresting gear engine.
On March 18, the engine was miscalibrated and couldn't absorb the energy caused by the landing, which transferred the load to the deck pendant, snapping the left side and sending it whipping across the flight deck.

https://www.navytimes.com/story/military/2016/07/14/horrific-cable-mishap-caused-maintanence-errors-navy/87032244/

Where has this been all my life?!?
Doin' tricks and decking chicks, it's Italian Spider-Man!
*promote

"Uhhh, hello from the flight deck. This is your captain speaking, Captain Badass. We are currently flying at an altitude of negative 1 feet. If you look out your right window you will see water. If you check your left, more water. Don't worry folks, first were going to blast the shit out of a forest fire, do it all over again, then have you home for dinner. Thanks again for flying Adventure Airlines!"

For reference, race relations in Canada between white and aboriginal populations is if anything more strained than black and white is in the US. As a white guy, the only context in which I can observe the incarceration rate is if I specifically blame the incarceration rate on the police and judicial system being at fault for disproportionately targeting aboriginals. To observe that aboriginals are in fact responsible for a disproportionate number of crimes will get me labelled a racist. No amount of explanation about systemic disadvantages stacking the deck against aboriginal youth will cover that mark up here. To be sure there are circles where you can have that discussion, but you have to really know each other before you aren't going to worry about being classed as a racist straight away before any discussion can occur.

It's weird, I can go up to the observation deck of the CN tower, stand at the edge of a cliff or building without any issue, but I feel nervous as shit hanging Christmas lights using an aluminum extension ladder (which never seem stable). lol. I guess as long as whatever I'm standing on is secure and stable, I'm good.

With that said, no way in hell would you get me doing this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40F8mALRukA

I don't disagree that his response was more than needed, but I don't expect someone who's been taunted and hit repeatedly (and I saw the shove as WAY more than a friendly Elaine style push, and the second hit looked to be to his neck/chin, not shoulder) to think it through and be restrained, but I do agree a good pimp slap may have sufficed....a call to the cops should be the proper response, but it's clear that wouldn't work for him in a white girl vs black man incident in real life.

All that said, I still say that if you start a physical fight and you lose, badly, that's never your victim's fault, it's yours, and genitalia have nothing to do with it (unless someone gets kicked in the balls). I know <100 lb women that brag about getting high and going to bars intending to fight men, and winning those fights. Assuming gender or size makes someone not dangerous is naive.
Edit: note, his first reaction was to walk away from the taunts, and his first reaction to the first shove/hit was verbal, so decking her was technically his second choice, or third depending on how you look at it. ;-)

An 'A' of hearts? I don't think will i am has ever seen a deck of playing cards or has the slightest clue about them.

TRICK SPOILER:
At :54 he sees the top two and the bottom card of the deck. At 1:04 he moves the bottom card to the top, so he now knows the top 3, with the 3rd being what will become Will's card. His shuffles don't have an impact on the top 3, and the middle pile he places down comes from the top of the deck. When he looks through the cards later he puts the ace where he wants it, and the rest is just careful manipulation to keep it hidden while showing a bunch of other cards. He definitely has solid showmanship though!

Thank god for those subtitles.

Also, that is very impressive. I read somewhere that some ship+helicopter setups have a winch system, where they basically pull the helicopter onto the deck from a hover to secure it.

Here is what I had in my early teens. It was my grandfather's that I inherited after his passing. I loved it until I could afford a cassette deck.

Not just the cassette deck, but the vinyl LP at the beginning.