The ICE era is ending.
This is the decade of the EV.
Are you ready?

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.

What on earth are you talking about?
Do you believe the government dictates your vows? What "rules"? You just cannot grasp the concept of no fault divorce or prenuptial, can you?

I guess you never planned on kids or shared assets. If you do, not having a marriage means you almost certainly will pay for them for 18+ years but won't have many rights to be in their lives, and may lose your rights to any assets if she grabs first. Uncle Sam is in your relationship, married or not....without a marriage contract, he makes ALL the rules and you have no say.

My brother paid well over a hundred thousand dollars for his divorce in Texas that in my state would have cost under $10K and you congratulate him? You are one strange person.

Again, your perception, not based in fact since the 60's. You assume women take off time to raise the kids and take care of parents and assume fathers don't take paternity leave or have obligations outside work. How 50's. You start from a false position that men work both harder and better, but you have no data to back that up. It certainly hasn't been my experience, I've seen women in the workplace working harder and longer for less pay, sacrificing just like their male counterparts if not more, putting off having families until it's too late while men can have kids long after normal retirement age, putting themselves in dangerous situations where those with power over them have opportunities to abuse that power and abuse those women in ways that rarely happen to men. These aren't exceptions, they're the norm.

Um...so since you admit many women outearn men and the trend reinforces that, meaning soon women in most catagories will out earn men and have more to lose, you admit you're wrong in your position now, right? Of course not, I expect you will still start from a point that hasn't been correct since the era and sexual revolution, early 70's at latest.

No, many of the studies I've seen compared people in the same exact positions in the same industries, even same companies, and women consistently get paid less for the exact same job and hours, and women rarely work less today, and just as often out work their male counterparts knowing they are often token hires not valued by the bosses so have less job security. If I recall correctly, 80% of job losses due to Covid were women, and the men are getting rehired faster. I think you are thinking of some studies from the 80's that made those assumptions and accusations. Comparing apples to apples, women still get shortchanged and as often as not overworked.

Bullshit. You said you would immediately dismiss any woman who has...
"Long dating history? Too much risk
Tends to have short relationships? Too much risk
Likes attention? Too much risk
Single mother (non-widow)? Too much risk
Any mental issues (depression, bipolar, narcissist, anxiety, etc)? Too much risk
Older (why you still single...)? Too much risk
Likes to party? Too much risk
Drinks? Too much risk"

And again, prenuptial. Do you not know what they are? Specify what you expect and agree, and you walk with exactly what you agreed to, no government rules or split involved. Geez. You speak as if you had never heard of them.

Most divorces may be initiated by the woman (if that's true, I expect it's just another assumption) because their husbands are more likely to break their vows first, but are not willing to pay to end the marriage, including penalties for breaking the marriage contract, and we're too dumb to get a prenuptial (or got one that spells out harsh penalties for cheating). Yes, I am assuming men cheat on their spouses more often than the reverse, because men are wired that way.

You are not more likely than not to face a divorce, because it's unlikely any woman meeting your criteria would give you a second thought, and you need to get married to get divorced.

I bet if you show your significant other this thread your 20 year relationship will be in big trouble, or at best enter a long dry dark spell. Women don't like men that believe wholeheartedly that all women are just lessers, leeches that take more than they deserve or even could give back and destroy you whenever they think it serves them. It's probably a good thing you aren't married.

Laws and family court aren't as you describe. Maybe when you enter the 21st century you'll recognize that. The rules of your marriage can be whatever you agree to, including the specifics of the split if it ends.

It's a sad thing you can't grasp that a codified, delineated, agreed to partnership is almost always better, more fulfilling, and has many benefits cohabitation lacks.....almost always unless one or both of you are total douchebags.

I remember watching the very last Tonight Show with Johnny Carson when Bette Middler sang to him. It was such a real moment. They both knew that they were living in the final minutes of an amazing era. Things change, but watching this makes me wish I could go back and re-live a single day in the 1970s.

It's fairly amazing how short the Stelliferous Era (the time period in which stars exist) is during the entire birth-to-death of the universe. It's roughly 10^6 - 10^14 years (one million to 100 trillion years from the Big Bang to stellar death, or a span of one million million x 8 years). This seems like a very long time, but on the universal time scale, it's not. "Matter" in the universe will exist for ~10^~125 years, or ten unquadragintillion (yes, that's a real word)

This is the equivalent (if I'm doing the math right) of the total life of the universe being a length of one mile, the entire age in which stars exist is the width of a playing card approximately one millimeter from the start.

For comparison, the atomic decay of Xenon-124 into Tellurium-124 is about 18 sextillion years (1.8 x 10^22 years), roughly 1 trillion times the current age of the universe.

No surprise here, it's its claim to fame of real-time action from the traditional turn-based RPG mechanism. Just like the Red Alert, Warcraft of its era.

Sad.

So first I thought this was a really short video.

Then I googled and found out how little video material from that era exists.

I found a great clip of Oh Well, live, in the middle of that.

Then I googled that Danny Kirwan died two years ago.

Only then I noticed Peter Green died.

And then I "remembered" the lick from Oh Well as the Formula 1 intro from before The Chain.

Then I Googled it.

Then I realized that it wasnt.

Then I remembered a conversation I had with someone 40 years ago who heard Oh Well and said "this is the music from F1" and I explained that no, that is another song by the same band but its not the same band anymore.

Somehow what gets stuck in your head becomes potato mash at some point. Or its just me.

It was itself the theme to "25 years of rock" a few years later.

Peter gave everything away because of drug induced mental problems, not that much of a good role model. At least he made it out of the 70s alive.

Not very many, and most of them are masked, unlike the anti-healthcare worker rallies by Trumpsters. >70% of Americans are intelligent enough to say it's not time to reopen, dozens of states are still on the upswing in cases, not flat or falling. Thanks to brain dead morons, we are nearly guaranteed a second outbreak this summer, Trumpronavirus is going to be with us in November, and most Americans are intelligent enough to understand why.

We should definitely listen to you because you've only been wrong about everything you've ever said about Covid 19.
It's not even as bad as the flu.
We won't ever have more than 15 cases, quickly dropping to zero.
There's no need for federal guidelines.
It will disappear by April.
We won't ever see 1000 deaths.
We definitely won't hit 10000 deaths.
We won't hit 20000 deaths.
40000.
60000.
80000.
100000.
Ok, it's well over 100000 dead Americans from horrendous planning, foot dragging, and obstinate denials, but Trump saved us from it hitting 2.5 million dead.
Only Chinese nationals carry it, so a travel ban on them solved everything.
It's an Obama era CDC created virus handed to China by Democrats to attack America.
*facepalm

Oh yeah? Tell me these known stories of Democrats cheating....I must have missed that, or is it data only found on OAN? Trump's multi million dollar nationwide election fraud investigation sure didn't find any, that's why you never heard it's conclusions.

We don't need Republican examples, we all remember last election and the candidates who had their campaign collect thousands of ballots from the elderly and change their votes, and the judge who voted as their dead spouse, and those woman who admitted voting multiple times because Trump said Democrats would, etc. All Republican cheating.

Idiot, vote by mail is not new. The only thing new is one party claiming it's improper or illegal....only when their political rivals do it, not their own party (Trump isn't threatening any red states who've gone to vote by mail...neither are Democrats, blowing your snide bullshit accusation out of the water.) Multiple states were 100% vote by mail when Trump was elected....are you saying that election was invalid and he's not the president?! Ok, I'll go along under those circumstances, but only if I get the last 3 1/2 years back first.

Trump hopes he can create that kind of confusion, then morons like you would accept his just declaring himself the winner and maybe having to postpone any further elections until we can figure out what's going on (indefinitely).

No one likes him OR the shit he's gotten done, shit like sparking a depression by not handling the outbreak in any useful way (banning some Chinese but not travel from China clearly didn't help) for almost two months while telling the nation there was nothing to worry about, go about your business, no need to prepare for anything, shit like handing trillions to political allies, withholding aid from Democratically led states, dragging his feet, publicly denying there's any problem while those around him illegally prepared by selling hotel stocks etc, blaming one race for creating the virus to deflect blame from his total failure to lead, etc.

If Hillary was in office, she wouldn't have disbanded the CDC international pandemic prevention and preparedness teams and plans, so wouldn't have needed Republicans to vote for her stimulus package.

If Dems/Hillary put forth a $2 trillion recovery bill, Republicans would have denied her a penny, not one Republican vote, called it a socialist cash grab, fake virus, and insisted the stimulus was tied to death squads who would come murder grandma, just like they did over healthcare. Republicans are incapable of compromise or honest debate, incapable of legislation that doesn't benefit Republicands at least 2-1 over Democrats, and incapable of putting the good of the nation before party, unlike Democrats. Republicans agreed to give billions to citizens, as long as they got trillions for businesses like Trump's failing clubs, and they complained about hundreds of millions to fight Covid.

Name these non related goodies, I bet you can't without asking OAN, who will give you an outright lie to repeat.

Everyone lost except maybe the makers of hydrocloroquin and Trump's failing golf clubs and a few billion dollar companies that took most of the small business stimulus money. All that loss was due to Trump's complete failure to take Covid seriously and his multi month delays when every second counted to save lives, jobs, and the economy, and his removal/firing of all oversight positions listed in the recovery bill he signed to facilitate disqualified billionaires and Trump family members getting the lions share.

I keep imagining a government issuing such a public directive along with the initial calls for these lockdowns...and a consistent message to boot, and where we would be today.

Instead, we “must have meat” and are encouraged to join a lawsuit against China (?!?) and told “anything goes” as to how we exit this era. There are not enough curses for those calling these shots.

Russia is being recycled from the Mcarthy era as a propaganda bat to hit at the knees of progressives again.

This is another example of Conservative thinking. All these guys are concerned with is the right now, and the near future. The next quarter. They have no idea what they're talking about here.

China is expecting their population to increase by 300 million in the next thirty-ish years.

I'll say that again for the folks at the back:

China is expecting their population to increase by one United States of America worth of people by the 2050's.

We're talking about a country with a government founded by a workers' revolution, that has had a widespread famine in living memory. (During the Great Leap era.) This isn't ancient history.

They cannot allow "market forces" to dictate how and where people live in North America where fertile fields are plowed under to make room for sprawling suburbs.

That's why they're building. That is why they are building UP.

Young families will not be able to just go any buy a house in the suburbs. China, for the most part doesn't build suburbs. Suburbs waste space.

They need existing farmland to be protected to manage their food security. They don't want a famine, that's how you get a revolution. They don't want a revolution.

They want stability.

China doesn't worry about next quarter because they planned for that a decade ago. It's the next decades that they're planning for now---a timeframe these Conservative talking heads are incapable of understanding.

Really? Can you offer a comparative American/Russian timeline of computer telecommunication innovations, or are you just assuming? Be sure to focus on pre '68 era, before American socialism was applied in large part (public funding/monopoly busting).

And for some unknown to you reason China is beating the ever loving pants off America lately....so what's your point? Certainly not that Capitalism always beats socialism, I hope you aren't that deluded. Both have strengths and weaknesses, both ebb and flow. Neither are the sole determining factor for inventiveness, neither has a monopoly on invention.

Russia beat America into space even with their near poverty level economy at the time, and despite the fact that their scientists definitely didn't personally profit from their myriad of inventions required to make it happen.
I'm not arguing which is better, that's like arguing over which color is better....better in what way? I'm arguing against your contention that ONLY personal profit drives invention or innovation. That's clearly a mistaken assumption imo.

You are correct, I was using NOAA numbers, not realizing they use a different start point to compare from. I honestly thought both would use 1890, pre industrial era start points, since that's what the 1.5C limit is based on. Stupid to use all these differing sets, that only adds confusion to an already technical and confusing topic.

No matter what, it's incontrovertible that every iteration of the IPCC reports has drastically raised their damage estimates (temp, sea level) and sped up the timetable from the previous report. You can accept their current estimate, that's better than the average person. I'll take the less conservative NOAA estimates and go farther to assume they over estimate humanity and underestimate feedback loops and unknowns and believe we are bound to make it worse than they imagine.

I have no horse in this race. I hit my best by date next year, and don't have kids...got fixed in my 20's. What happens after 2050 isn't my concern, and I have no problem if humanity goes extinct. It's all the other life we will take with us, or worse, that we survive as the last species standing, that gets me upset.

I saw Once Upon A Time In Hollywood at the theater. I found myself smiling pretty much through the whole movie. Whether it was the dialog or the way the camera shots were done or the characters or all the memories from that era, Tarantino is truly one of a kind. I will watch it again because there is so much I'm sure I missed in just one sitting.