I've seen some additional reports now with verified details from the BBC and Reuters - and a proper landscape view of the impact - none of that side panel blurring business! Both news outlets confirm what you've said, converted light aircraft, and they also state that Ukraine forces have taken responsibility for the attack. I'm still amused that they rigged it for remote control and left the landing gear down the whole way!

Another one bites the dust, this time Jenna Ellis-Trump’s election denial lawyer, has plead guilty in Georgia, crying during her mea culpa, admitting she lied repeatedly about evidence of fraud she never had, never saw, and knew was 100% made up just like the rest of them knew.
She blamed the other lawyers for giving her bad advice she never verified (advice like it’s ok to lie to the American people, the courts, investigators, etc), but that’s not a defense. It’s also 100% opposed to the image she put forth as one of Trumps main high power lawyers running things.

That’s co-defendant #4 turning on Trump, pleading guilty, and admitting everything they told you about the election being stolen was pure fiction they made up to sucker cultist rubes like you…and it worked.

It’s somewhat surprising that hair dye dripping sex abuser Giuliani farting on her and giving her covid during hearings in the House or holding press conferences at landscaping business/sex shop parking lots because he went to the wrong “four seasons”) wasn’t enough for her to think twice and run….no one ever accused her of being too smart. No one ever honestly accused Trump of that either.

How you liking big daddy Chump now? I imagine you’ll be standing with him defending him even after all 19 cox-defendants turn and testify against him, after he’s convicted of multiple counts of election fraud and put in the pokey. You’ll likely stand with him after he’s convicted of treason for stealing and handing over/selling top secret military documents to foreigners. Too bad you won’t stand with him for the punishment…you should.

Er-mer-gerd…just saw Trump’s latest speech where he admits just this week realizing how similar the abbreviation “U.S.” and the word “us” are…he never noticed. WHAT!?! 😂

I'm optimistic that the level of creativity and humor presented in the teaser means the team behind the movie has their collective head screwed on straight. The teasers / trailers that worry me are the ones that are just quick cuts of various action scenes and striking landscapes - leaning too heavily on visuals gives me serious misgivings about the writing. When teasers give a taste but legitimately *tease* us (the Matrix is a good example, or the first teaser for LotR) that seems to generally be a great sign.

Oops this turned into a semi rant. But I am legitimately open to discussion here, and am curious to get your thoughts on a few points Bob. That is, IF you're willing to actually think about them beyond the level of repeating talking points.

I find it interesting how divergent the two overall "sides" are in this country, in terms of where they focus. None of the issues brought up in this video are really on the radar of most progressives, beyond being aware some on the right are talking about them. And I'm guessing a lot of the concerns progressives discuss rarely come up in your chosen media landscape. A lot of the issues in the video are largely off of my radar, and I have to wonder how you feel they should be addressed - like, actual proposed solutions rather than just complaining about / worrying about them.

We only dedicate one day to remember our fallen soldiers

How many should there be? Arguably we have more than one already: there's Memorial Day and Veterans Day, and it seems that Sept 11th is often used for the purpose as well.

I'd argue we should spend more time acknowledging and understanding the principals behind WHY our soldiers died in the various conflicts which caused them to fall in the first place. Let's make sure our citizenry appreciates what we collectively rejected in the Revolutionary war. Why it was important that we kept the country together rather than allowing the south to split off in the mid-1800s. Why we chose to honor our diplomatic agreements and support our allies in WW1. Why we fought against the countries and governments we did in WW2. What our goals were in Korea and Vietnam, and what lessons we learned from those conflicts and from the Cold War in general. Commemorating and remembering those we've lost absolutely matters, but if we're ONLY doing that while forgetting why they fought OR ignoring what we learned then we're doing them an equal or greater disservice. Remember that America was built on the idea of forming "a more perfect union" - not a perfect one, a MORE perfect one - a work in progress. We're striving towards an ideal, not assuming we're already there. Learning from our past successes, failures, and our struggles around both outcomes is vital. If our self-analysis is no deeper than hero worship we'll never make real progress towards that theoretical perfect union.

The only mask that's gonna save us is duct tape on their mouths

Yeah, sound medical advice and evidence-based science is terrifying. Better to shut up those whose words we dislike, because we're reactionary authoritarian babymen. I truly do not understand being more afraid of reasonable safety measures than of a virus which has been shown to cause serious harm in the short and long terms. The only reason this "masks = liberal / maskless = conservative" crap came about is because politics has devolved to the level of team sports in the US, and one party has chosen "the opposite of whatever our political opponents say" as their entire governing philosophy. (And yes, ONE party - research and understand the GOP's 2020 platform if you want to argue the point.) This video even seems to reach a reasonable conclusion at the end, while coming up just short of that final logical leap to "maybe I should question what the public faces of MY side have been claiming in this Us vs Them madness." Seriously - keep going friend, you're almost there! George Washington was 100% right in wanting to avoid political parties being a force in the US, and it makes me immensely sad that his fears came true.

Big oil runs the world / the only wars to get fought are with the countries who have natural resources they want

Solid point here, no sarcasm. The US military has long been a tool of our profit-driven form of "free market" imperialism. A really great way to combat this, specifically with an eye to ending Big Oil's goddamn death grip on our foreign policy goals, would be an aggressive implementation of renewable energy projects. Remember the space race? America can be an absolute beast at clever engineering solutions when we dedicate ourselves to it. Fuck the petrostates, we have the available land and resources to absolutely kick ass in the realms of solar and wind power, and be leaders in the the post-hydrocarbon reality. We can certainly agree on that, right Bob? Left / Right nonsense fully aside, I think any reasonable American can agree on at least two points: let's stop sending heaps of cash to buy oil off of the Saudis (etc), and Fuck Cancer.

But if a white man acts too white he's white trash / he's a racist he's a bigot he's a monster

What the fuck is this horseshit? What does "acting too white" even fucking look like? Watching NASCAR on a sailboat while listening to polka? Typically when I see racism from white people it's in the form of denying that brown-hued people deal with any additional difficulties in life due to their skin tone, or denying that there have been structural obstacles for them through history, or lamenting that their white children are being burdened with a broader lens on culture or with (gasp! shock!) an accurate accounting of actual US history, including the ugly bits that we shouldn't be proud of (but MUST learn from). I'm progressive / lefty as fuck and there is no aspect of "white culture" or "acting white" which upsets me in the slightest. UNLESS one counts "denying racism exists / has ever existed" as a fundamental value of being white. Which... why would anyone want to claim that nonsense? If you want to listen to classic country music in a rusty pickup truck while driving to an evangelical church, then discuss hockey over Buds after 18 holes with the rest of your tractor pull team, then absolutely go nuts my fellow caucusoid! Just recognize and understand that your life experiences may not be the same as those of others. Further, if we care about trying to avoid unnecessary, avoidable unfairness in life (recognizing that life will never truly be fair, for anyone), then it might be reasonable for some governmental / legal / structural recognition in furtherance of that notion. There is absolutely room for legitimate policy disagreement here without being accused of racism. It's denial of others' reality which tends to garner the label of racist (sexist etc) - steer clear of denying the lived experiences of other people, allow for the possibility they may have encountered difficulties you haven't / won't, and we've room for further discussion.

Edit / final point: I voted the video back up to 0 from the -1 where I found it. Because while I disagree with a lot of the positions taken by the performer, they may have reached them through no fault of their own and with no true malice. Misinformation / disinformation is a devious shit of a motherfucker, and the rot it causes can run deep. It is painful to abandon deeply-held beliefs, on a fundamental level. If nothing else, the video gives us room to discuss some specific viewpoints held by people who think of themselves as good, but which can lead to harm.

Well put. But what's the % of Western (or the whole World in general except the Middle Eastern region) population who can make the distinction? It's really depressing.

Here in Canada, IMO the political landscape is very much the same as in the US. It is firmly drilled into people's mind that anyone criticizing the government of Israel's constant harrasement, military action, and land grabs in Palestinian territories are automatically branded as Anti-semitism by the likes of the JDOs (Jewish Defense Organizations). There are many legit Anti-Semitism incidents in Canada that need to be condemned, true, but there are also real over-reaction and subpression of objective opinions by the JDOs. These "false branding" hurts people's lives. And we almost NEVER hear the word Zionist (or anti-Zionist) in the media, mostly isolated to academic circles only.

Nobody would be offended hearing someone criticize any country's policy and military incursion (say, you don't like Trump/Biden? No one will say you're anti-American), but any negative comment involving Israel? Damn it boy, you're begging for trouble. As if Isreal, Likud, Netanyahu and the Jewish people are one and the same. Criticize one, you criticize all. But why is that? What makes Isreal, above all other countries, well above any reproach?

Now, I'm not pro- or anti-Semite nor pro- or anti-Zionist. Such generalised sentiment is wrong to me. I'm just pro-peace, the history of that land is way too complex and the blood spilled between its peoples ran for generations and gone on for centuries. It's unrealistic for any leaders to settle anything between their peoples in a political term or two (and not even factoring outside influences that DON'T want them to settle). There are too many hate and zero trust between the peoples right now. Just let peace reigns for a decade then it'll be time to talk settlement of statehood. Give Isrealites & Palestinians some peaoce & prosperity first. Everyone, including the media, politicians inside and outside of that land, the UN, etc. just need to recognize that and not be just so lopsided in their support.

The 1st statement is true. The 2nd statement is overly optimistic. The political landscape is littered with morally compromised & corrupt people on the right (and some left) that Republicans can and will continue to govern even for the 10~20%.

Farm to table?
I don’t think that means what he thinks it means.

*quality landscapers….great even….some might say the Greatest Of All Time!

I was confused due to the lack of context but the Youtube description says:

"Landscape gardeners destroyed a brand new patio and fences with sledgehammers after a homeowner allegedly refused to pay £7,300 for the work. Jack Pendergast claimed the customer in Ellesmere Port, Cheshire, failed to pay despite asking five times."

A video of an actual landscape filmed in portrait mode. Genius!

Getting that close to lions in an open vehicle is not unusual on safari. They see the vehicles as just part of the landscape, like a tree.

Reminds me of this TV listing:

The Wizard Of Oz (8-10 p.m., TCM)

Transported to a surreal landscape, a
young girl kills the first person she meets
and then teams up with three strangers
to kill again.

I might have been partaking just a bit, but I had one hell of a time deciding how much of the video was CGI, or how much was camera tricks. There's obviously -some- quantity of effects, if for no reason other than the duplication of the drones. OTOH, the landscape looks perfectly real, as did the ripples on the water.

To be perfectly honest, I don't even remember now what I decided...but I remember arguing with myself for almost the entire video.

That's some beautiful landscape he's fucking up. What an asshole.

Damn, sorry to hear that. I could go off on a frothing at the mouth rant at how bad it was, what we went through. To save money our original company, a nationwide US health insurance company, outsourced us right at merit raise time (nice touch, a-holes) to an off-shore company that would probably only ever meet expectations running an assembly line operation for building PCs.

They were out of their league taking over level 1 and 2 operations for a large company, which was already working through the pains of merging with other companies they had acquired. Instead of inspiring the legacy workers to stick around to make the transition work, their attitude was we were lucky the host company insisted we get first crack to reapply for "our" jobs. Like it was all one big assembly line and we could be easily replaced with someone with an A+ cert for $11\hr. The equivalent of pulling up to a storefront and having IT landscapers jump in the back of a pickup truck to work that day. Might work for an assembly line but not for a complex embedded IT infrastructure with 1001 local support quirks. They were completely clueless.

Add insult to injury, their internal processes were so bad, over the course of a year they asked us continually to remind them of the phone# of the iPhone they gave us and the serial# of the laptop they gave us. At least half a dozen times, it was fucking absurd. And when we were offered an incentive to help reduce the ticket log backup, they mailed unsigned money orders to fictional home addresses they had on record for us. With the stamp on the wrong part of the envelope for those lucky enough to receive their unsigned money orders. You had the option of mailing the money order back to get it signed (good luck getting it back) or committing a felony to get the money you legally earned, by not using the first option. Took me 7 months to finally get my money order, who knows where they originally mailed it. Their indifference during this whole mess was staggering, you had to badger management and HR like they were a deadbeat drunk brother-in-law who owes you money.

And they kept putting off the review\raise process until they finally offered us 50 cents an hour for the highest performers. I gave my notice the next day.

Sorry for the rant, it was such a colossal failure on all fronts, except no doubt for the amount the host company saved on IT during that time. But of course nobody is interested in capturing the countless hours of downtime and lost productivity introduced by these IT cost "savings". Last I heard they were putting the contract back out to bid before the scheduled end of the current contract, which doesn't surprise me. What a freaking waste.

I hope you find work soon, Ant.