In Seattle, there's a shipping canal that cuts through the Ballard, Fremont and University districts, each spanned by a single drawbridge, any of which MUST be opened if ANY boat traffic requests it. There's a time between 4pm - 6pm where they won't open the bridge, but one minute after 6, if you're not across you just turn off your engine and watch every entitled prick in the PNW putt their boat down the canal. Bridge opens, 10 minutes pass, bridge closes again. All along the canal. Backing traffic up to the fucking moon and it takes about 15 minutes to clear. Which works out wonderfully because the bridge often has to open 10 minutes after it just closed. At first, it's a novelty to see the bridge open. Then it's meh. Then it's the bane of your fucking existence. You start to whimper and sweat when you hear the two-minute horn and the ding-ding-ding of the gates coming down. Then come sthe white-hot fury directed at anyone who has the gall to come down the canal at exactly 6:00:01 and block traffic for the next 47 years. Hate. Hate. HATE!!!

The NOAA ships, mega-yachts and ships going to the yards are kind cool, 'tho.

HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATE!!!!!!

Does anyone know how much the plane's weight decreases during the drop, and how that changes its handling?

(I'm trying to work out how much harder this is than, say, coming in for a landing run.)

Interesting - thanks for sharing! Shame it didn't work out better, and I have to wonder if the outcome would be different now with the increased focus on fuel economy / climate change mitigation.

I have a friend who is very, very, VERY rich. Years ago, he married a total psycho chick, realized his mistake, and bailed out of that marriage a couple of years later.

He told me later that after the dust settled, he did the math and it worked out his marriage cost him about $2,500 an -HOUR- in immediate losses. When he worked out the long term costs in investment appreciation, compounded interests, real estate values and a slew of other "sundry" losses that alone were worth more than we'll see in 10 lifetimes, he would have needed to add another zero.

It gets better/worse.

He plays online poker and is very good at it. Just for fun, he went into business with one of the early online poker site's founders and helped write the security for the site. Because of a bunch of legal shit, he was paid in BTC, which was selling for about $50 a "coin" then. His now-wife freaked the fuck out and made him sell it. His estimate of THAT little loss, according to him (he told me this when BTC was at around $40k) would have been enough to offset his divorce settlement by a factor of about 2.5.

Do the math.

Oh boo-freaking-hoo! Your support of the moronic self-obsessed grifter didn't work out super well? Sucks to suck!

I gotta squirrel story.
So when I lived in Mountain View, for Christ only knows what reason, the idiots in charge of power put this big-ass transformer thing on the corner of my property. The thing hummed with menace and I knew that shit wasn't right. But I didn't worry none because there was a big green metal cover over it that provided the same protection against horrendous death that a box of Kleenex would have provided the World Trade Center on 9/11.
One day, I'm standing on my balcony and drinking a beer. I mighta been stoned, too, only there's no 'mighta' that day. I'm watching the whorehouse across the street (really) and generally buzzing when I see a squirrel on the lawn. I hate squirrels. A motherfucking squirrel ate my bar fridge and fucked me outta the $50 I was selling it for on Craigslist (really).
Anyway, I got this longneck of Bud in hand and I'm working out whether I can brain the goddamn rodent with it when the neighbor's cat come rippin' ass from under the balcony and goes after Skippy.
Well here's some amusement!
The squirrel is running for it's pointless life and the cat is banking like a F-16 chasing an Iraqi MIG and I've already got $10 down on the kitty with a $3 over/under. I already know how this was gonna end and I was rootin' for it every step of the way.
Only it didn't.
The goddamn squirrel found the ONE way to get under that green metal cover I mentioned previously. The cat stops in amazement and I'm all pissed because I've been gypped outta Wild Kingdom's money shot.
A second later there's a flash like Ivy Mike going off from under the cover and an a concussive BOOM!! The fucking cover blasts off like a Space-X project gone horribly wrong -- or, in this case, delightfully right.
The cat jumps like 5 feet in the air and an arc of turds flies outta its butt, the cover returns to earth as a traffic hazard in the middle of Latham St., and the squirrel is basically vaporized. And now I'm the happiest motherfucker in Mountain View because dude, that shit was AWESOME!
I call out, "Babe! You won't believe what just happened!" 'cause you gotta totally share shit like that.
Then I realized everything is TOTALLY silent, like Little House on the Fucking Prairie silent.
"The power's out," my wife responds.
And it STAYED out for like two goddamn days while the putzes from the power company had to rewire pretty much everything that blew up.
Honey Badger didn't give a shit because Honey Badger'd copped an oz right before this shit happened. And as Fat Freddy taught us, "Dope will get you through times of no power better than power will get you through times of no dope." Or some shit like that. I dunno, I'm totally fucking baked right now.

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Novel prize? For his ghost written books?

Really, how’s that peace deal with the Palestinians working out? Iran? Yemen? Afghanistan? Hardly a Mid East peace deal without them.
He “made” deals that had already been made between the parties involved....meaning he just took credit for other people’s work as usual, and the deals made are meaningless. More trade agreements than peace deals by nations that weren’t hostile to begin with.
The Nobel committee evaluated his “work” and found it much less of an achievement than getting elected president as a black man.

Why do you care? He’s happy to lie about it and claim he’s received multiple peace prizes from them....pay no mind to the fact that he used the science medal in his tweet where he made the claim, you don’t care. Donny said he won, so he won, right? Sounds familiar.

🤦‍♂️

So, how about this guy, unarmed, unthreatening, not running, in his own garage, complying with police, and shot dead? How did calmly complying work out for him? Not so good. Kind of makes your claims that “if black people would just comply with police they’ll be safe” look idiotic, doesn’t it?

Btw, they let him bleed out for 6 minutes with zero aid even though they knew within 1 minute there was no weapon. Officers on the scene were more concerned with calming the murdering officer who knew he had just murdered an unarmed innocent citizen than in giving lifesaving aid to his victim. That’s accomplice to murder, fire them all and prosecute to the fullest.....won’t happen, he just gets paid vacation.

He probably has a history of being late for things which worked out for him this time. Otherwise he probably would have been sitting in the car.

On the other hand, had the roof not fallen and he got to the 7-11 instead, he probably would have gotten the winning scratch off lottery ticket for 100 MILLLLLION dollars.

Yea it was cut and past. Epstein Dem or Rep doesn't matter.


If you were Epstein wouldn't you have cameras. Nothing like an insurance policy. Even if it did not work out for him.

But his side kick Maxwell has or know where it is.

That didn't work out very well in Star Trek V.

Subscribe to what you want, my birth lottery included trees and butterflies, I was raised in a forest in a glass house in a forest. (We had an atrium inside with a forest of trees growing through the roof, and the house was in the middle of a forest)

If I were born black, that person would be me, but I would be different. Besides, I was born a poor black child, sir. ;-)

If my starting line is 50 meters ahead of yours in a 100 yard dash through nothing but luck, that's pretty lucky for me.

I feel pretty successful having made little effort to get there, that's luck.

I don't feel shame because I'm not a normal American that thinks anything they want is something they deserve and need. Best lesson my dad ever taught me was know the difference between want and need and you'll be far happier in life. It's true.

I don't have too much, I have enough, but I still share with those who i feel don't. I've housed multiple friends for free, and even let one live in my yard for 7 years, which in retrospect was at least 5 years too many. My wife and I live comfortably on <$30000 a year. Most Americans can't live on that for one person. Newts do just fine, we take a vacation every year, pay our bills, and eat well.
Maybe that's why I'm so different. I was allowed to roam the wild woods and bayou alone at just over 3, to the point where the neighbors told my parents they were going to call the cops. This was in the middle of Houston, literally a wilderness of (or at least in) modern civilization. ;-)

I did go to school for 24 years (preschool -the ten year plan at Jr college) but never tried hard or practiced, to the point where my trig teacher insisted I was cheating because I didn't pay attention or do homework so she separated me for a big test, the class average dropped a full grade but not me, my neighbors were cheating off me. She left me alone after that. That might be preparations, but it wasn't hard work. It was boring busy work.

I did that, read encyclopedias and dictionaries. That was punishment at my school through 7th grade....but my grandmother read her set through twice for fun. My mother was called "the encyclopedia" in school, with good reason.

I definitely let opportunities pass often. Sometimes because I don't need them and others might, sometimes I'm just lazy and happy so see no need to expend effort, usually because I see opportunities as traps, the bait being some modest short term gain, the cage being large long term obligations. I'm always prepared for opportunities that are for me without preparation. I'm not Trumpian, I understand I have limitations, and don't tend to obligate myself beyond them.

Who said I waited. I've been lucky enough that I didn't have to wait for, nor do I expect luck. Through luck, forethought, and decent planning things have worked out well with minimal effort or sacrifice. I don't rely on luck to dig me out of holes, I tend to watch my step and not fall in them often. You might call that preparation, I call it paying attention. It's working so far.