The Random Thread: The Next Generation

Topic

Bananas. Diesel. Armadillos. The square root of 1,364.

Continue the randomness here….

Replies

I dunno, to me this whole “cancel culture” is just a trendier/nicer name for “mob rule”, which is always a bad idea.

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Jon wrote:

I dunno

Correct.

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lorcan_nagle

Jon wrote:

I dunno, to me this whole “cancel culture” is just a trendier/nicer name for “mob rule”, which is always a bad idea.

Well, it is hard to determine how “natural” some of the stories are or if, like a lot of entertainment journalism, they aren’t coming out because of any interest in the actual victims, but because someone wants to target some celebrities or politicians for interests entirely unrelated to justice. Certainly, the media wants these stories, but the stories have been there for decades with witnesses – actual victims in many cases – who came forward but were always ignored or even demeaned.

So, whenever someone loses a job over it, though they certainly deserved it in many cases, I’m always a little suspicious that it is being driven by someone else’s interest who’s not in the reports.

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Todd

Anonymous wrote:

but the stories have been there for decades with witnesses – actual victims in many cases – who came forward but were always ignored or even demeaned.

And that’s certainly a problem… and that should be fixed. But there’s a justice system and there are laws (flawed as they may be). If you commit a crime, you go to court.

The “cancel culture” I’m talking about is the twitter/social media mob “canceling” people left and right for whatever bullshit they say or post. Not really the same thing.

Yesterday I saw a guy drive his bike around a speedbump. That was the most Dutch thing I ever saw. Germans make fun of us over this stuff, I thought it wasn’t real…

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njerry, Todd

Jon wrote:

I dunno, to me this whole “cancel culture” is just a trendier/nicer name for “mob rule”, which is always a bad idea.

Is it the mob deciding though or some big tech CEOs? edit: well that may be another thing than what you’re talking about, I mean when someone is banned that is not the mob doing it, it is just a corporate decision.

 

Are youtube/twitter/facebook bans forever or can they be temporary?

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Anonymous wrote:

Are youtube/twitter/facebook bans forever or can they be temporary?

They have an estimated halflife of 5.352*10^23 years, but it’ll only take you five minutes at most to setup a new e-mail and twitter account.

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Todd

Anonymous wrote:

Are youtube/twitter/facebook bans forever or can they be temporary?

The default if you break their rules is normally a relatively short suspension. You’ll only tend to get banned permanently for repeated infractions or something very serious.

It’s pretty much impossible to get someone chucked off just because ‘the woke brigade’ are being sensitive or whatever.

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lorcan_nagle

Anonymous wrote:

Is it the mob deciding though or some big tech CEOs? edit: well that may be another thing than what you’re talking about, I mean when someone is banned that is not the mob doing it, it is just a corporate decision.

Oh yeah that’s also another thing, which springs out of the mob rule sometimes, though not always. Nah I’m literally just talking about when a certain group dogpiles on someone because they said X or Y, and when I say dogpile I mean REALLY go for it, which can result in people losing their jobs or getting harrassed in real life, etc… and yes, getting their account banned and that kind of stuff…

Split in two: magicians to celebrate 100 years of sawing people in half

Kind of surprising that what we might think of as a timeless magic trick has only been in circulation for a century.

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njerry, Christian, Todd

As If You Needed It, Further Proof That Houston Is So Much Bigger Than Most Cities

It’s… smaller… than Paris and London?

lorcan_nagle wrote:

It’s… smaller… than Paris and London?

Bigger. Based on the parameter used, it engulfs the main city and many nearby towns and cities.

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garjones

London spreads further east and west than the Houston outline though. It’s almost as big as the orange ring (the M25 motorway) which runs all the way round Greater London.

[lorcan_nagle]

I mean, this is the Greater London area, and the arterial links of the city stretch out even further than this. Heathrow airport is barely in the west-most border of the map

• This reply was modified 3 years, 11 months ago by lorcan_nagle.

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garjones

Todd wrote:

As If You Needed It, Further Proof That Houston Is So Much Bigger Than Most Cities

Pfft. Not even a tenth the size of Kiruna Municipality.

My girlfriend and I are taking French lessons and I’m doing my French homework. One of the questions requires me to translate “could you teach me to play guitar?” into French. There’s a perfectly good French verb meaning to teach, “enseigner,” but the answer uses “apprendre”, meaning “to learn.”

THIS IS WHY I HATE FRENCH!!

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Martin Smith, DavidM

I miss being a “happening kind of guy”…

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Todd

We all miss being young.

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Rocket, Todd

Steve Sensible wrote:

My girlfriend and I are taking French lessons and I’m doing my French homework. One of the questions requires me to translate “could you teach me to play guitar?” into French. There’s a perfectly good French verb meaning to teach, “enseigner,” but the answer uses “apprendre”, meaning “to learn.” THIS IS WHY I HATE FRENCH!!

This is what happens when a bunch of Guals are forced to try to speak Latin. Latin in itself is hard enough.

 

 

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Todd

Al-x wrote:

I miss being a “happening kind of guy”…

When this corona thing is over, I’ll be happening all over the place, I can tell you that.

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njerry, Todd

Christian wrote:

Al-x wrote:

I miss being a “happening kind of guy”…

When this corona thing is over, I’ll be happening all over the place, I can tell you that.

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Christian, Todd

It’s a good time to be investing in condom manufacturers, I guess.

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Todd

65% of the world’s condoms are made in Malaysia so they may have a good year coming. A similar proportion counts for rubber gloves and they made a fortune last year.

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Todd

I was watching The Crown with the wife yesterday and really liked a bit they added in.

It’s been a long running thing on the Kermode and Mayo film show that the Queen Mother used to sign off her letters with ‘tinkerty tonk and down with the Nazis’. Which it has to be said is a spectacular sign-off, much better than ‘kind regards’ or whatever. For years people emailing the show have signed off with it.

So it was great when they had her say it one scene.

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Christian, DavidM, njerry

Martin Smith wrote:

It’s a good time to be investing in condom manufacturers, I guess.

Are you kidding? We can’t even get people to wear masks on their FACE!

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Rocket, Sean Robinson, Todd, Al-x

Why are flies so hard to swat?

A fly buzzes past your head and lands nearby; you snatch a flyswatter or roll up a magazine and approach cautiously — and you strike!

But no matter how quick you are, the fly is almost always faster, and it usually manages to evade your wallop and escape unharmed. (Is it trying to annoy you?!)

Flies have many adaptations that lend them heightened speed, maneuverability and perception, making them very, very good at detecting and evading even the swiftest swats. And new evidence shows that flies’ modified hind wings play an important part in launching them into a speedy takeoff — often just in the nick of time.

House flies (Musca domestica) belong to the order Diptera, or true flies. Diptera flies possess modified hind wings that have evolved into tiny, sticklike structures with a knob at the end, called halteres. Their vibrations help the insects stabilize their bodies while in flight, by sensing body rotations and transmitting information to the wings.

Flies in the Diptera subgroup Calyptratae, which includes house flies, also vibrate their halteres while walking, but scientists didn’t know why. In a study published online Jan. 13, 2021 in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, researchers investigated Calyptratae flies to see if haltere oscillation affected their transition into the air, directing additional sensory input to help coordinate movements in the wing and leg muscles.

Using high-speed cameras to capture tethered and free laboratory-reared flies during takeoff, the scientists recorded footage at speeds up to 3,000 frames per second. They found that Calyptratae flies launched themselves around five times faster than other flies; their takeoffs required an average of about 0.007 seconds (7 milliseconds) and just one wingbeat.

“None of the Calyptratae had a takeoff duration longer than 14 milliseconds [0.014 seconds],” the researchers reported. By comparison, non-Calyptratae flies’ takeoffs lasted about 0.039 seconds (39 milliseconds) and required about four wingbeats, according to the study.

Next, the researchers anesthetized the flies and removed the halteres, which all Diptera flies have. Calyptratae flies lacking these knobby structures took a lot longer to become airborne, but takeoff time wasn’t affected in non-Calyptratae flies without halteres. Stability during takeoff also suffered with haltere removal, but only in Calyptratae flies.

For example, the Calyptratae insects known as blow flies that attempted escape takeoffs without their halteres “always resulted in a crash landing,” the scientists reported.

“This indicates that for Calyptratae flies, haltere input is necessary for fast and stable takeoffs,” said lead study author Alexandra Yarger, a postdoctoral researcher at Imperial College London. Yarger performed the fly research with the Fox Lab in the Biology Department at Case Western University, in Cleveland, Ohio.

Being able to escape predation is a big plus for an animal, and Calyptratae flies are extremely successful; with approximately 18,000 described species, they comprise about 12% of Diptera diversity, Yarger told Live Science in an email.

“When performing an escape takeoff there will always be a tradeoff between speed and stability, but the Calyptratae seem to have found a way to negate some of the loss in stability through the use of their halteres,” Yarger said. “The halteres allows Calyptratae to perform faster and more stable escapes than many other fly species.”

In the blink of an eye
Halteres aren’t the only secret weapon in a fly’s evasive arsenal; once a fly is airborne, it can execute maneuvers that would be the envy of a fighter jet pilot. Fruit flies can change course in under 1/100th of a second — about 50 times faster than an eye can blink, Live Science previously reported. In experiments, perfectly timed wing flaps generated enough force to rapidly propel the flies away from a predator while in mid-air.

“These flies roll up to 90 degrees — some are almost upside down — to maximize their force, and escape,” Florian Muijres, who studied the biomechanics of flight at the University of Washington in Seattle, and is now at Wageningen University & Research in the Netherlands, told Live Science in 2014.

Flies also have exceptional vision, which helps them plan their jumps away from a threat. About 200 milliseconds before takeoff, fruit flies use visual input warning of looming danger to adjust their posture and pinpoint the direction that will launch them to safety, scientists wrote in 2008 in the journal Current Biology.

In fact, their enhanced perception juggles up to six times more visual input in one second than humans can, the BBC reported in 2017.

Animal brains perceive the passage of time by processing images at speeds known as the “flicker fusion rate,” a term describing how many images flash into their brains per second. Roger Hardie, a professor emeritus of cellular neuroscience at the University of Cambridge in England, implanted electrodes into the photoreceptors of flies’ eyes to measure their flicker fusion rate, calculating it to be 400 times per second; the average flicker fusion rate for humans is about 60, according to the BBC. This means that movement you perceive as “normal” moves like slow-motion to a fly.

With all these built-in advantages, it’s no wonder that the fly you’re trying to swat can escape. However, one approach that might improve your chances is aiming your swat at a spot where the fly is likely to go, rather than where it’s resting, Michael Dickinson of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena told The Independent in 2011.

“It is best not to swat the fly’s starting position,” Dickinson said. “Aim a bit forward of that to anticipate where the fly is going to jump.”

Then again, you could also just leave the fly alone, Yarger added. “They have just as much right to survival as any other animal,” she said.

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Al-x, DavidM

garjones wrote:

tinkerty tonk and down with the Nazis

Feels like a woke version of In The Night Garden.

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Bruce, garjones

Mental health/well being

I hear some say that when “things” settle down, they will feel better.

To me, that is putting your feelings in a place where you have no control.

I say that if COVID, too much bad news on TV, and constant political talk on social media is getting you depressed, take a hiatus from it and focus/meditate on something else.

Don’t kid yourself. “Things” won’t ever get “back to normal” whatever that means as it varies from person to person. Have to adapt and adjust.

I post all this because of what I hear, my last post, and my resolution of meditating more.

Any thoughts, comments?

Al-x wrote:

I hear some say that when “things” settle down, they will feel better.

“you keep waiting for the dust to settle and then you realize this is it; the dust is your life going on”

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Rocket, lorcan_nagle, DavidM

garjones wrote:

It’s been a long running thing on the Kermode and Mayo film show that the Queen Mother used to sign off her letters with ‘tinkerty tonk and down with the Nazis’. Which it has to be said is a spectacular sign-off, much better than ‘kind regards’ or whatever. For years people emailing the show have signed off with it.

That really is spectacular. And apparently, it was even “tinkerty tonk old fruit” in at least one case, which is even better.

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Dave, garjones

Yeah you can’t really improve on ‘tinkerty tonk old fruit and down the the Nazis’ as a credo for life.

I’m a republican at heart and there are a few very dodgy elements about Elizabeth Bowes-Lyons and family that aren’t skipped in the show but the high regard in which she was held was a lot down to her too. The primary one being that during the Blitz she was asked repeatedly to evacuate to Balmoral or some other remote retreat but stayed in London and regularly visited the bombed sites and never forgave her brother in law for being a Nazi sympathiser.

So even though she spent most of the following 50 years pissed on gin and watching horse racing the general reaction was ‘fair enough’. 😂

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Christian, Todd

Al-x wrote:

Mental health/well being

I hear some say that when “things” settle down, they will feel better.

To me, that is putting your feelings in a place where you have no control.

I say that if COVID, too much bad news on TV, and constant political talk on social media is getting you depressed, take a hiatus from it and focus/meditate on something else.

Don’t kid yourself. “Things” won’t ever get “back to normal” whatever that means as it varies from person to person. Have to adapt and adjust.

I post all this because of what I hear, my last post, and my resolution of meditating more.

Any thoughts, comments?

13 Ways To Find Peace Of Mind In These Bleak Times

How much data per month do you guys use on your smartphone? I think I’m about to buy one for the first time and I have no idea how much I need. I am not interested in watching videos or playing games on my phone.

At the moment, virtually nothing as I’m always close to a WiFi connection.

But in normal times – when I use my phone for casual browsing outside of home, not for music or video or anything like that – I still get through a good few GB a month.

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Nobody:

Me explaining my crackhead Disney theories at 4am on discord pic.twitter.com/uildCE2faX

— Nickeem (@nickeemVO) January 13, 2021

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Martin Smith, Todd

Dave wrote:

At the moment, virtually nothing as I’m always close to a WiFi connection.

Same here. I would be a bad measure for you anyway because I watch a lot of videos. In the before-times, it was maybe 5-8 gigabytes per month.

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Yeah, I think slimmest contracts still have about 3GB inclusive, which should do fine for you, Arjan. If the choice is between 1GB and 3 GB or something, I’d probably go for the latter these days even if you’re not planning on using it a lot for internet stuff. But you probably don’t need more than that, then.

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Todd, Sean Robinson, garjones

Anonymous wrote:

How much data per month do you guys use on your smartphone? I think I’m about to buy one for the first time and I have no idea how much I need. I am not interested in watching videos or playing games on my phone.

If you aren’t watching video then you don’t need that much, that’s the real data eater. I’d agree with Christian a 3gb plan should be fine.

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Anonymous wrote:

Steve Sensible wrote:

My girlfriend and I are taking French lessons and I’m doing my French homework. One of the questions requires me to translate “could you teach me to play guitar?” into French. There’s a perfectly good French verb meaning to teach, “enseigner,” but the answer uses “apprendre”, meaning “to learn.” THIS IS WHY I HATE FRENCH!!

This is what happens when a bunch of Guals are forced to try to speak Latin. Latin in itself is hard enough.

 

 

But the Romans in Judea spoke Greek, and used it as the administrative language, so it makes total sense that Brian wouldn’t know good Latin, but it also doesn’t make sense he would graffiti in Latin, not Greek. He should have mistakenly written “ΡΟΜΑΝΟΙ ΥΠΑΓΟΥΣΙ ΟΙΚΟΣ” (Romanoi hypagousi oikos) and been corrected to ΟΙ ΡΟΜΑΝΟΙ ΥΠΑΓΟΥ ΕΙΣ ΤΟ ΟΙΚΟ (Hoi Romanoi hypagou eis to oiko)

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One weird thing in Malaysia is there’s no real market in second hand stuff. There’s no charity shops, I went to a car boot sale but it was really a craft fair and small traders selling new goods. Ebay exists with a local site but it’s pretty unused.

So I saw a new app/web service called Mudah was catching on as a second hand sales platform. Out of curiosity I took a look to see if someone had old games consoles going cheap. They really don’t get it with the pricing. A guy was selling a used PS4 with no games for RM150 more than I could buy a new one with a warranty, all the way through stuff is priced almost as new. Very strange.

 

garjones wrote:

Mudah

That’s Japanese for “Useless”

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Todd

garjones wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

How much data per month do you guys use on your smartphone? I think I’m about to buy one for the first time and I have no idea how much I need. I am not interested in watching videos or playing games on my phone.

If you aren’t watching video then you don’t need that much, that’s the real data eater. I’d agree with Christian a 3gb plan should be fine.

I think I am going for a 3 gb or 5 gb plan

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Todd

Anonymous wrote:

garjones wrote:

Mudah

That’s Japanese for “Useless”

And the battle cry of Dio Brando/DIO, the main antagonist of the 1st and 3rd parts of the Manga/Anime JJBA, and of the protagonist of the 5th part, who is the son of DIO’s head  fused with the body of the protagonist of the 1st part.

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Todd

Anonymous wrote:

That’s Japanese for “Useless”

Then in my opinion it’s very aptly named.

(In truth in Malay it translates as easy/convenient).

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njerry

Aimless channel surfing with the remote
Aimless mouse clicking from site to site
Aimless scrolling on the phone on social media
Even coning back here every 10-15 minutes to see what’s up

I am not a psychologist, but what is it? An addiction? Boredom? A mind that is racing and wanting to be busy with information? A bad habit? d all of the above?

Al-x wrote:

Aimless channel surfing with the remote
Aimless mouse clicking from site to site
Aimless scrolling on the phone on social media
Even coning back here every 10-15 minutes to see what’s up

I am not a psychologist, but what is it? An addiction? Boredom? A mind that is racing and wanting to be busy with information? A bad habit? d all of the above?

I think a lot of people are going through it at the moment. I think it’s a combination of things. The news is very compelling at the moment but whether it’s politics or covid a lot of it is quite negative and depressing. At the same time a lot of us are stuck indoors with fewer outlets and distractions than normal, and turning to online chat and news for something to do.

It’s all creating a bit of an unhealthy cycle that’s making us unhappy but also making it harder to look away. I’m finding I often have to consciously put my phone down and make a pointed effort to spend my time doing something different at the moment.

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Rocket, DavidM, Todd, Al-x

Al-x wrote:

Aimless channel surfing with the remote
Aimless mouse clicking from site to site
Aimless scrolling on the phone on social media
Even coning back here every 10-15 minutes to see what’s up

I am not a psychologist, but what is it? An addiction? Boredom? A mind that is racing and wanting to be busy with information? A bad habit? d all of the above?

Clicks and likes etc are a dopamine hit, the brain starts craving it. A bit like snacking.

 

You can try to divert that process by replacing it with other things that you think are more productive. Maybe read a book, get a hobby, learn a skill, go jogging

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Rocket

Like many people, I spend most of my workday on the computer; as a result, I try not to spend too much personal time on-line. I typically visit The Carrier three times a day, Facebook twice a day, and Instagram once a day. I don’t have any other social media accounts.

I think I just saw two chinook choppers fly pretty low over my house…ominous. It made a hell of a noise.

THE DUTCH ARE INVADING BELGIUM!

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Todd

Please let’s not discuss such silly things as “Belgium”. From now on it’s the Southern Netherlands.

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Christian, DavidM, Todd

Anonymous wrote:

THE DUTCH ARE INVADING BELGIUM!

Fucking Bruges.

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Rocket

Anonymous wrote:

Please let’s not discuss such silly things as “Belgium”. From now on it’s the Southern Netherlands.

The Nether lands of the Netherlands.

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Todd

Todd wrote:

Fucking Bruges.

Hey! It’s like a fucking fairy tale!

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Christian, Todd

If/when I run out of women for my avatars, I will move on to other aspects of popular culture.

I covered the Twilight Zone a long time ago, Star Trek and Star Wars are too general. Oh well, when the bridge comes, I will cross it.

Good news Al, it’ll be a while before you need to bite the bullet and chose another theme…

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Martin Smith, DavidM, garjones, Todd, Dave, Rocket

He meant “hot” women… so slash that by at least a half… =P

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Al-x

The return of Bruce’s T-rex avatar made me smile this morning.

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Rocket, Todd, Dave, Bruce, garjones

Conspiracy theory that actually has some legs to stand on:

Coca-Cola claims that only two people, who work for them, know the recipe. But, in the American/Canadian and Israeli markets it is certified kosher, and in some Muslim-majority countries it has halal certification. Does this imply that Coke is lying and that really a Rabbi, an Imam, and two Coke execs make the total of people who know the recipe four, not two? The Rabbi cannot be an exec, as we know that the certification is done by paying a third party religious organization (The OU) to oversee the process; this is how Kosher certification works; even companies owned by Kosher-keeping Jews pay an independent Rabbi. Furthermore, there would need to be five (Two execs, two Rabbis and an Imam), as  the Rabbi who certifies for the Israeli market is a different representative of The OU then the American-Canadian market. This is all backed up by the fact that I found an Israeli website that writes of Rabbi Landau, the one in charge of the Israel market certification (translated from Hebrew by myself):

“Rabbi Landau certifies Coca-Cola as Kosher here in Israel, and it is said that he is one of the few who know the ‘secret’ of the ingredients of Coca-Cola……”

Anonymous wrote:

Conspiracy theory that actually has some legs to stand on:

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Rocket, Martin Smith, Dave

Anonymous wrote:

a Rabbi, an Imam, and two Coke execs

This sounds like the setup for a joke.

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Sean Robinson, Rocket, Todd, garjones, Martin Smith

Anonymous wrote:

Does this imply that Coke is lying

They are lying, I think KFC makes similar claims, which are also bunk. It’s just a marketing thing.

There’s not just the kosher/halal certification which by the way for halal certs is unique to each country, so you wouldn’t need two imams but potentially dozens. Coke also contract out to 3rd parties – in South East Asia for years it was made by Fraser and Nieves in Singapore, not by Coke. There also isn’t one recipe, we know for various economic reasons they use corn syrup to sweeten in north America and sugar in most of the rest of the world. They also have to declare their ingredients to various authorities for health and safety reasons so we know the ingredients but not necessarily how they are mixed. However everyone working to make Coke in factories must know how much they order and chuck in the machines to make it and the sheer volumes pumped out daily make it impossible for 2 people to oversee that in 200 countries.

garjones wrote:

There also isn’t one recipe, we know for various economic reasons they use corn syrup to sweeten in north America and sugar in most of the rest of the world.

Isn’t there a whole thing in the US about Mexican coke being valued because it’s made with sugar as opposed to corn syrup?

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Rocket, Todd

lorcan_nagle wrote:

Isn’t there a whole thing in the US about Mexican coke being valued because it’s made with sugar as opposed to corn syrup?

I think Al-x is the expert there, if I remember correctly he got some of the Mexican stuff shipped in.

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Todd, Dave

Anonymous wrote:

Conspiracy theory that actually has some legs to stand on:

Coca-Cola claims that only two people, who work for them, know the recipe. But, in the American/Canadian and Israeli markets it is certified kosher, and in some Muslim-majority countries it has halal certification. Does this imply that Coke is lying and that really a Rabbi, an Imam, and two Coke execs make the total of people who know the recipe four, not two? The Rabbi cannot be an exec, as we know that the certification is done by paying a third party religious organization (The OU) to oversee the process; this is how Kosher certification works; even companies owned by Kosher-keeping Jews pay an independent Rabbi. Furthermore, there would need to be five (Two execs, two Rabbis and an Imam), as  the Rabbi who certifies for the Israeli market is a different representative of The OU then the American-Canadian market. This is all backed up by the fact that I found an Israeli website that writes of Rabbi Landau, the one in charge of the Israel market certification (translated from Hebrew by myself):

“Rabbi Landau certifies Coca-Cola as Kosher here in Israel, and it is said that he is one of the few who know the ‘secret’ of the ingredients of Coca-Cola……”

The recipe and the ingredients are not the same thing. Telling someone what’s in it to get a certification doesn’t mean the person listening knows the recipe.

Like it’s a fuckin secret… it’s just carbonated water, an obscene amount of sugar and colorants. Also, I’m not sure if there’s just one recipe but that shit tastes differently whether it’s in a can, a platic bottle or a glass bottle. Also, I mostly drink glass bottled coke (when I do, which isn’t very frequently), ’cause that’s the best, specially if super cold.

garjones wrote:

lorcan_nagle wrote:

Isn’t there a whole thing in the US about Mexican coke being valued because it’s made with sugar as opposed to corn syrup?

I think Al-x is the expert there, if I remember correctly he got some of the Mexican stuff shipped in.

I think the shipment he received was cocaine, not Coca Cola.

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Christian, DavidM

Close enough.

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Todd

NASA: Send your name to Mars

Todd wrote:

NASA: Send your name to Mars

Why, is the rover lonely?

So in a strange twist a bloke I know has been arrested for storming the Capitol. He was stationed in Penang for a while (working in oil and gas) and he was friends with people I know. I even remember talking to him at a friend’s housewarming party and he said he was voting for Trump and I told him that was crazy. He didn’t seem that gung-ho about it at the time and the conversation wasn’t heated at all but his son, who shopped him to the FBI, has said he got more radicalised in the last year or two.

Capitol Invader Threatened to Shoot His Kids if They Turned Him In: Feds

 

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Christian, lorcan_nagle, njerry, Rocket

lorcan_nagle wrote:

Isn’t there a whole thing in the US about Mexican coke being valued because it’s made with sugar as opposed to corn syrup?

Yes. They switched to corn syrup in 1979 because the price of sugar was going up.

The Mexican Coke is being sold in the US at a small premium.

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Bruce, lorcan_nagle

Todd wrote:

I think the shipment he received was cocaine, not Coca Cola.

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Todd

Al-x wrote:

lorcan_nagle wrote:

Isn’t there a whole thing in the US about Mexican coke being valued because it’s made with sugar as opposed to corn syrup?

Yes. They switched to corn syrup in 1979 because the price of sugar was going up.

The Mexican Coke is being sold in the US at a small premium.

Also, around Passover, Coca-Cola makes a run of Coke with sugar, so it’s Kosher for Passover.

I have a mushroom farm in my cellar right now.

Well, I say farm. It’s just one box, with the mushroom culture inside. It’s a thing like this one:

The mushrooms are now at the point where they’re breaking out of the box. It’s awesome, it looks like a fucking Cronenberg sequence from your nightmares. I’ll see if I can post a pic later.

(No, these mushrooms are not in the least magic, unfortunately. Just culinary.)

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Todd, DavidM

Martin Smith wrote:

Todd wrote:

NASA: Send your name to Mars

Why, is the rover lonely?

Yes.

Christian wrote:

The mushrooms are now at the point where they’re breaking out of the box. It’s awesome, it looks like a fucking Cronenberg sequence from your nightmares.

yes it is. thank you. I always like to see my nightmares when I am awake

The pink color makes me think they used a wine box to cultivate the mushroom.

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Christian, Todd

garjones wrote:

He didn’t seem that gung-ho about it at the time and the conversation wasn’t heated at all but his son, who shopped him to the FBI, has said he got more radicalised in the last year or two.

To play off Rick James’s thoughts on Cocaine: Trumpism is a helluva drug.

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Todd, JRCarter

Rocket wrote:

yes it is. thank you. I always like to see my nightmares when I am awake

Ah, that’s nothing compared to the state mine are in right now. They look like a flock of mutant penises.

BEHOLD THE GLORY:

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Rocket, DavidM, Todd

Christian wrote:

Rocket wrote:

yes it is. thank you. I always like to see my nightmares when I am awake

Ah, that’s nothing compared to the state mine are in right now. They look like a flock of mutant penises.

BEHOLD THE GLORY:

It looks like Cthulhu’s brain.

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Christian

Todd wrote:

As If You Needed It, Further Proof That Houston Is So Much Bigger Than Most Cities

With cities in Europe it is always the question how big they actually are. The municipality is often much smaller than the urban area or the metropolitan area. The municipality of Paris is pretty small with 2 million people but the metro area is over 10 million I think.

 

In the Netherlands we have the Randstad which includes Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Den Haag and Utrecht, but if you would call it one city people would call you crazy. There was a proposal to turn it into one city called New Amsterdam a while ago, and everybody mocked it. The city I live in is in a greener area in the middle of the Randstad called “the green heart”.

Anonymous wrote:

In the Netherlands we have the Randstad which includes Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Den Haag and Utrecht, but if you would call it one city people would call you crazy. There was a proposal to turn it into one city called New Amsterdam a while ago

That’s basically what happens in William Gibson’s Sprawl novels – the Sprawl is the Boston-Atlanta Metropolitan Axis, and basically the cities on a line between the two of them – New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, DC and Charlotte all sorta merged into one gigantic urban zone

It just isn’t one city, apart from Rotterdammers or Hagenezen rather killing themselves than being called an Amsterdammer, I don’t think it can be claimed in any way to be one city. If you take the train from Rotterdam to Amsterdam you pass through different cities, Den Haag, Leiden, then Schiphol Airport, and then Amsterdam, that all have green zones and lakes separating them. From Amsterdam to Utrecht you pass through maybe 20 kilometers with just farms here and there.

 

“Randstad” is not a bad name, but it isn’t really a city. “Rand” means edge, because the cities look like they’re on the edge of a circle.

All of your cities are puny compared to mine…

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Rocket, DavidM, Christian, garjones, Todd

Jon wrote:

All of your cities are puny compared to mine…

I’m now moving to Tokyo just to win an internet argument. 🤣

It is true that city sizes are incredibly undefined, which is why you rarely see two population numbers that are the same. Googling Mexico City I get any number between 8.8m and 22m (I believe the latter number is the more realistic one).  It looks like the Houston guy has just looked at the names on the map which are even more arbitrary than that. Under every definition Brixton is part of London and there’s no clear reason why it would appear there over a dozen other London districts, it’s 8 minutes by cab away from Big Ben.

There’s a lot of actual ‘sprawl ‘in reality. Even outside the M25 ringroad in London I have friends who have commuted in daily to central London from Bracknell to the west and Southend to the east. Average commute time in the US is 26 minutes, the intercity train from Reading to London takes 23 minutes.  Even in smaller places there’s no rural divide between my home town and the next town across and the city next to that, it’s all one urban area split into 3 by history and tradition.

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Rocket

Well, the thing with Mexico city is that, legally speaking it’s kinda like DC in that it’s got its own jurisdiction, government and stuff… so the “legal” limits are small(ish, actually not that small, but there’s like a large chunk to the south that’s not inhabited ’cause it’s volcanoes and stuff) and the official population of 8-9 million people is for that part of it… the problem is that the city has extended wildly outwards which is where the 22-23 million number comes in, but technically those extra howevermany are part of the “State of Mexico” and not “Mexico City” even though it’s literally part of the same geographic mastodon that is the overall Mexico city.

It’s kinda funny because in most directions, you only need to cross a street and you’re in a different legal jurisdiction, so it can mean that if you can’t buy alcohol for whatever reason after 11pm (on a specific holiday, for example) in one side street, you can literally cross the street and buy from them because they have different laws and regulations =P

So anyways, the point is that Mexico City proper (which until a couple of years ago was actually called Federal District here in Mexico) is probably smaller than other cities, but when you take into account the wider interconnected zone, yeah, it’s probably one of the top 5.

lorcan_nagle wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

In the Netherlands we have the Randstad which includes Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Den Haag and Utrecht, but if you would call it one city people would call you crazy. There was a proposal to turn it into one city called New Amsterdam a while ago

That’s basically what happens in William Gibson’s Sprawl novels – the Sprawl is the Boston-Atlanta Metropolitan Axis, and basically the cities on a line between the two of them – New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, DC and Charlotte all sorta merged into one gigantic urban zone

*cough*Mega City One*cough*

DavidM wrote:

lorcan_nagle wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

In the Netherlands we have the Randstad which includes Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Den Haag and Utrecht, but if you would call it one city people would call you crazy. There was a proposal to turn it into one city called New Amsterdam a while ago

That’s basically what happens in William Gibson’s Sprawl novels – the Sprawl is the Boston-Atlanta Metropolitan Axis, and basically the cities on a line between the two of them – New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, DC and Charlotte all sorta merged into one gigantic urban zone

*cough*Mega City One*cough*

Mega-City One is similar in that it’s a massive urban sprawl, but different in every other way – For one thing it’s New York but massive, and came about because of the devastation of World War III. the Sprawl is just massive urban growth. The cities in it are still separate jurisdictions.

I understand the desire to point out how some stuff in the 70s is similar to better things that came later, but when you don’t know about the later things it just looks sad.

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Rocket, DavidM

Jon wrote:

All of your cities are puny compared to mine…

Kiruna is more than thirteen times bigger than Mexico City.

Anonymous wrote:

one city called New Amsterdam a while ago,

Even old New York

Was once New Amsterdam

Why they changed it, I can’t say

People must’ve liked it better that way

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Rocket, Dave

Jon wrote:

All of your cities are puny compared to mine…

Size doesn’t matter, Jon.

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Todd

Anonymous wrote:

Jon wrote:

All of your cities are puny compared to mine…

Size doesn’t matter, Jon.

Oh it does… but not in the way you’re thinking… I wish Mexico wasn’t that goddamned big… it wasn’t a brag, trust me.

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DavidM, Todd

Mr Green: It didn’t work
Mr Blue: How much did you drink?

Mr Green: All of it.

Mr Blue: Then it’s time to meet

Mr Green: Not sober

Mr Blue: Living with hangover not safe.

Mr Blue: Stop chasing dragons

Mr Blue: Send me a dick pic

Mr Blue: Can’t help you if you won’t let me.

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Todd

You know…

I would like to return to the Relationship thread, but I have nothing new to add.

It’s no longer happening.

You could always return to one of your old talking points! Unheard of!

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Todd

I’ll pass on that…

I have run out of talking points just like I’ve run out of young women for my avatar.

I need to replenish.

Well, you know Al, there’s always the Prometheus Hail Mary, if you’re desperate =P

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Todd

Jon wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Jon wrote:

All of your cities are puny compared to mine…

Size doesn’t matter, Jon.

Oh it does… but not in the way you’re thinking… I wish Mexico wasn’t that goddamned big… it wasn’t a brag, trust me.

Take a joke, dude.

I thought I did…