Rov_Scam
2hr ago
Haha, I have a friend who I found out had a boat when he was younger. I knew him for years before another friend (who had known him since college) mentioned this in our presence. When I said something like "I didn't know you used to have a boat", his response was "It's a part of my life I don't like to talk about".
Rov_Scam
2hr ago
If you really want to complete the look, and are bald, you should get a toupee to go along with the car and attach it insecurely enough that it moves around/has visible seams/blows off when driving with the top down. You also shouldn't drive the car faster than 40 mph under any circumstances.
Rov_Scam
4hr ago
I go one better and try to take a DLSR and tripod with me if it's feasible, and even if I'm stuck using my phone I try to at least take a good picture and not just snap away. With the DSLR, especially, I find that it actually enhances the experience because when you're trying to take a good photo, i.e. something that you might want to get a print of and frame for the wall of your office or living room, you spend a lot more time looking than you otherwise might. If you're at an overlook a small building you wouldn't have otherwise noticed may either become a distraction that needs to be kept out of the shot or the focal point of the whole composition, depending on the situation. Lines, topography, geometric shapes, framing, color, points of interest, etc. And then I get to go into Photoshop and coax the image that I saw out of the raw data dump, and try to capture its emotional impact.
The end result of this process is that I might get 2 or 3 images that are frame-worthy, if I'm lucky, as well a as a few that just don't work at all. The upshot is that a standard vacation album still ends up being a lot better than the one from the guy with the phone who just snaps everything he sees without thought, allows the JPEG algorithm in the phone to make all the processing decisions, and ends up with a whole bunch of pictures that all look the same.
Rov_Scam
1d ago
Now that Tomlin has gone the current fringe rumor is that he stepped down to avoid a media circus cause by him impregnating a 30-year-old white bartender. You can tell it's obvious bullshit because there's a discrepancy; sometimes the bar is on the North Side, and sometimes she's from New Castle. It's not clear if he had to step down because she was about to start showing, or if the baby was born in December. The biggest tell is that the rumor first surfaced back in July, then again after the loss to the Bills, and is resurfacing again now that he's stepped down. For some reason these rumors only circulate when the team is losing, as if the coach is incapable of infidelity when the team is winning.
Rov_Scam
2d ago
I don't think rented mobs and planted newspaper articles would have prevented the Islamic Revolution. People seem to forget that the Shah still controlled the police and military in 1953, and the issue was that he didn't feel like he had the popular support to use them to take out Mossadeh. In 1979 he was deposed despite having that power tenfold and not being afraid to use it. Propaganda making the Ayatollah look bad wasn't going to stop that tidal wave.
Rov_Scam
2d ago
How many protestors do you thin there are? I can't find good estimates on numbers, other than "millions" on the high end. So let's assume for the sake of argument that somewhere between 5 and 6 million people have been involved in the protests in some fashion. That's about the equivalent of the number of protestors who turned out for the George Floyd protests, proportionally speaking. The Floyd protests were different in that they weren't calling for the government to be deposed, but other than that they were similarly based on generalized grievances and weren't organized and coordinated on a nation-wide level. If the Floyd protestors had called for a new government, do you think that airstrikes by a capable nation would have made that happen without invasion? If protestors are getting shot at in Washington DC I don't know that bombing the Navy Yard is going to do much to help them. And that's one of the few places where there's a major military base in a large city; here in Pittsburgh the closest you'd get is the 911th Air Refueling Wing, the bombing of which would be beyond useless. And it's not like you can take out military positions, either, because those enforcing the current regime's laws are out amoung the populace, not concentrated on battle lines. My point is that bombing is a good way to take out strategic military targets, but you're suggesting that it can be used to essentially take out law enforcement, which I've never seen happen.
Rov_Scam
4d ago
There are protests, not a mass uprising in the sense that there is a rival faction ready to take power. The situation in 2011 was markedly better than the current situation in Iran, as large parts of the country were already under rebel control, and foreign countries, the US included, had already recognized a different government. That's the only instance I can think of where we did "regime change by bombing only", and I haven't heard too many people describe that campaign as something we should try to replicate.
Rov_Scam
4d ago
Bombing and regime change aren't the same thing. They could have bombed Iran into a parking lot but it would have done nothing to change who was in power unless they were able to actually occupy Tehran and take control of government. That's a tall order considering the size and remoteness of the country and Tehran's location within it. Not that it couldn't be done, or even be done easily, it just wouldn't be same quick in and out operation and would almost certainly involve taking significant casualties.
Rov_Scam
5d ago
This kind of theorizing is based on nothing more than conjecture, though. First, you're describing a single incident of the three. Second, if it had happened in Austin we would have talked about how the woman exhibited a typical Texan brashness in a city that's known for being a liberal enclave in a stereotypically conservative state.
Rov_Scam
6d ago
My whole life I had problems with cold hands until about a dozen years ago when I switched to mittens. After that it's been a complete non-issue, even when skiing in -10 F. For boots, just make sure they're reasonably waterproof and not too tight. There's a temptation to load up on socks for extra insulation but this just makes matters worse; the lack of circulation is what kills you. In ski boots I don't really have that option so I just have to live with cold toes and the pain of the circulation returning when I take them off, but getting more comfortable ones would cost money and performance, so I just use boot warmers and deal with the tradeoff. To illustrate how big of a deal having extra space is, last year I went skiing and after several hours outside my feet were freezing. We were tailgating in the parking lot at the end of the day and I changed in to the tennis shoes I drove up in, thin mesh ones that I was sure in the ~20 F weather would let the wind in and make my feet even colder. But once I was moving around in them my feet actually warmed up significantly, at least after the pain of the blood returning had subsided. Now, I'm sure that if I had been out there longer than an hour or so they would have gotten cold, so insulation is still important, but don't make the mistake of loading up on insulation at the expense of breathing room. I'd prioritize the latter over the former if you have to make a choice. Also, modern toe warmers last about 6 hours and aren't expensive.
Rov_Scam
6d ago
I think people below are reading too much into this. It's just a coincidence. If the same thing happened in any other city there would be similar explanations.
Rov_Scam
6d ago
I was specifically referring to the book club episode where he tried to get out of reading Breakfast at Tiffany's by watching the movie.
Rov_Scam
6d ago
Um, did you read the case? He was charged with murder, and the District Court dismissed on immunity grounds, and the 9th Circuit, in the opinion you linked, reversed the District Court and allowed the case to proceed. Subsequent to this the en banc 9th Circuit upheld the decision. Horiuchi ultimately wasn't prosecuted, but that's because the successor to the original prosecutor dropped the charges. All of this is irrelevant anyway since Minnesota isn't in the 9th Circuit. There may be other caselaw out there but I haven't seen anything to suggest that a state prosecution would be precluded entirely.
Rov_Scam
7d ago
The last I checked the criminal laws police officers conducting law enforcement operations didn't get any special privileges regarding standards when lethal force is justified, but even assuming they did:
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This lady actually hit me. Not hard enough for it to matter, but she did make contact; there are nor arguments about whether if you look at which way the wheel was pointing you can divine if she was trying to steer towards me or go around or had the car in reverse or whatever.
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She hit me again after I yelled at her for hitting me and putting a kid in danger.
Rov_Scam
7d ago
About ten or twelve years ago I was walking down the street and an older woman pulling out of a bank drive-thru bumped me with her car. Then she bumped me again after I banged on the hood and started yelling. I had a 4-year-old kid walking with me at the time, too. It's good to know I could have shot her in the face three times if I had been strapped.
Rov_Scam
11d ago
I get the impression that nothing is going to change since all of the concessions Trump wants apparently have to do with oil. And he's supposedly told the oil companies that if they want their assets back they will have to commit to billions of dollars in additional investment. That's going to be a tough sell, especially since the political situation hasn't changed much in terms of stability. Venezuelan oil is expensive to drill and doesn't sell for much, and with prices low, that kind of investment doesn't make sense. Even if the oil companies want to appease Trump, the banks and insurance companies also have to be on board, and I don't see it happening. Maduro was a bogeyman but he didn't really do much (and he was supposedly offering oil concessions anyway), so it's hard for me to see what taking him out accomplishes. As I said earlier, I don't think this is going to have much salience two months from now.
Rov_Scam
12d ago
I'm guessing that this is one of the endless parade of things that seems like a big deal now that everyone will forget about two months from now. Maduro is out of power, sure. But he wasn't some kind of svengali whose personal leadership was necessary for the Bolivarian regime's survival. If that was anyone, it was Hugo Chavez, and when Chavez died it didn't exactly lead to a sea change in Venezuelan politics. So it will be with Maduro; as Mike Tomlin says, next man up. No different than if some foreign power succeeded in assassinating Trump. No different than how the Cuban regime has been operating for years without anyone named Castro in power.
But of course Trump will pretend otherwise, and in Trump World pretending is as good as being true, especially since the Bolivarian regime wasn't any more of a threat to the US in the past 6 months than it's been for the past 25 years. So sure, go in, remove the guy from power, declare victory, and forget the whole thing happened. We won't have to hear about drug boat strikes and oil tanker impoundments anymore, but we also won't see any sanctions relief, resumption of diplomatic relations, or new American investment. Trump will chalk up a W and his supporters will talk about how he had the balls to do what Biden didn't, but everyone will forget about this by spring. By November, nobody in the US is going to be talking about how much better their life is now that Maduro is out of power, and Republicans aren't even going to bother bringing it up in their campaigns, because they know as well as anyone that no one gives a fuck and that things aren't really that different than they were a year prior.
Rov_Scam
13d ago
The difference is that a video of you as Stalin is obviously a joke. Do you think you would have felt the same if instead they showed a video of you masturbating on a television in the classroom?
Rov_Scam
14d ago
If the best you can come up with is a message board notorious for offensive content and a movie that came out 25 years ago it's safe to say that this isn't part of normal polite discourse, and certainly isn't fun. The guy got a 15 year sentence for a first offense. As part of a plea deal. That alone should tell you how serious the conduct is in terms of degree.
Rov_Scam
14d ago
I don't know what circles you're running in if you hear that joke "all the time", but either way, you're talking about the theoretical sexual abuse of a dog and conflating it with the actual sexual abuse of small children.
Rov_Scam
14d ago
I can understand including some of the more morbid cases weeks when the pickings are slim, but there were three other cases this week. I don't see any need to include this, and, Hentai or no, these facts aren't hilarious. Especially since people like me don't even really know what Hentai is and thus have no frame of reference for what you're talking about.
Rov_Scam
15d ago
No. I think that the president's racism and the racism of most of his supporters is beyond a mere possibility at this point. I'm concerned that, guilty or not, in a free society we shouldn't be targeting criminal investigations based on race, especially when we've already shown a willingness to excuse the exact same behavior when it's done by someone we like.
I think the best period is when you've accepted the position and are waiting a few weeks for your start date, assuming you have enough money that you aren't desperately waiting for that first paycheck. It combines the joy of not working with the security of not wondering how you're going to pay the bills. And it's better than a vacation because it's usually longer and you're actually excited about going back to work rather than dreading it. It's also a situation I hope to never be in again.
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