Randomness thread, part two.

[Poopadoop]

So you share their lack of respect for people who've lost their lives as policemen and women, and their families? It's ok to laugh and joke around at a memorial? I think you're in minority there.

[OngBonga]

I'm saying that it's not really that easy to control. If something is funny, you laugh, or smile. It's not like they're rolling in the aisles. It lasts a few seconds.

You might think it's a lack of respect, I don't. I would think it's a lack of respect if they didn't compose themselves as quickly as reasonably possible. That isn't what happened though.

[Poopadoop]

Like I said, I doubt the families of the police who've died in the line of duty would agree it's ok, nor would most of the public. You do you though.

[OngBonga]

You're like a broken record.

Would you feel the same if someone sneezed? Or would you accept that's an involuntary thing to do?

Do you think finding something funny is a voluntary action?

[Poopadoop]

Maybe I just have more self-control than some people, but I don't find it hard to suppress the urge to laugh and giggle at somber events.

You're trying to pretend that laughing is some kind of involuntary reflex. It isn't. How many of the relatives of fallen police officers were laughing do you think? I'll bet you any money it was somewhere between zero and none.

[OngBonga]

Oh my god won't someone think of the relatives.

You must have said that ten times now, in less than ten posts.

Perhaps you do have more self control. Well done to you. Patel's smile seems a little awkward, like she knows it's an inappropriate time to smile, but she can't help it. I think that's Patel anyway, correct me if I'm wrong.

[Poopadoop]

Oh my god won't someone think of the relatives.

It's a valid point regardless of whether you have any sympathy for them or not yourself. If I ever start laughing in front of people grieving over their loved ones, I hope someone punches me in the face so I never do it again.

Patel's smile seems a little awkward, like she knows it's an inappropriate time to smile, but she can't help but lick Boris' boots.

fyp.

[OngBonga]

I'm impressed how much mileage we can get from an umbrella malfunction.

Finding something funny and being unable to control laughter is not the same as having no sympathy for grieving people.

[Poopadoop]

I'd like an update on what's happening with Oskar and his neighbor please. Are you still staring at each other from across the street?

[OngBonga]

I want to know if his bike arrived yet.

[Poopadoop]

I thought he cancelled the bike. That's probably how he sprained his ankle, riding some pos Euro bike instead of one of ours.

[Poopadoop]

https://twitter.com/magnifiedpix/sta...78086111154177

[oskar]

I'd like an update on what's happening with Oskar and his neighbor please. Are you still staring at each other from across the street?

I'm keeping a close eye. I'll let you know when he starts wanking.

I want to know if his bike arrived yet.

I got it early March, a little over 2 months after I ordered. Not too bad all things considered. Some in-demand bikes have a 6 month waiting list right now.

[oskar]

https://twitter.com/magnifiedpix/sta...78086111154177

Nice!

Twitter has become indispensable:
https://twitter.com/nowthisnews/stat...214520321?s=20

[Poopadoop]

Awesome.

https://twitter.com/Rainmaker1973/st...92186281697282

[oskar]

I wonder how a company like this operates. It looks like they've been pitching this for a decade, and I don't see much indication of them doing anything else. Who funds this?

[OngBonga]

I'd imagine the taxpayer funds it to a large degree. It'll fall into the realm of road safety R&D. I'm surprised it's taken so long to get to the point where non-Newtonian fluids are used for this purpose, we've known about these properties for a long time. You'd think the only research you need to do really is to find different viscosities that harden at different forces. I feel like we're 10-20 years late with this.

[OngBonga]

I also guess they need to study the effects of temperature, which probably means introducing a fuck ton of different chemicals. It's not like they'll just use cornflour.

[Poopadoop]

It'd be funny if they spent 20 years looking at just different kinds of flour to find the right one.

[OngBonga]

It'd be funny if they spent 20 years looking at just different kinds of flour to find the right one.

This is my kind of work.

[MadMojoMonkey]

Awesome.

https://twitter.com/Rainmaker1973/st...92186281697282

Those were invented at my place of work (Washington University in St Louis) like 80 years ago or something.
Or so the tour guides love to point out when you walk past them in the parking lots.

[Poopadoop]

Must go. Immediately.

https://www.diggerland.com/

[OngBonga]

Looks crap, I was more interested in the boat storage at Devon for £450 a year, which is great value. I don't even have a boat.

[Poopadoop]

Dude, you get to ride a digger and drive a dump truck. What is wrong with you? That's every human male's dream.

[OngBonga]

Riding a digger would be fun, but it's not exactly bucket list stuff.

[Poopadoop]

I would rather operate a digger than do a bungee jump.

[OngBonga]

Hmm. I'd rather see the Northern Lights than do either.

[Poopadoop]

If they bring the northern lights to within an hour of where I live, I'll go see them. I'm not going to the Arctic just for that though.

[OngBonga]

I'd definitely go to the Arctic for this reason. Iceland or Svalbard. Probably Iceland, no polar bears.

[Poopadoop]

I saw them once when I was a kid. They were in the sky in my town. Yeah, pretty cool.

[OngBonga]

I did think that as a Canadian you probably had the opportunity, but then again I have no idea where in Canada you're from, and it's a big country. I mean, the US border is probably no more north than Birmingham. I'm guessing but it can't be far off.

[OngBonga]

I just checked, Toronto is on a similar longitude to Barcelona, which seems fucking insane. Then again Canada did just have silly heat by the US border. Around half of Canada is further south than Thurso, which is the extreme north of mainland UK.

*edit - perhaps not Barcelona, but South of France like Monaco and Montpellier. Not much further north than Barca.

[Poopadoop]

I grew up in a place close to the US border. It's actually a couple of degrees south of London.

https://www.latlong.net/place/lethbr...ada-29113.html

It was the one and only time you could see the NL in the whole 27 years I lived there, so not exactly a common occurrence.

[Poopadoop]

^ If you scroll down that page to the satellite image, then zoom out a couple of times, the town of Frank will appear on the left side of the map. Then if you drag over to Frank and zoom in you will see the aftermath of Frank Slide.

[OngBonga]

Ok so Calgary region. Kinda crazy you can see the NL from that far south. That's further south than I am. I can only imagine you had a particularly clear view to the north. Or maybe it was a freak solar storm. In any case, I'd be pretty amazed if I saw the NL anywhere in England, let alone this far south.

And yeah that Frank slide stands out once you know where to find it.

[Poopadoop]

https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Northern_Lights

they are occasionally seen as far south as 35 degrees North latitude

I guess it helps that the magnetic pole is in Northern Canada. But I still only saw them once.

[Jack Sawyer]

This happened in Tokyo. Keep in mind this is actually mixed relays

[MadMojoMonkey]

This dude is ridiculous. All teams ran 2 men and 2 women. The order in which they ran isn't changing the final time the team can run the 4 x 400m.

If he's arguing against people suggesting that men and women are physically equal, then this video is 5 minutes too long.

[OngBonga]

That guy is a fucking idiot. I completely agree with mojo's post there.

I mean, if you want to present this as evidence for why men should not be able to simply identify as women and then compete as women, if that's your point, then great, I agree with that. But what I will say is mixed events like this are really great for sport, so long as it's fair. Which it is.

[oskar]

Who does he think he's arguing against?

[Poopadoop]

Jesus. So sad.

https://twitter.com/AsYouNotWish/sta...12168798212100

[OngBonga]

That's utterly insane. Also, and this won't be a popular opinion, it's stupid. If you cling onto a plane, you're committing suicide. If that's you're intention, fair enough, not stupid, but if you think this is a viable escape plan, it's not. You will die. This isn't like India where they cling on to trains, where you at least have a reasonable chance of survival. This is a zero percent survival rate plan.

I know the Taliban are complete assholes. I know these people are absolutely desperate. If they were taking over England, I'd want to flee. But I would certainly not choose this method of escape. Might as well take up arms and fight. If I kill one Taliban bastard before I die, that's a bonus.

Yes it's incredibly sad.

[oskar]

Despite the Taliban propaganda that they're a new and improved Taliban (I cannot believe how many newspapers and stations straight up ran unfiltered Taliban propaganda over the weekend) - if you're a vocal atheist, women's rights activist, homosexual or aide to the US, you should have a reasonable expectation of having your head cut off. These people are desperate.

I cannot believe the incredible miscalculation by the US not to evacuate before pulling the troops out. Even just for optics! After Biden literally said 'This is not Saigon, you're not going to see helicopters lifting people off the roof of the embassy' Wasn't there at least one person going: maybe we should make sure that exact same thing doesn't happen?

I don't think a prolonged involvement in Afghanistan would have helped, but after investing so much, at the very least they could have given the people a chance to get out.

[Poopadoop]

They might have thought the plane wouldn't take off with people hanging onto the sides.

[Poopadoop]

Biden literally said 'This is not Saigon, you're not going to see helicopters lifting people off the roof of the embassy' at the very least they could have given the people a chance to get out.

It's tricky. I mean I don't think it's our place to go around policing the entire world, or we'd have to have troops in half the countries in Africa as well. OTOH, we are a good part of the reason those countries are messed up in the first place.

But if we are going to stick our noses in, we should do everything we can to make sure this kind of shit doesn't happen.

Oh, and as a special bonus, the current UK gov't seems to have abandoned all the Afganis who worked for them as interpreters to the Taliban to appease the anti-immigrant #MEGA types who vote for them. "Global Britain", fuck off.

[Poopadoop]

Look closer.

https://twitter.com/BenceNanay/statu...00444383301632

[OngBonga]

They might have thought the plane wouldn't take off with people hanging onto the sides.

Kinda begs the question what the fuck they think they're doing then. Trying to stop others fleeing?

[Poopadoop]

No, they're hoping the plane is going to stop and let them on it. Either that or they're going to die. But maybe either outcome is better than having your head chopped off by the Taliban.

[OngBonga]

Well yeah, I'd rather fall to my death than have my head chopped off by the Taliban. I don't think they use a guillotine or a sword, rather they hack it off with a knife. So I agree on that. But still, if you're pointing a gun at the fuckers, they're not going to hack your head off, they're going to neutralise you. I'd rather get shot trying to kill them than fall off a plane.

And I'm not going to try and stop a plane taking off in the hope they let me on board, as that's pretty stupid. Planes have a capacity, it's full, they're not going to risk the lives of those on board. And once the engines are fired up, once it starts moving, there's still time to shit your pants and jump off while it's still on the ground.

[Poopadoop]

Yeah I'm sure you'd have a perfectly clear head and be able to reason your way through to calculate your best option in those circumstances.

How about this then? The guys clinging to the plane don't have access to a gun, and don't know how to carve one out of soap. So they know they're either going to die by beheading or by falling off a plane. So they're either choosing the least painful death, or their knowlingly sacrificing themselves to create a powerful image in the hope some cunts in the West will try to help their relatives.

But instead of seeing it as a desperate act, cunts in the West just say 'hurr durr, stupid guys are stupid.'

[OngBonga]

It's both desperate and stupid. You surely agree on that, right?

[OngBonga]

I get it, you don't want to be so cold as to say out loud that these people are stupid.

But they are stupid. I'm not going to lie.

[Poopadoop]

Are the people who jumped out of the twin towers on 9/11 stupid? I mean they died from the fall right?

Or did they just prefer it to burning alive?

[OngBonga]

No, the people who jumped from those buildings were actually going to burn to death. I'd jump too when all hope was lost.

This isn't remotely similar.

I mean, like I said in my first post, if their intention is to commit suicide, fair enough, not so stupid. But if their intention is to flee, it's fucking stupid.

[Poopadoop]

Well you've been going back and forth between either committing suicide or trying to ride a plane all the way to America in one post, then just being stupid in the next three, so it's hard to tell.

[OngBonga]

Well I don't know their intention and neither do you. You rather understandably have taken issue with me calling them stupid for attempting to flee in such a manner, but it is stupid, under that assumption. I have accepted that if they were actually trying to commit suicide, then it's not so stupid.

It's understandable because it's cold, and you don't want to come across as cold. I get it. I don't give a fuck about that though. I'll be blunt.

[Poopadoop]

More economic migrants fleeing for their lives.

https://twitter.com/MrAhmednurAli/st...51281702367235

[OngBonga]

They're not economic migrants though and I don't think there's many people claiming they are.

Those fleeing France are economic migrants.

[Poopadoop]

Would you be in favour of accepting these people fleeing Afganistan into the UK as refugees?

[OngBonga]

Well not all of them. We have a responsibility to accept our fair share, just like USA, France, and all the other countries who were involved in the Afghan war. Certainly, we should be accepting those who helped the west, such as interpreters, those who will definitely be killed by the Taliban. They should be the priority.

[MadMojoMonkey]

IDK. Stupid is too harsh. Ignorance and desperation don't exactly lead to the best decisions.

If those people only knew that there's not enough Oxygen to breath when the plane is at cruising altitude, and the temperatures are freezing up there, then we could say it was definitely stupid and/or suicide to think they would survive it even if they had strapped themselves to the plane.

Even you guys seem to be assuming that if they could have held on, they'd have survived... but that doesn't mean you're stupid.
It just means you were ignorant about the actual conditions outside the plane at cruising altitude.


IDK. This is heart-wrenching news. I hesitate to go throwing negative judgements on the people who are so desperate for their lives that they'll do something so misguided as this. I'd rather spend mental energy blaming the regime that pushed them to this terror, not the people who are fleeing to literally avoid having their heads cut off by human monsters.

[OngBonga]

If those people only knew that there's not enough Oxygen to breath when the plane is at cruising altitude, and the temperatures are freezing up there, then we could say it was definitely stupid and/or suicide to think they would survive it even if they had strapped themselves to the plane.

idk if it's just easy to say it's obvious or if I'm taking even a basic education for granted. But for me it's one notch down from people who light cigarettes while stealing leaking fuel. That's stupid, and we surely agree on that.

It just means you were ignorant about the actual conditions outside the plane at cruising altitude.

They live in a mountainous country. They know it gets colder the higher up you go. Would they expect to survive at the top of their highest mountain? What about Everest? They know planes fly higher than Everest, right? And they know it'll be windy. Very windy, because you're going extremely fast. If you're not going through some kind of similar thought process when considering doing something obviously very dangerous at the very least, then you're stupid. What else does stupid mean if not completely lacking in common sense? I know a sense of panic can cause people to make poor decisions. We'd even go as far as to say stupid decisions. I have made stupid decisions in my life many times. Even smart people are capable of stupidity. And smart means educated. These people aren't educated. If they are, the decision they are making is even more stupid. Unless, of course, their intention is to commit suicide. In which case, it's a great idea.

IDK. This is heart-wrenching news. I hesitate to go throwing negative judgements on the people who are so desperate for their lives that they'll do something so misguided as this. I'd rather spend mental energy blaming the regime that pushed them to this terror, not the people who are fleeing to literally avoid having their heads cut off by human monsters.

Fair enough. I guess this is one of my flaws. It's a sense of bewilderment that anyone could be so stupid. I also have that same sense of bewilderment that humans can be so horrible, but that stopped surprising me long ago. I guess I'm still surprised that humans can be this stupid. Which I guess is a positive spin.

[oskar]

https://www.reddit.com/r/PublicFreak...n_clinging_to/

Oh, there were a lot more than I thought!
Hard to put that down to suicidal desperation. Extreme ignorance and groupthink seems more like it. They do have the lowest literacy rate in the world.

[Poopadoop]

You want stupid, go find whoever designed these robots.

https://twitter.com/neuroecology/sta...88194340003842

[OngBonga]

That faceplant to the table was pretty special.

I mean, this is hardly stupid. One imagines they're making progress thanks to this kind of research. It'd be stupid if it was designed to explode if it faceplants a table.

[oskar]

I recently watched I Robot. I knew it was going to be shit, but it's an Alex Proyas (The Crow, Dark City) movie, so I had to watch it at some point. In the movie they try to sell this idea that there are "laws of robotics" that forbid robots to hurt humans. It's in their DNA if you will. I am not a nitpicking movie goer. I can suspend disbelieve... Feed a Gizmo after midnight and it becomes a Gremlin. If Freddie kills you in your dream, you die for real. Ok, got it. It's the logic of the movie.

But this Laws of Robotics crap is just offensively stupid. As if we all didn't know that the second this technology becomes viable, a thousand of those things are going to liberate a developing nation from its socialist government. That's not the surprise development, that is clearly the first thing it's going to get used for.

[OngBonga]

You should see the Terminator films.

[Poopadoop]

I mean, this is hardly stupid.

Of course it's stupid. What good is a robot that can't even do a backflip?

[Poopadoop]

But this Laws of Robotics crap is just offensively stupid.

Reminds me of the prime directive in Star Trek. Something about not interfering in other cultures. Which is precisely what they end up doing in every fucking episode.

As if we all didn't know that the second this technology becomes viable, a thousand of those things are going to liberate a developing nation from its socialist government.

But they'll quote Oppenheimer while they're doing it, so it's all good.

Seriously, I was envisaging them being used to break up protests, but crushing a fledgling democracy works too.

[Poopadoop]

Actually, the robots have some positive implications too - like designing prosthetic limbs that are pretty much as good as the flesh and bone ones.

[MadMojoMonkey]

But this Laws of Robotics crap is just offensively stupid. As if we all didn't know that the second this technology becomes viable, a thousand of those things are going to liberate a developing nation from its socialist government. That's not the surprise development, that is clearly the first thing it's going to get used for.

You're spoilering yourself on the whole point of the laws of robotics. The moral of the story is that the laws fail.

[Poopadoop]

notsureifsrs.jpg

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1612480/Heal_Hitler/

[MadMojoMonkey]

Oof

[MadMojoMonkey]

Totally unexpected, and even more unexpected, a video about humans killing other humans in war actually makes me feel a little better about humans in general.

[oskar]

You're spoilering yourself on the whole point of the laws of robotics. The moral of the story is that the laws fail.

Movie bad, ok?

Speaking of robot movies: Alita Battle Angel - a much more realistic movie where robots are being used for their most obvious applications: space wars, and competitive rollerblading, is actually surprisingly good. It suffers from weak characters and trying to shoehorn an entire book series into a 2h movie, but in terms of cgi character integration, it's a modern day Who Framed Rodger Rabbit.