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Phanatic
Mar 13, 2007

Please don't forget that I am an extremely racist idiot who also has terrible opinions about the Culture series.

Crocuta posted:

Eh, Transformers was right up his alley, in the radio days he did tons of schlocky radio serial roles where he had no idea what the plot was.

He really got deep into a frozen peas commercial, though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V14PfDDwxlE

Which Animaniacs did a great riff on:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlXEC8kcbqc

(And so did the Critic:)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IH1PJTY9AVA

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Phanatic
Mar 13, 2007

Please don't forget that I am an extremely racist idiot who also has terrible opinions about the Culture series.

Here's that same thing only with a 20-million-dollar helicopter instead of a Merc:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lW5Dxizy4ZE

Phanatic
Mar 13, 2007

Please don't forget that I am an extremely racist idiot who also has terrible opinions about the Culture series.

pageerror404 posted:

Most castle laws are like that, but when I moved to Arizona I was very surprised to learn that isn't the case here. The law explicitly states that you can use deadly force on a home intruder regardless of what you feel their intentions are and you have no obligation to warn then or try to get away first.

That's absolutely not true, and I know this because it's part of the course to get a carry permit. You are not allowed to use deadly force in response to criminal trespass. To protect yourself? Sure. To protect your property? Sure. But just because someone's *in or on* your property? No. Section 13-411 of the state codes.

Phanatic
Mar 13, 2007

Please don't forget that I am an extremely racist idiot who also has terrible opinions about the Culture series.

tviolet posted:

I think this count: http://www.topicalinfo.org/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=1302&whichpage=1

tldr: in which a lady decides to use black salve to "cure" the skin cancer on the tip of her nose because modern medicine is evil or something. Then it falls off.

Holy poo poo, what an idiot.

"You have a basal cell carcinoma on the tip of your nose. We could excise this in a 5-minute procedure."

"You can't oppress me with your Western medical witchcraft, I'm going to smear caustic zinc chloride on my nose."

(Nose falls off)

"Well, now you need nasal reconstructive surgery."

"Will my insurance cover it?"

"Sure, if we perform the excision we told you about in the first place."

"...okay, let's do that." (Drinks alt-med "anti-cancer" fluid)


What a loving idiot.

Phanatic
Mar 13, 2007

Please don't forget that I am an extremely racist idiot who also has terrible opinions about the Culture series.

VanSandman posted:

As someone who genuinely enjoys the 40k setting for the sheer madness of it all, GW is basically a company made of evil.

I have a special hate-on for GW because they threatened to sue my brother-in-law. His fledgling software company at one point was developing a product that was basically just a calculator for Warhammer. For those who don't know, the way armies work is that you and your opponent decide on how big a battle you want to fight, which tells you how many points your army can be worth, and then you "buy" army units with points, each unit being worth a different number. So a big battle to last all night might be 1500 points of units on each side, a small skirmish might be 500.

So there's generally a specific sourcebook for each army type (space mans, giant bugs, terminator robots, whatever), but then there are sub-armies and combined armies and basically the point values for what you want to build might be scattered across a bunch of sourcebooks. So they wrote basically an army calculator which compiled all these point values etc. and had them all nicely presented in a bunch of drop-down menus and such and you could use this program to build your army and then it would give you a nice printout of all your units with all the relevant attribute values and modifiers presented right there, so you could take this printout and play with it and never have to flip through your half-dozen sourcebooks when playing the game.

At this point it's worth pointing out that *game rules cannot be copyrighted*. The art, written material, presentation, layout, etc. of a rulebook is copyrighted but the fact that such-and-such unit has an attribute called 'BS' and it equals 4 and has a +1 modifier and a 3" template isn't copyrightable. Someone could take the exact mechanics to WH40K and use them to design another game entirely and they'd be on completely legal ground so far as copyright is concerned.

But when you're GW and you have GWs lawyers little niceties like the actual law don't concern you so much and when you're a little software company whose product is making some noise on the internet and then you get a big scary C&D letter from those big scary GW lawyers, you're not going to be too concerned with the actual law either.




Anyway, allow me to tell a tale of schadenfreude, Philly-style.

There's this guy named Matt Swartz. Matt likes to run restaurants but he's not that good at it. He opened a place in Emmaus called Tap & Table, and used the money from that to open a place in East Falls called Fork and Barrel. Then he used the money from that to open a place in Philly proper, called the Farmer's Cabinet. Then he opened another place called Boilermaker's. His standard operating procedure is basically to loot one place to fund the opening of the next place and then just...not pay people. Not his employees, not his suppliers. Did I mention he once served a term in Federal prison for fraud?

At each step along the way, he consistently stiffed and screwed everyone who worked for him. The entire staff at Fork and Barrel showed up for work one day to find that it was just closed. No warning. No back pay. Just new locks on the doors and a closed sign in the window. A friend of mine had managed there, and he'd been regularly stiffing her, and she was going to quit and he said "Don't, I'm sorry, I'll make it up to you, I'm opening this new place in the city and you'll get to run it, big raise, etc," so she was already gone by the time that happened. But the new place in the city, Farmer's Cabinet? I showed up one week after it opened, asked if my friend was there, and was told "Oh....she doesn't work here anymore." So she took this job to manage this new restaurant and get it ready to open and he was already *not paying her* before the place even opened, so she walked. At one point, the entire kitchen staff walked out because of being stiffed. At another, the entire front-of-the-house staff did the same. The best was when his *beer wholesaler* sent a truck and a couple of drivers around to confiscate every keg of beer he hadn't sold yet because he was *stiffing his supplier.*

I want to emphasize that. It's a bar. He's in the business of selling booze, at enormous markups. In fact, his beer selection was basically the rarest, hardest-to-find stuff, obscure Italian and Norwegian craft brewers, not necessarily because it was the best beer but because he could charged $10 for an 8-ounce pour. And he decides to stop paying the people who supply him with beer. The wholesaler takes his unsold product back, and Swartz *walks into the wholesaler's place* and physically threatens him, they have to call the cops to get him to leave.

He enticed a great local brewer, a guy named Terry Hawbaker, to leave his digs at a place called Bullfrog, and move to Farmer's Cabinet and brew beer for them, and Terry got set up with a contract brewer down in Virginia (Terry eventually got pissed and left, probably because he wasn't being paid). At one point, what FC was going was renting a panel truck, sending it down to the VA brewery, loading up the kegs and just driving them back into PA. This is...really, really illegal. The Virginia TTB raids the brewery and dumps all of FC's beer down the drain, Prohibition-style.

Well, recently, all the remaining shoes dropped. FC's liquor license expired in October. Usually, you get a renewal lickety-split, you have a temporary permit you put up in your window while you wait for them to process the new license. Unless you're a nuisance bar and have underage drinking and drunks making a mess in the streets and so forth, but for a fancy-rear end Center City restaurant it's pretty much a formality.

Unless you have $30,000 in unpaid employment taxes. Then the state's not going to renew your license. And if what you do then, instead of paying those back taxes, is to take your temporary permit from last year, forge *new dates* on it, and put that up in your window, well, then what happens is that the state raids your establishment and arrests you and confiscates all your booze. And then it hits you with a $100,000 fine for selling liquor without a license. Plus an additional fine for each customer in your place at the time of the raid. Plus $2 for every ounce of beer or wine and $4 for every ounce of booze they confiscate. Then all your booze gets destroyed. And, oh yeah, you get charged with a couple of felonies, including forgery.

He actually kept the place *open* after that for a couple of weeks as a BYO, but then closed it because nobody's going to go there for the food. And the very latest is that he's gone back to the state and paid his back taxes and application fees and now has a renewed license so the place is re-opening. But that ain't gonna make the fines and criminal charges go away. Couldn't happen to a nicer fuckhead.

ObMugShot:

Phanatic
Mar 13, 2007

Please don't forget that I am an extremely racist idiot who also has terrible opinions about the Culture series.

Sjurygg posted:

Because who try are consumed by intradimensional nightmare monsters from hell and their hometowns are then annihilated with nuclear carpet bombing.

charlesstross.mobi

Phanatic
Mar 13, 2007

Please don't forget that I am an extremely racist idiot who also has terrible opinions about the Culture series.

Squidster posted:

If I saw three men loitering carrying loaded rifles, I would assume that they're there to provoke or commit violence.

Good thing you're not a cop then, because rule of law is supposed to be an actual thing and the law in a lot of states permits open carry.

Phanatic
Mar 13, 2007

Please don't forget that I am an extremely racist idiot who also has terrible opinions about the Culture series.

Blistex posted:

That's one expensive hobby.

Serious question, what's the best case scenario when you do a perfect burnout? You have to buy two new tires?

It looks loving awesome:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfFTOUfhOu8

And it's not like you have to start with new tires. When it's time for new ones, get rid of the old ones like my friend does:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m3nCU6QfTw

It's no doubt ridiculous but, well, sometimes ridiculous is fun.

Phanatic
Mar 13, 2007

Please don't forget that I am an extremely racist idiot who also has terrible opinions about the Culture series.

FrozenVent posted:



Cruise ship shadenfreude story:

On a family cruise, my just-turned-21 cousin got completely shitfaced before we even set sail. We were holding him upright during the safety lecture so they wouldn't boot his rear end off. Turns out it'd have been better if they had, because he then proceeded to get very angrily drunk, call his own sister a whore, and take a swing at security. He was locked in the brig (Not a "brig" as such, just a typical stateroom except one that locks from the outside.), and he had to stay there through the entire first port of call, because that was the cruise line's private resort on Haiti, so they couldn't kick him off there. When we got to Jamaica they put him off and he had to get a plane back to Florida.

Phanatic
Mar 13, 2007

Please don't forget that I am an extremely racist idiot who also has terrible opinions about the Culture series.

Especially because they forget that it's the vapors, not the liquid, that's flammable.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8q_gSJ5n_A

Phanatic
Mar 13, 2007

Please don't forget that I am an extremely racist idiot who also has terrible opinions about the Culture series.

Henchman of Santa posted:

Oh dear, this happened in my hometown. Reminds me of how Terry Kath from Chicago died. He was playing around with a semi-automatic at a party and put it in his mouth, forgetting there was a bullet in the chamber. I'm pretty sure he's the most famous person to win a Darwin Award.

John-Erik Hexum. Soap opera star. Stage gun, a .44 Magnum revoler loaded with blanks, he thought he'd be clever and put it up to his temple to play Russian Roulette.

Turns out that the human temple isn't really thick enough to stop the exploding gases and wadding from a round of blank .44 ammunition.

Phanatic
Mar 13, 2007

Please don't forget that I am an extremely racist idiot who also has terrible opinions about the Culture series.

This is years old and all the pictures are gone, but this is a thread about a wonderful war between an Arizona HOA's chosen parking enforcer and a guy whose Audi they booted even though he had a parking permit.

Basically he put the car up on dollies and moved it into his garage. He's doing a rebuild on the car so he doesn't care that the boots are on his wheels. Parking company wants $140 to take the boots off. Guy says "Nah, I don't care that they're there, but you can come on my property to take the boots off if you want." Parking company calls the cops, says he's stolen their property, cops say "Look, he's standing right here telling you you can go get your boots back, he hasn't stolen anything. He moved his own car into his own garage, and then called and told you where your boots are."

Phanatic
Mar 13, 2007

Please don't forget that I am an extremely racist idiot who also has terrible opinions about the Culture series.

Danger Mahoney posted:

A story of schadenfreude from my town -

I work in economic development for a very white and very rich Texas town.

In a related matter, this happened a while ago, but it's arguably the single best thing George Lucas has ever done.

Lucas wanted to add an expansion to Skywalker Ranch, his development studio in Marin county. This expansion has been part of his approved development plan since 1996. He was doing everything that liberal, wealthy Marin wanted: preserving greenspace, environmental protection remediation, so on and so forth. It was all headed towards approval until one group of neighbors banded together into a new HOA (well, actually they resurrected an old defunct one and violated that HOA's own bylaws to do it) and started complaining about all these new jobs coming into their area, the increased property value they'd enjoy, and so forth.

So Lucas got fed up and said "Okay, gently caress you guys, I'm selling this land to a developer to build low-income housing."

http://www.marincf.org/news/press-releases/mcf_to_explore_development_of_affordable_housing_grady_ranch

Phanatic
Mar 13, 2007

Please don't forget that I am an extremely racist idiot who also has terrible opinions about the Culture series.

Centripetal Horse posted:

I've had a few run-ins with electricity over the years, but somehow I have never been knocked down or out.

Schadenfreude at my expense time.

In school I worked a job in the university's repair center fixing lab equipment. I'm repairing a strobe light; the bulb has four electrodes, a high-voltage pair to ionize the gas and a low-voltage pair to send a current pulse through the gas to light it up.

I take it apart, resolder some dodgy contacts, and decide that before I put the casing back on I'll power it on and check that it works. So I do so, not noticing that my hand's in contact with the high-voltage contact.

1000 volts goes through me, I make a noise that sounded like "hrgh," every muscle in my torso hypercontracts, and I drop the strobe. The three other guys in the shop look at me, they all figure out what happened at the same time, and we all broke out laughing.

Fortunately that's the low-current side of the transformer. Wow.

Phanatic
Mar 13, 2007

Please don't forget that I am an extremely racist idiot who also has terrible opinions about the Culture series.

One Swell Foop posted:

Yeah, those things (especially the older borosilicate ones) have a huge amount of compressive stress baked into the outer layers of the glass, which helps prevent cracking and breakage from heat and impact. But when they do break, all of that stress is suddenly released, with spectacular results.

Other way around. The older ones were just borosilicate glass, which has a much lower coefficient of thermal expansion than soda-lime glass, so it's used for lab glass. Pyrex kitchenware used to be the same stuff, but years and years ago Corning sold the name for that line to another manufacturer, so Pyrex kitchenware in the US is just soda-lime glass. But that stuff can't go from hot to cold like borosilicate does, so they temper it, which does what you say: sets up compressive stresses in the outer layers and tension in the inner layers. It's stronger, but when tempered glass *does* crack (like if you take a pan out of the oven and set it down on a counter which, oops, has some water on it you didn't see), it loving explodes.


BaronVonVaderham posted:

In hindsight, this is why you put hot bakeware down on an insulator: to prevent rapid, uneven cooling. These things are supposed to have super low thermal expansion coefficiencts, that's the entire reason they're oven-safe, but if you cool it fast enough it will gently caress you up.

Again, the US stuff hasn't been borosilicate for a long, long time, now it's just soda-lime glass with regular old soda-lime thermal expansion coefficient, which is why it blows up like that; borosilicate wouldn't.

Neat bit: in my microfab lab a long time ago we had quartz racks that you'd stick the silicon wafers in to put them into the furnace for doping. Those things, you could pretty much take out of the furnace glowing red hot and drop them into a bucket of water and they'd stay in one piece. Not that we ever did that.

It's pretty tough, though:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3rSXU3OOvY

Phanatic has a new favorite as of 18:10 on May 13, 2014

Phanatic
Mar 13, 2007

Please don't forget that I am an extremely racist idiot who also has terrible opinions about the Culture series.

C.M. Kruger posted:

Speaking of Harrier fuckups:


The best part of that is that fodding out the engine like that is a ridiculously more expensive repair than if he'd just gently belly-landed it. The guy who came up with the idea for the mattresses was a fuckwit.

Phanatic
Mar 13, 2007

Please don't forget that I am an extremely racist idiot who also has terrible opinions about the Culture series.

6675636b20796f75 posted:

Did they not essentially belly land it but at a much slower velocity? Also, the repair may have been expensive but it sounds like they were trying to avoid total airframe loss, which would be much more expensive.

The Harrier's got an emergency system of pressurized nitrogen to blow the gear down in the event of an emergency where they won't extend on their own, and that's actually the written procedure (NATOPS) for what to do in that situation, but the pilot was ordered not to do it and instead to land his plane on a bunch of metal springs; the MAG CO had apparently seen this procedure used with a CH-53, but that's an enormously and obviously different aircraft. The fact that the downdraft of a vertically-descending Harrier would, you know, blow the mattresses around right by its enormous engine intakes, was entirely foreseeable by anyone with a clue. And the only reason that stack of mattresses didn't catch on fire could be termed "luck." The guy who decided NATOPS was wrong shouldn't be an O-6 anymore, and I don't think he is; this was hashed over in one of the SA aviation threads.

Phanatic
Mar 13, 2007

Please don't forget that I am an extremely racist idiot who also has terrible opinions about the Culture series.

nexus6 posted:

But he has 5000, or is it 2,500? Isn't that still around 700 Canadian dollars? Is Google's currency converter, for some reason, using exchange rates that are a decade old?

The Romanian leu was re-denominated in 2005. 10000 pre-2005 lei = 1 new lei. So he has an old 5000 lei note, which is worth .5 lei today. 1 new lei = .31 USD according to Google's currency converter, so his note is worth about 15 cents. Which will not buy you a video card.

Phanatic
Mar 13, 2007

Please don't forget that I am an extremely racist idiot who also has terrible opinions about the Culture series.
Saw this while walking home on Tuesday night.

This is a one-lane road, parking on either side, trolley runs down the middle. 25mph speed limit. Can't figure out how the guy managed this while ending up in the dead center of the road without any signs of damage to other cars. Maybe they'd already hauled another vehicle off but I didn't even see any broken glass.

Phanatic
Mar 13, 2007

Please don't forget that I am an extremely racist idiot who also has terrible opinions about the Culture series.

Automatic Retard posted:

I have a feeling that a lot of these fuckups are caused by traction control kicking in. That poo poo is dangerous if you are deliberatly trying to get sideways. It just completely messes with what you would naturally expect the car to do.

I have a feeling traction control doesn't have a lot to do with most fuckups of this nature.

Phanatic
Mar 13, 2007

Please don't forget that I am an extremely racist idiot who also has terrible opinions about the Culture series.

MisterOblivious posted:

:NSFW: http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=44d_1211647625
Oooops
"...this guy was aiming for a Humvee down an alley..., he pulled the trigger and turned the projectile as it left the tube into a near by wall."

It's even better than that. The factory fuse won't arm the warhead until it's traveled a certain distance to prevent just that sort of thing from happening. Insurgents have been known to disable that feature because they're fighting in built-up areas and might want to shoot something that's even closer, counting on ducking back around a corner or something to protect them from the nearby blast.

Whoops x2, in other words.

Phanatic
Mar 13, 2007

Please don't forget that I am an extremely racist idiot who also has terrible opinions about the Culture series.

Memento posted:


TNA is a lovely company, Dixie Carter is a lovely person, Vince Russo is an even shittier person and they have now probably been destroyed by their own duplicity and idiocy. It's delicious.

I met Mick Foley in India, completely randomly, when he and Kurt Angle and some other guy were doing a promo tour for TNA. He was an amazingly nice guy, I'm glad he got out of that mess before it derailed.

Unrelated corporate schadenfreude. In a rent-seeking effort to secure an exclusive supplier contract with the New York state government, Staples (an actual real company with real lawyers and real accountants and stuff), offers a big list of items that it will sell to the government, without limit, at a price of one cent.

It is then surprised, shocked, to find that a lot of the state buyers are buying a whole lot of poo poo they don't actually even need.

http://online.wsj.com/articles/when-staples-offered-items-for-a-penny-state-workers-ordered-kleenex-by-the-pound-1406169004

In the first few months of the contract, it delivered goods with a total list price of $22.3 million and received $9,300 in payment. Yeah, list prices are themselves bullshit (the article mentions that a 64GB flash drive lists at $250) But Staples seems to be having second thoughts:

quote:

Two months into the contract, a senior Staples official complained in an email to John Traylor, a state official, about "excessive orders," citing as an example the request for 240,000 boxes of Kleenex, or 5,000 cases at a penny per 48-box case.

"This order alone exceeds the capacity of 10 tractor trailers [and] has a retail value of $399,500," the executive wrote.

Arguing that demand was unreasonably above estimates, Staples never delivered the truckloads of tissues or many other orders, and blocked some items from sale.

The state "is still in active negotiations to resolve this disagreement," a spokeswoman for New York's Office of General Services said. "Staples did not ask for a limitation in ordering quantities," she said, "and OGS would not have accepted such a limitation had it been made."

[...]

The No. 1 item purchased by Attica Correctional Facility, the famous maximum-security prison, was Premium #1 Paper Clips—a half million of them. The clips came with a list price of $3,750. The prison paid $5.

"They were cheap," a prison spokeswoman said. Could they be used to jimmy jail doors? "Inmates are prohibited from having paper clips," she said.

A coveted penny item was a 64GB SanDisk flash drive, a large "thumb drive" to store or transfer data. It listed for $249.99 but recently was priced at $54.99 on Staples.com.

Customers ordered 128,978 of them in the contract's first few months, documents show, compared with anticipated annual demand for 33. Staples delivered 1,080 in that period. Had it delivered all those ordered, it would have sold drives with a current retail value of $7.1 million for $1,290.

The state estimated there would be just 41 takers annually for the 18-sheet commercial shredders, recently priced at $599.99 on Staples.com but available under the contract for a penny.

New York customers ordered more than 6,000 in the first few months. Staples delivered 154 in that period, each costing a penny.

Basic economics, how do they work?

Phanatic
Mar 13, 2007

Please don't forget that I am an extremely racist idiot who also has terrible opinions about the Culture series.

HonorableTB posted:

And so another man learns not to sexually assault women.

My grandmother used to sexually assault me all the time.

Phanatic
Mar 13, 2007

Please don't forget that I am an extremely racist idiot who also has terrible opinions about the Culture series.

Canuckistan posted:

If only we could leave this stupid meme on a high note.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ymn7W_X6OtE

Phanatic
Mar 13, 2007

Please don't forget that I am an extremely racist idiot who also has terrible opinions about the Culture series.

AzureSkys posted:

(Planenfreude)

I'm out in Vegas for work, coming home on a red-eye. I sit down, aisle seat a few rows behind the emergency exit row. Guy in a rumpled suit dragging his carryon comes down the aisle, he's clearly drunk as a skunk. He tries to shove his carryon into to the overhead, lengthwise, and it's too long to fit. He pulls it out and tries again. If he turns it 90 degrees it will fit, but that's beyond him in his current state. He pulls it out and tries again. He's *slamming* it into the back of the overhead. He keeps this up for a couple long minutes, and then just leaves it sticking halfway out of the overhead and sits down in the last available seat in the exit row.

A few minutes later, the woman who actually has the ticket for that seat shows up and asks him to move to his seat. He basically shakes her off. "I'm gonna stay here." She gets a flight attendant, who repeats the request. "No. I'm staying here." She says that if he doesn't move, she'll get the captain. He still refuses. Captain comes back down the isle and declares "You can either move from this seat and sit in yours, or you can sit in the terminal." He still refuses to move.

So they call the cops on him. Two airport cops show up, and I'm guessing these were the two cops who, if you need to pull an unruly drunk off an airplane, get the call every time. Because they are loving huge. They have to turn sideways and shuffle down the aisle because they're too goddamned wide to fit like a normal person. They loom over the guy, who has to crane his neck up to take them in fully. The closer one says, basso profundo, "We can do this two ways. You can either leave the airplane on your own, or we will remove you." He actually gives this a moment's consideration before nodding and saying "I'll leave."

He leaves. Leaving his carryon behind, still sticking out of the overhead compartment. We're about 10 minutes late pulling away from the gate because of this. Captain gets on the PA and says "Folks, we apologize for the delay, but as you all know, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas."

Phanatic
Mar 13, 2007

Please don't forget that I am an extremely racist idiot who also has terrible opinions about the Culture series.
Would-be burglar discovers the limits of solipsism when he breaks into a home and starts beating the woman inside:

http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/phoenix/2014/09/03/12-news-homeowner-shoots-intruder-on-911-audio/14989333/

quote:

Homeowner: I see.... Hurry, hurry! They're coming in right now, please, please, please, please!

Dispatcher: Yes. They're coming out as fast as they. I promise you. They're, they're coming out there as fast as they can. I got a lot of officers responding. And, I'm getting, and as everything you're telling me I'm typing in and other dispatchers are giving it to them immediately. They're getting all of this information.

Homeowner: They're breaking out my window.

Dispatcher: Are you in your bedroom or?

Homeowner: My bathroom.

Dispatchers: Yes. They're coming out as fast as they can I've got a lot of officers responding. Is there an alley behind your house?

Homeowner: (Whispering) yes.

Dispatcher: You back up to the canal, right?

Homeowner: (Whispering) yes.

Dispatcher: Yes. Okay. You don't need to answer anything. I'm just going to stay on the line with you. Okay?

(Garbled screaming. Phone dials. Gunshot.)

Michael Lewis: Ow! (Expletive.) What was that? What was that? What was that? (Expletive) did you do?

Dispatcher: What happened?

(Garbled)

Homeowner: Did you think you could beat me half to death?

(Garbled)

Michael Lewis: I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

Phanatic
Mar 13, 2007

Please don't forget that I am an extremely racist idiot who also has terrible opinions about the Culture series.

mds2 posted:

Weird. You'd think a city in the middle of a literal desert would be more well equipped for rain.

Why? Why would you expect a city in the middle of a literal desert to install storm drains and retention basins and etc etc for rain events that only happen very rarely? It's like expecting Miami to prepare for snow.

The schaedenfreudest part of it is the people who inevitably decide to drive through feet of standing water. I lived in Phoenix for a few years, and there are a number of surface streets that pass below the highways. I don't just mean that there's a highway overpass, I mean the surface street literally has a dip where it goes down well below grade, you go down a hill and back up. So obviously those are places you don't want to be in a flash flood. Just as obviously, they're were a bunch of water accumulates and makes them impassable. And to drive the obviousness home, there are signs in front of them that say not to enter them when they're flooded.

Example.

But it never fails. Ever. Every single time there's a flood a bunch of hayseeds try to drive right on through. You can hear the dull impact of hydrolock echoing across the valley.

Phanatic has a new favorite as of 20:13 on Sep 8, 2014

Phanatic
Mar 13, 2007

Please don't forget that I am an extremely racist idiot who also has terrible opinions about the Culture series.
Make out at the game at your peril:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1SpcP9T5So

Phanatic
Mar 13, 2007

Please don't forget that I am an extremely racist idiot who also has terrible opinions about the Culture series.

snortpocket posted:

on the subject of news schadenfreude, how about the shortest anchor career ever:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGY1SBqnjXk

This one went out that way by choice:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYcSqIuqkz4

Phanatic
Mar 13, 2007

Please don't forget that I am an extremely racist idiot who also has terrible opinions about the Culture series.

Testekill posted:

They apparently have medics on standby.

"We didn't kill you, we just injured you in such a fashion that it will have serious health implications going forward from this day until the end of your life" isn't exactly a get-out-of-jail-free card.

Phanatic
Mar 13, 2007

Please don't forget that I am an extremely racist idiot who also has terrible opinions about the Culture series.

theironjef posted:

Too bad, because he's got methemoglobinemia, not a colloidal silver addiction. Unless I was being lied to these many years past.

That's really, really blue for cyanosis. Anyone that cyanotic I'd be surprised they could walk around without carrying an O2 tank with them. That looks like argyria.

Edit: Yep, argyria: http://www.today.com/health/real-life-blue-man-dies-after-heart-attack-stroke-4B11243410

Phanatic
Mar 13, 2007

Please don't forget that I am an extremely racist idiot who also has terrible opinions about the Culture series.

Sentient Data posted:

More boat fun courtesy of the random imgur thread


That's a good way to gently caress up your skipjack

Did I just watch someone jibe?

Phanatic
Mar 13, 2007

Please don't forget that I am an extremely racist idiot who also has terrible opinions about the Culture series.
Some student government Vice President, Miles Sisk, at the University of Oregon didn't like that bloggers were saying mean things about the University of Oregon student government so he threatened:

quote:

“In response to this, I have communicated with a friend of mine. He has acquired the IP addresses of those blogs. If these blogs are not shut down within the next 48 hours I am turning these in to the administration. They are able to connect these IP addresses to the people running them.”

And now he's all upset that suddenly a lot more people are saying mean things about the University of Oregon student government. Or, rather, about him:

quote:

“The student government has such a negative image already that the existence of these blogs makes it even worse, and it’s hurt and they are saying hurtful things about people,” Sisk said. “And the fact that they are now being reported on, it’s apparently going over to other organizations, the news about these is really the exact opposite of what I wanted to do, which was just make them stop. Now everybody knows about them.”

The whole thing reads like an Onion article except it's funny because this guy is an actual person:

Satirical writeup with links to the actual news articles:

http://www.popehat.com/2014/11/05/breaking-existence-of-u-of-oregon-student-senator-miles-sisk-confirms-failure-of-american-experiment/

Phanatic
Mar 13, 2007

Please don't forget that I am an extremely racist idiot who also has terrible opinions about the Culture series.

For real pure wasted money schadenfreude, you cannot beat audiophiles.



quote:


Machina Dynamica's Tru-Tone Duplex Covers are special audiophile-grade covers for all duplex wall outlets; they are intended to replace all types of duplex covers - steel, plastic, wood, etc. - in the listening room -- including non-audio outlets and unused outlets. While one or two Tru-Tone Covers can make a significant improvement to the sound, 3-4 Duplex Covers in the room can yield tremendous results. Tru-Tone Duplex Covers produce a remarkable degree of focus, fullness, detail and presence.


IMPORTANT NOTE: When installing the Tru-Tone Duplex Cover, the screw should be loosened 1 to 1 1/2 turns from the point when it is nearly tight; never overtighten. Tru-Tone Duplex Covers are prepared using proprietary materials-processing techniques and fit snugly on all standard duplex receptacles. Size: 1/4" thick x 2 3/4" wide x 4 1/2" high.

Tru-Tone Duplex Cover (pure white), $30.




quote:

Brilliant Pebbles is a unique and comprehensive system for tuning the room and audio system based on special physical properties of highly symmetrical crystal structures. Brilliant Pebbles has been evolving since its introduction 6 years ago at the London HI Fi Show, especially the number of applications, many of which were discovered by our customers. Brilliant Pebbles addresses specific resonance control and RFI/EMI absorption problems associated with audio electronics, speakers and cables, as well as acoustic wave problems associated with the listening room boundaries and the 3-dimensional space within the boundaries. Brilliant Pebbles comprises a number of precious and semi-precious stones (crystals) selected for their effectiveness. The original glass bottles for Brilliant Pebbles have been replaced by clear zip lock bags, which have a more linear response than glass. We employ a number of highly-specialized, proprietary techniques in the preparation/assembly of Brilliant Pebbles to enhance the crystals' inherent characteristics. The fundamental operating principle of Brilliant Pebbles involves a number of atomic mechanisms in the crystals. Brilliant Pebbles will enhance the performance of your audio system so your favorite music and even your experience playing online fantasy games will become a mind blowing auditory experience.

3rd-party snake-oil review:

http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/machinadynamica2/ib.html
http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue23/clock_nespa.htm

Phanatic
Mar 13, 2007

Please don't forget that I am an extremely racist idiot who also has terrible opinions about the Culture series.
It's almost that time of year again (If you're an American, I'm not sure what the top burn-your-own-house-down-while-trying-to-cook day is for all you furriners):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnMi0T1A5hc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHrSXLuEx3U

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uT51aaFxmMM

Phanatic
Mar 13, 2007

Please don't forget that I am an extremely racist idiot who also has terrible opinions about the Culture series.

I don't have much schadenfreude in what's supposed to be a liberal democracy blocking a guy from entering for no better reason than that he says dickheaded things. Marc Randazza, the lawyer who's defending 8chan against this dickhead's legal threats, said it:


quote:

As objectionable as I find Mr. Blanc, I find no justification to deny a guy entry to your country, because you’re afraid that he will speak bad words.

gently caress the UK. For no other reason than they finally went and did something that makes me side WITH Julien Blanc.

Blanc's "legal counsel," such as it is, sent 8chan a demand letter full of baseless legal threats, probably written in crayon. Randazza, who generally writes awesomely entertaining letters to lawyers who don't actually know what they're doing, outdoes himself with this one:

quote:

Lets go back to page one. Your client is the guy who seems to advocate sexual assault against random women, on the basis that he’s Caucasian, and they’re not. Neither Mike, nor I, are in any danger of winning the “Male Feminist of the Year Award.” But
Jesus Hello Kitty Christ on a Rocket-Powered Toboggan, are you FREAKIN’ SERIOUS? If you have the audacity to file a defamation claim on behalf of a guy who advocates sexual assault, and relies on racist bunk to justify it, then come at us, bro. Our client might just waive his CDA immunity and let the case stand on the merits of the defamation claim. I can not express how much joy I would find in watching you try and articulate how your client’s reputation has been harmed by anything other than his own asinine,
racist, sexist, rapey-creep-scumbag statements.

[...]

Your client made some really objectionable statements. There is a price for that – it is called “criticism.” Your client acted like an rear end, and people pointed at him and said “look at that rear end in a top hat!” Rather than answer the criticism, your client sought to cower
behind a wall of censorship. This really isn’t advisable for someone like your client, who will likely need to raise the shield of the First Amendment at some time in the near future. Julien Blanc may bully Japanese girls, but he will not bully our client. And, with any luck, he’ll try and bully the wrong Japanese girl. We hope that when he does, the event gets captured on video.

[...]

2 If this whole “white males can do whatever they want in Tokyo” thing is true, I’m going to move there and pee on everything. Except, since I can do whatever I want, I’m going to make the pee turn into Hibiki whiskey or money as soon as it exits my penis.

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Phanatic
Mar 13, 2007

Please don't forget that I am an extremely racist idiot who also has terrible opinions about the Culture series.
Also Martha Stewart.

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