BIG HEADLINE posted:

My driving test in VA was 15 minutes of error-free driving in a 45 minute test period. My instructor was chill but loved to troll kids.

About 35 minutes into my test period I cracked and asked "how am I doing?"

Answer: "Oh, you passed the first time. I've just been enjoying the ride ever since."

quote:

At the time, there was a widespread belief in Washington, D.C., that Maduro’s administration was on the verge of toppling and the Venezuelan “armed forces would flip and go right over to Guaidó,” says Michael Shifter, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Trump reportedly asked his advisers why the U.S. couldn’t just invade the country. In his tell-all memoir, former National Security Adviser John Bolton — a Venezuela hawk who supported increasing sanctions on the country —
claims that Trump told advisers that it would be “cool” to invade.

Wombot posted:

Something I wasn't able to find in the articles the last time this was in the news: Is there an increase in child-consuming capability between a Peloton and any other brand of treadmill?

RFC2324 posted:

Its a techbro thing, so the tabley is probably a web app to the remote server that actually controls the thing, so its harder and slower to turn off than a traditional treadmill

Comrade Blyatlov posted:

Few people have come to know the “true” story of the origin of Sinko de Mayo. It is my pleasure to set the record straight.

A little known fact is that back in 1912, Hellmann's mayonnaise was manufactured in England. In fact, the Titanic was carrying 12,000 jars of the condiment scheduled for delivery in Vera Cruz, Mexico, which was to be the next port of call for the great ship after its stop in New York. This would have been the largest single shipment of mayonnaise ever delivered to Mexico. But as we know, the great ship did not make it to New York.

The Titanic hit an iceberg and sank and the cargo was forever lost. The people of Mexico, who were crazy about mayonnaise and were eagerly awaiting its delivery, were disconsolate at the loss. Their anguish was so great that they declared a National Day of Mourning, which they still observe to this day.

The National Day of Mourning occurs each year on May 5 and is known, of course, as Sinko de Mayo.

Notahippie posted:

I lived in a house that had been illegally converted to a duplex, my landlord was a sweet old hippie who lived on the other side of the wall, and one day I came home to find a dude in a tent living on her side of the lawn. She had made friends with a homeless guy and invited him to live there, he was chill and we talked about Conan comics a lot and he gave me a lovely lockback pocket knife he found in a dumpster.

It turned out he smoked crack, but that wasn't why he left. It ended in drama and he was the one who moved out - he and my landlord got into a relationship but she was bipolar and they'd get into big arguments and at one point she shoved him and he moved back out to the yard then took off. He told me he was leaving because he was worried somebody was going to call the cops because of the fighting and he was worried that no matter how chill he was, if the cops rolled up to a fight between an older white lady and an (also older) black guy then it was going to go poorly for him.

This was in Austin, same city that is just about to pass a public camping ban. No discussion of what people are going to do or where they're supposed to go. It's just going to end up with a bunch of people in jail for being poor. poo poo makes me really loving mad.

Madurai posted:

My hatred of young people is matched only by my hatred of old people. How can we combine Logan's Run with Children of Men?

bulletsponge13 posted:

I had similar lovely views when I was younger, because I was raised with the belief that good work ethic and determination will make you a millionaire.

It might. But you are starting 10 seconds behind the fastest sprinter in the 100 meter sprint.

What changed me was the Army. I watched dudes who should be rewarded, who should be having incredible success and early promotions, never get gently caress all besides a certificate for working 3- 23hr days in a row. That whole organization is "predicated" on pushing the best people forward, and instead I saw shitbags who knew who to talk to get ahead by playing politics.

Time Crisis Actor posted:

This is how J.D. Vance should’ve turned out

Knives Amilli posted:

very well said

boop the snoot posted:

My brain immediately thinks someone’s pistol fell out of their pants during an examination.

CommieGIR posted:

He's running for Secretary of State in Georgia, a state that went blue and is actively undermining voting rights to change that.

Long story short: the GOP has to cheat and oppress to win.

Blind Rasputin posted:

Making a 3/5ths compromise joke and then saying it was, “too dark” for them is a hell of a thing OP.

ElMaligno posted:

We are dealing with COVID the same way we dealt with Vietnam.

By ignoring we had to do anything

Grip it and rip it posted:

Is this guy someone important? His quotes make him sound like a moron

Edit: oh he's some child star has been trying to jump into being a RW failed celebrity.

boop the snoot posted:

This is good activism.

Blind Rasputin posted:

I do hope that since for the most of the US the idea of wearing a mask on the regular has had the glass broken, is kind of normalized now, that people will start wearing them every flu season. There was no flu season this year. At least anecdotally, every year our ER gets packed full of influenza pneumonia, but this year I don’t think any of us admitted a single case of it to the hospital. It is awesome how effective masks are in stopping the spread of a virus we’ve lived with for 200 years and kills a million people or more a year. It’s just awesome.

In actuality we will probably keep seeing conservative states get wrecked by viruses (flu, covid) year after year while Democratic states fare much better. I wonder what will happen to the general political demographics/landscape of this country after a few years of conservatives dying significantly more often than liberals. As more die they seem to just get more entrenched in their beliefs, and thus more die, and so on. I can absolutely imagine this affecting voter turnout in conservative states to the point where they’ll shift blue in a few years.

hobbesmaster posted:

boop the snoot posted:

I remember growing up the stereotype for people as far gone as the QAnon cult was something kind of like Randy Quaid in Independence Day. They usually hung out at a bar. People mostly ignored them and would only listen for a laugh. And they were mostly harmless (because they were alone).

To learn that there are actually towns full of people like this who are actively influencing how the country is ran has been a wild ride, to say the least.

A Bad Poster posted:

Crypto is crashing hard across the board lol

quote:

New pictures appear to show damage on the I-40 bridge long before a shocked inspector called 911 last Tuesday to call for its shut down.

Transportation officials have repeatedly said they don’t know how long that steel beam has been damaged.

But after checking the metadata on newly discovered photos and video of the bridge, it looks like the crack was there almost five years ago.

Barry Moore and his son went kayaking on the Mississippi River in August 2016. Moore, an avid picture taker, shot plenty of photographs and recorded video of their adventure, including when they approached the Hernando DeSoto Bridge.

With the bridge in the headlines every day for the past week, Moore decided to take a deep dive into his photo collection to see if he might have any photographs that show damage pre-dating 2021. When he looked through his 2016 album, he says he was stunned.

“My jaw dropped,” Moore said. “Yeah, 2016. The crack is past halfway up that box beam. That really took me aback.”

WMC Action News 5 reported last week that two other Memphians found 2019 pics of the crack. The Arkansas Department of Transportation (ArDOT) confirmed inspector drone video from 2019 also showed it.

Moore says he sent his pictures to ArDOT and to the Tennessee Department of Transportation and received a “thank you” reply from ArDOT. An agency spokesperson declined comment about the 2016 images. It’s unknown right now if the 2016 inspector was the same ArDOT employee fired this week for problems identified with the 2019 and 2020 inspections.

Eej posted:

Different kind of crappy news, it was announced yesterday that Kentaro Miura the author of Berserk passed away earlier this month at the age of 54 from an aortic dissection. Berserk influenced a ton of modern media but what it does better than all the grimdark stuff after it is tell a story about people struggling and succeeding at surviving in a hellish, uncaring world by learning the strength of finding others to support you and the will to keep striving no matter what horrible things life throws your way.

People joke a lot about how in the past few years he took a bunch of hiatuses and spent his time playing anime games but the guy spent his entire young adulthood working on his story with multiple stories of him only having two days off a year or not seeing the sun for weeks at a time. I'm glad he found a work-life balance that worked for him in the end but I'm sad that what he put his body through for the sake of art and deadlines caught up to him regardless.

Platystemon posted:

“continue”