No, Don't Do That

The Detroit Free Press: Teenage e-bikers on Oakland airport runway force plane to abort landing

Teenage e-bikers on an Oakland County airport runway last week forced a pilot to abort his landing, taking the potential perils of e-bike misuse to a whole new level.

"This is very, very dangerous," Oakland County Airport Aviation Manager Cheryl Bush said. "They aren’t respecting the impact they could have on aircraft trying to get in or out or what it could do to them."

Unfortunately, the idiots made their way in to the Oakland/Southwest Airport in New Hudson from a trail at the southeast of the airport. They then crossed a taxiway and proceeded to do wheelies on the runway, forcing a landing aircraft to do a go-round to avoid them on landing.

Not smart at all to enter airport property and then go onto an active runway and mess about. 

Morons. 

That Was A Tad Unusual

Saw a rather unusual thing during a Blackbeard's night dive.

While on a night dive back on July 8 with Jim and Kevin, we came across a quite large underwater worm.

 Quite a big worm, eh?  It got quite  close to us and our lights and was wiggling along its way through the ocean. 

Things then got weird with what it did next:

 

As you can see, at 36 seconds into the second video, the worm quite simply explodes into multiple pieces right in front of us which then dissipate into the water.

None of us had seen something like that happen before and we all looked at each other like "WTF just happened?".

It turns out, some underwater polychaete worms apparently do this, and they do it on purpose.

They explode like this in order to scatter their gametes (eggs and sperm, whichever they happen to have on board), into the ocean to try and reproduce with other worms.  

You could say the experience blew this worm's mind, and verily the rest of it, all over the place.  

You could say it went out with a bang.

First time seeing it happen and quite neat to catch it on video.  

If You Owe A Bank $100 That's Your Problem, If You Owe The Bank $100 Mllion That's Their Problem. But If

Anthropic is going to end up owing the Banks $10 Billion, I expect it may become everybody's problem.

Fintech Blueprint:  AI: Banks scramble to lend $10B to Anthropic

Anthropic is asking Wall Street for more than $10B of credit.

Reuters reported that Anthropic is arranging a revolving credit facility expected to exceed $10B ahead of its IPO. The largest banks have reportedly been asked to commit around $1.25B each, second-tier banks around $1B, and others $750MM or less.

What could possibly go wrong?  

Dolly Parton Day

Dolly Parton, was by all accounts, a fantastic human being who did a lot of good things for this country and was well-liked by sane people.

With the sad news of Dolly Parton dying I'd like to join the movement for Congress (they might as well do something useful)  to introduce and then pass "Dolly Parton Day" to have a day on the calendar in her honor.

The day to be marked in her honor should be 9/25.

Sorry Abdul, It Just Doesn't Work That Way

Abdul El-Sayed is drawing some flack due to his campaign buddy Hassan Piker threatening people on his behalf, in addition to Hassan's love of communism; hatred and threats against Jews and Israel; being fine with rape as long as it is for the cause,; advocating killing capitalists (while he himself is a millionaire nepo-baby); hating white people; and saying America deserved 9/11. 

 The Hill:  El-Sayed weighs in on Piker controversy: ‘Nobody speaks for this campaign besides me’  

“But I want to be crystal clear, nobody speaks for this campaign besides me and my campaign spokespeople,” he added. 

Nice try Abdul, but you were constantly on the same podium and have been arm-in-arm with Hassan Piker throughout your campaign.  Hassan Piker has campaigned and he continues to campaign on your behalf and you certainly haven't told him to stop.

As indeed are others with similar extremist and anti-American views you hang around with on the regular.  

Hassan Piker is a spokesperson for your campaign. He's a spokesperson for you to the Islamists and radical leftists and progressives out there, but he is turning off the moderate Democrats whose votes you need. Can't have that, so now you're going to play the age-old game of "Hassan doesn't speak for me " even as he continues to speak for you to your more radical and hard-core supporters.

This is the typical game of saying one thing on a subject to a credulous western  audience, and saying the more radical and contradictory thing on the same subject to  core supporters - or having alter-egos like Hassan Piker say them for you, and it isn't going to work for most people. 

Except, of course,  it will work and provide cover for the credulous fools and kapos looking for an excuse to justify supporting you, more's the pity.

Roasting Hatch Peppers

It is Hatch pepper season.

My local grocery store was having a sale so I bought a bunch.

Had a few raw that I  chopped and had on a burger for some extra taste and had the in a few other dishes.

Nice amount of heat, nothing to much bu enough to know its there, great flavor, and it tastes better than a jalapeno, IMHO. 

I had a lot leftover so I decided to roast them.

 I grilled them on a friend's propane grill.

Once all roasty,  I had them sweat in a bowl covered in plastic wrap for 15 minutes.

Then I proceeded to skin them and the burned parts came off quite easily, leaving behind wonderful and tasty roasted peppers.

 These then got placed in quart ziploc bags and put away for later use.

 I did, however, forget one rather important step.

Yep, I wasn't wearing gloves. There were no food gloves available.

So, after peeling the peppers and putting them away, I washed my hands repeatedly with dish soap, dried them and washed them again with the soap. Did that cycle 5 times. 

This should have been sufficient. 

Should have being the operative words, but it was not. 

A few hours later, I went to take out my contacts, again washing my hands well before doing so.

Nope, that didn't help either, the peppers got their revenge. 

Fingers removed contact lenses and then instantly: 

Ouch. Frack, Ouch.

I think this is probably what being pepper sprayed feels like.  

Ouch, more Ouch, and F me even more Ouch. My eyes, they were a burning, they were tearing, they were burning some more. The burning feeling  continued.

And these are Hatch peppers, not even really hot peppers!

Anyhoo, the burning sensation eventually went away. A useful lesson was learned. 

I'm now going to make sure I have some plastic food handling gloves available and on my hands whenever handling even mild peppers.

So I'd count that as a success with eight roasted peppers and a practice exposure to pepper spray all in one go.

I would however suggest to most people to forgo the exposure part and just process the peppers while wearing gloves for a far more sedate and less painful process.

Imagine, If You Will, If It Had Been Three Puppies

That Lindsay Clancy had strangled to death instead of her children.

Do you really think all these women would be lining the entry to the courthouse and sitting in wearing pink on her behalf?

PBS: Women rally in support of Lindsay Clancy at her trial

Court TV:  ‘Team Lindsay’: Hundreds line the street outside courthouse in silent support of Lindsay Clancy 

Note the pictures, every single one attending is indeed a white female and almost certainly can be classified as an AWFUL - an American, White Female University-educated Liberal.

The Suicidal Empathy of the AWFUL is fully on display here.  

But now, with ten states allowing abortion up until the very moment of birth, there is room for the suggestion of a modest proposal here:

We simply need states to respect women's choices and bodily autonomy, and to do so to meet the AWFUL's needs. We therefore must extend that cut-off to permit post-partum abortions until the child reaches real viability. 

 Perhaps that should be six years old where the child can prove they can sleep through the night and get up and feed themselves without their mother's intervention. Perhaps longer, maybe even up to 18, for after all, it depends on how the mother is feeling at the moment, and it is her choice, of course.

In all seriousness however, while she has certainly committed murder and had a multitude of options to handle the situation other than killing her children, this is again a case where mental health care in this country needs a major rework. 

It is well past time that choices are made and resources are dedicated to the  institutionalization and treatment of those who are a harm to themselves or others until it can be shown they will not be such a harm.  It is long overdue.

Lobster, No Lobster. Yes Lobster

After the shark feed we dove Lobster No Lobster.

Did you know that lobsters migrate?  They do, and neither European nor African swallows are involved.

Jacques Cousteau named this site because on one dive he found this reef just teeming with lobster. The next time he dove it there wasn't a lobster to be found.

Yes Lobster do indeed move around and migrate. 

We first dove Lobster No Lobster during the day and didn't see a single lobster.

There was a rather healthy reef system there.

 And smiling fish

 

There were also some quite large Lion fish.

 

Each spine on a lion fish is venomous and if you touch it, it hurts, a lot. So avoiding these invasive species is a really good idea, and there are unfortunately quite a few of them around.

 No lobster in sight.

Still a nice dive. 

The night dive however did have lobster.

Big. Lobster.

 

And a big Crab:

And a tiny Stingray

 

And best of all, a tiny and cute Octopus!

First time seeing an Octopus in the wild.  Very cool. 

That was a night dive for the books, we just kept finding cool creatures.

Day Dive: 44 minutes, average depth 27 feet, and a max depth of 32 feet.

Night dive:  1 hour, average depth 24 feet, and a max depth of 31 feet.