TheVat

(AP) - The president, following a 158th viewing of the 2013 film "Gravity," was briefly distracted from his usual routine of contemplating (and commenting on to staff) the firmness of Sandra Bullock's derriere by the scene which depicts the onset of a destructive ablation cascade. While it's unclear what drew the president's attention on this particular viewing, it became quickly apparent to the NASA officials and space tech billionaires who were summoned to an emergency meeting that he has now realized the genuine threat which Kessler Syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome poses to America's future in space. Consulting with a team of experts which included his hairdresser, a former golf caddy, and a YouTube professor known for his research into rains of toads, the president concluded that the country's best option is, in the president's words, "just don't go too far up there." To that end, he has directed NASA and conmercial space companies to shift their focus to suborbital passenger flights which will be as he put it, "so amazing, you will go so fast you can leave New York and be in Tokyo in thirty minutes, and it will fix our air travel problems with the greatest rocket network in history!" NASA is also directed to begin developing suborbital satellites, a concept which has caused some confusion and criticism from space flight engineers and scientists. Press Secretary Katherine Leavitt, questioned about how such satellites could work, dismissed the critical comments as "symptomatic of the decline of imagination among overpaid eggheads who fail to appreciate the president's visionary approach." A Democratic Senator, Bob Goddard IV from Massachusetts, suggested that the president's notion of "just don't go too far up there," might better serve as sound advice regarding a part of the president's anatomy. The Senator is currently en route to Guantanamo Bay for what the White House described as "protective sequestration" and a "brief time-out where he can think about being respectful."

It's hilariously awful, usually found on lists of worst films ever made. The Hellstrom Chronicle was far better in the insectmageddon subgenre, giving a knowing wink to the audience now and then. Seems to be a longevity effect from appearing in The Swarm, however. Lee Grant and Olivia de Havilland both centenarians, Michael Caine and Richard Widmark both reaching 93 (Sir Michael still going). Wonder if they all tried yeast supplements. Or the health regimen of bee venom? Sorry @sethoflagos this is derailing somewhat.

Looks like a powerful sealant, but I did wonder about buying boards pretreated this way and then cutting them to length with my power saw. Wonder if I'd need PPE while sawing. Finely powdered glass shooting out from the saw kerf sounds like a hazard to be handled carefully. (One also dons PPE when cutting old pressure-treated lumber, due to the old stuff getting impregnated with an arsenic compound. Glad they switched to the safer copper-based a few years ago.)

Hadn't thought so much about agribees poaching on the wild ones. (Requested this thread be merged with the one on same topic started by Mr Evil yesterday)

Sounds like I'd better read your recommended "Careless People" if only to prepare fortifications against further incursions by the Reptilians or their Fifth Column. My thanks to whichever human(s) cancelled the DVs! To the topic - a recent read in the genre of alien incursions was "Annihilation" by Jeff Vandermeer. Vastly better than the movie adaptation made a few years ago. Some books have psychological explorations which are really hard to translate into the language of cinema. ETA: Wynn-Williams' title sounded so familiar to me. Then realized it was from the ending of The Great Gatsby. "They were careless people, Tom and Daisy-- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made." Fitzgerald's words will never lose their freshness. While I'm here, let's have the rest of that sublime literary coda: And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors’ eyes—a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an æsthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder. And as I sat there, brooding on the old unknown world, I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night. Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine morning—— So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

Awesome! 😉

Any reason I suddenly received a string of three downvotes in this thread on posts from February 2025? Pretty ordinary posts, so I can't quite fathom the objection. Or is this some peculiar reprisal for (jokingly) referring to Mark Zuckerberg as a Reptilian? Did anyone else get sudden DVs? @exchemist ? Or the bit about Poles having too many consonants -- that seemed also obviously a joke. And if these were stupid jokes why not then DV the offending post (s)? I welcome any feedback from either Poles or Reptilians, or possibly Reptilian Poles, though it's my understanding that Reptilians come from Zeta Reticulum and not Poland, generally. Or wherever Morena Baccarin came from in "V."

Sarg, I'd ram a ptarmigan snag. I'm rat, Pa Mardi Gras.

Wondering if they mean current theories are flawed? Dark energy discrepancy, Hubble tension, GR/QT compatibility issues?

Sounds interesting but also a "broccoli" book. I don't know as much about Sandberg, but Zucks is definitely one of the Reptilians. They are drawn to corporate culture, as part of their plan to alter Earth's environment and government in preparing for the invasion fleet's arrival. Heh. Read it about 5 years ago when it was first published. The book had a light hearted tone, and I liked the highly creative approach to alternate forms of life. Combined a good first contact story with a save the world story. I did find the astrophages a little hard to believe, but I think it makes the point that the forms life can take are potentially way beyond the terrestrial variations we know.

This is good to hear. We are native wild bee supporters, with various amenities in our yard to help bees - dead wood, sunny bare patches of permeable soil, a shallow water basin with pebbles (they like to have pebbles to land on), piles of old stems, native wildflowers, no chems. One thing I've noticed when nectar is scarce is bees sucking up juice from rotting fruit bits - this is actually not good for them, as fruit juices are not as nutritive for bees (wasps do better with that stuff). So you've got me wondering if this yeast supplement could be sprinkled on the fruit bits, when nothing is flowering - especially in drought years. It obviously wouldn't make up for a pollen shortfall, but it might help through lean times.

I picked up Red Mars at the library some years ago but somehow it didn't grab me. Sometimes I circle back to a book years later and end up liking it. I'll be interested in your comments, if you post any. I thought I did, but they turned out to be a tobacconist. I feel that the Poles, though mostly well-intentioned, deliberately put in unnecessary consonants to mess with foreigners. Had no effect on the Germans, of course.

"Mój poduszkowiec jest pełen węgorzy."

Emily writes her friend, worried about online Russian bot influencers. AIs sure rip media pseudonym, Amy. No dues paid Empire Russia.

Man passes basic sanity test. (Not wanting to admit how long I labored under the misapprehension that the great German physicist was inexplicably exiled to the Falklands before recalling there was a character of that name in BNW...)

You definitely have your symbolism mixed up there.

It's darkly funny that Republicans are painting themselves into a corner where they would basically have to promote full-bore socialism to actually unyoke the US from the global petro economy. And to implement it would have to get SCROTUS to reverse the landmark decision Youngstown v Sawyer, which said the POTUS simply cannot take over private corporations, even in war time. I remember Isaac Asimov called phosphorus "life's bottleneck." It had a hugely inefficient supply chain back then and still does now (something like 4/5 lost from mine to fork). The only saving grace for Asia and Africa is they have a long history of recycling from waste streams (which we're only starting to relearn in the West). Various groups in the USA including one I'm a member of are starting to promote "peecycling" with bringing agriculture and wastewater management together.

An actual POTUS would help inflation and suffering the whims of a global energy market by supporting wind power, instead of attacking it. The US has one of the largest wind supplies in the world and we don't have to haul the wind in on tankers. Onshore wind in particular has the lowest longterm generation costs of any energy source. We should be building out enhanced distribution grids AFAHP.

Some correlations are more a spur to forming hypotheses that can be feasibly tested. E.g. decrease in children walking to school and activities and rise in obesity and metabolic syndrome. It's facile to say cause and effect, but much harder to control other variables. Same with the oft-mentioned decrease in home-cooked meals. Or increased time per day with electronic media, and less time in the park. Or, or, or. Not my field, but is one challenge with longitudinal studies that people don't necessarily select just one healthy habit and make just one change? The families that, say, sign up for a Walk Your Kids to School program may also start putting more vegs on the plate, switching from frosted flakes to müsli at breakfast, supporting their kids in extracurricular sports, etc. Maybe one good approach is to study fairly homogenous communities where you have entrenched traditions and then some amenity is withdrawn in a clear-cut way so that you don't have a testing group that self-selected.

Maybe. You offering a fix may be a little too kind - sometimes I find a palindrome has an okay core but it just didn't build out well. I could salvage some of it, maybe. Rot an ill opal? I attack cattail, a pollinator. (Meh...) AI demolish silo, media.

Well, this certainly supports that: (AP) President Donald Trump invoked Pearl Harbor while defending the U.S. strike on Iran and his decision not to alert allies in advance, saying during a meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi: “Who knows surprise better than Japan?” 🙄

Some breakfasts, Emily can't make much sense of what's in her Google feed.... Non-extra fast peruse: dine muesli, attack cat tails, Eumenides erupts a fart: xenon?

Dear Mr Agent of Chaos, https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/iran-attack-damage-wipes-out-17-qatars-lng-capacity-three-five-years-qatarenergy-2026-03-19/ Is there an adult somewhere nearby? Can you ask them to help you get over your tantrum about not getting a real Nobel Peace Prize, and then help you clean up this mess? I know you don't yet understand how actions in war, especially where Gulf states are involved, have massive economic ripple effects all around the globe, but maybe someone could read this report to you, which has an example, and help you with some of the big words and tricky concepts.

Seeing this article in The Guardian today, prompted me to think about aspects of freedom where the worst aspects of human nature are grossly amplified.... https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/18/polymarket-gamblers-threaten-israeli-journalist-missile-strike-wager While I want the Internet to be as free as possible, I would also see it as a public good if behavior like this were cracked down on, and countries coming together to restrict online gambling. I mean, let's face it: a lot of restrictive laws only exist because of rotten apples like these. Such laws don't affect most of us, and it reminds those they do affect that maximum freedom is only achieved when people can police themselves. When you fail to restrain your worst impulses, then the consequence is that others will step in and do so, usually in a very unpleasant way. If that consequence is not there, then the wolves will gradually take over.

The excerpt does mention aerobic exercise benefits, which body building mostly is not. Hope this isn't about "looksmaxxing," that shallow, narcissistic and often self harming web fad led by "Clavicular." That's a destructive trend which will leave young men anxious and miserable and trapped in their self-obsession and distorted body image.