Random Rants OA - I Have 71 Problems, But This Thread Ain't One

[Valka D'Ur]

I have developed a minor fear of flying and it sucks. I used to be fine but once I was traveling to/from a funeral and I got maybe 2 hours of sleep in two days. On the flight back, the pilot accidentally throttled back for a split second on take off and the plane dropped all of 5 feet before he throttled back up. No one else even noticed but I felt it and in my delirious, sleep-deprived state I was convinced I was going to die for the entire 3.5 hour flight back. Even while I know this was a totally irrational feeling, I've been unable to shake it.

My flights over the last couple of days were smooth but I was scared the entire flight out. Coming back it was better and I hope I can shake this fear for good soon. and I want to go to Mars.

Fortunately, there's no up or down in space, until you actually get close enough to a planet or moon to crash into it if something goes wrong. So you should be fine for most of the trip.

I'm sick today.

Chicken soup or ginger ale, whichever is best applicable.

 

[GoodSarmatian]

Had the flu since Wednesday last week. A real proper one, with pretty much every symptom in the books, from fever to joint pain to a weird rash. Yesterday was my first day back at work and I had to leave two hours early because I was just completely exhausted.
Today's much better, but I'm still coughing up disgusting stuff.

 

[Lexicus]

Today In Capitalism: NCAA applies logic of forced convict labor to argue why student athletes should remain unpaid:

https://theintercept.com/2018/02/22/ncaa-student-athletes-unpaid-prison/

 

[Takhisis]

#landofthefree

 

[Commodore]

The sad thing is even prisoners do still get paid. It's something ridiculously low like $0.30 an hour, but they do still get paid for their labor.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Fortunately, there's no up or down in space, until you actually get close enough to a planet or moon to crash into it if something goes wrong. So you should be fine for most of the trip.

It's the ride up and down from the surface that scares me.

 

[warpus]

Drone footage of some of the flooding where I live. It's the worst flooding we've seen since the 1960s IIRC

I don't live near the river so I'm fine, but if I walk for 2 minutes from where I work I can get to a flooded soccer pitch and tennis courts (under a dome)

Most of the area shown are a bunch of soccer and baseball fields, I used to play on one of them. Also a driving range and The Waltzing Weasel, it's like an upscale English style pub, right beside the driving range, you can sort of see it as a larger building with water all around it.

 

[Kyriakos]

Area looks nice. Those houses seem to be pretty f'd though.

 

[GoodSarmatian]

Apparently we're going to get movie and TV adaptions of the Culture novels.
Cool, right ?
Who has the rights ? Amazon, one of the most abusive companies out there.
Ian M. Banks must be spinning in his grave.

 

[tjs282]

Apparently we're going to get movie and TV adaptions of the Culture novels.
Cool, right ?
Who has the rights ? Amazon, one of the most abusive companies out there.
Ian M. Banks must be spinning in his grave.

AAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrgggghhhhhmaaaaazooooon!!! That is all.

 

[metatron]

PS (to my biannual medal table rant):

See, this is what you get for counting the medals the wrong way.

Another rant:
I'm basing this on what the CBC does. I tried visiting the CTV News homepage, for the first time ever.
That place is an unmitigated mess with horrible design features.
I mean it's really hard to get me to use "CBC news" and "better" in the same sentence, but, yeah, this is close.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

PS (to my biannual medal table rant):

See, this is what you get for counting the medals the wrong way.

Another rant:
I'm basing this on what the CBC does. I tried visiting the CTV News homepage, for the first time ever.
That place is an unmitigated mess with horrible design features.
I mean it's really hard to get me to use "CBC news" and "better" in the same sentence, but, yeah, this is close.

You should have seen the mess on CBC a few weeks ago when they tried to "improve" it. They got so much negative feedback that they stopped asking for feedback. And then they went back to the original design.

Our national broadcaster has really gone downhill in recent years. Part of it's due to budget cuts - not enough to hire reporters who aren't either fresh out of journalism school or some "web based reporter" (that, to me, translates as "I have a blog") - and partly due to a changing of the general way that news is presented. Peter Mansbridge retired and they hired FOUR other people to take his place. They take turns presenting the news, and I wish they'd just pick one and shuffle the others back to what they were doing before.

Okay, correction. I wish they'd fire Rosemary Barton. I can't stand her. Of the four who are doing the National, Ian Hanomansing is the most experienced at being an anchor. I'm surprised they didn't just put him into the top spot from the get-go.

As for Olympic coverage, I just turn on CBC and listen to whatever's going on, unless it's one of the sports in which I have no interest. At least figure skating has competent people reporting.

 

[Takhisis]

PS (to my biannual medal table rant):

See, this is what you get for counting the medals the wrong way.

Another rant:
I'm basing this on what the CBC does. I tried visiting the CTV News homepage, for the first time ever.
That place is an unmitigated mess with horrible design features.
I mean it's really hard to get me to use "CBC news" and "better" in the same sentence, but, yeah, this is close.

Surely you mean biennial?

 

[Commodore]

Being a homeowner sucks sometimes. We got some rain and my basement flooded a bit. Nothing serious, but it's definitely worse from the last time it rained so getting the leaky spots in the wall fixed just got a serious boost on our "things we need to get fixed" list. Goodbye tax refund money, I barely knew ye.

 

[metatron]

You should have seen the mess on CBC a few weeks ago when they tried to "improve" it. They got so much negative feedback that they stopped asking for feedback. And then they went back to the original design.

Well, it strikes me as pretty good design. So i could somewhat understand people being upset about them changing it.

Surely you mean biennial?

Erm... what... erm... yes.

I meant that.
Although biannual is probably correct as far as my actual ranting about this goes.
So, let's call it parapraxis.

 

[Takhisis]

Parapraxis or Freudian slip, whichever suits the situation best.

 

[Traitorfish]

As after every mass-shooting in the US, a bunch of self-declared "revolutionary socialists" come out to defend their right to own semi-automatic rifles because what if they wake up one day and it's 1917 again, and I find myself wondering about the most efficient way to fit an adult human into a rubbish bin.

like i know i'm supposed to be an "anarchist" or whatever, but it's not as if the immediate alternative to prohibiting high-velocity assault weapons is libertarian communism. you're still talking about a major capitalist industry which depends on the state as much as any other, and indeed more so, because states represent by far and away the largest market for arms manufacturers. you're just talking about what sort of business one part of the state-corporate complex allows other parts to engage in, the same as any other kind of regulation, and i don't see anyone arguing that, say, food regulations are counter-revolutionary. there is no "proletarian line" on this one, there's just whatever option gets less people killed in the here and now.

 

[Broken_Erika]

Dumpsters work best. Just open the flap and toss them in.

 

[GoodSarmatian]

To paraphrase Lenin:
"The capitalists are going to sell us the guns we'll shoot them with".
That's the line of thinking, right ?

On the one hand, screw Leninism, on the other hand I like the irony...

 

[hobbsyoyo]

As after every mass-shooting in the US, a bunch of self-declared "revolutionary socialists" come out to defend their right to own semi-automatic rifles because what if they wake up one day and it's 1917 again, and I find myself wondering about the most efficient way to fit an adult human into a rubbish bin.

like i know i'm supposed to be an "anarchist" or whatever, but it's not as if the immediate alternative to prohibiting high-velocity assault weapons is libertarian communism. you're still talking about a major capitalist industry which depends on the state as much as any other, and indeed more so, because states represent by far and away the largest market for arms manufacturers. you're just talking about what sort of business one part of the state-corporate complex allows other parts to engage in, the same as any other kind of regulation, and i don't see anyone arguing that, say, food regulations are counter-revolutionary. there is no "proletarian line" on this one, there's just whatever option gets less people killed in the here and now.

Are you talking about people in the UK worrying about their rights to guns or revolutionary socialists in the US worrying about their gun rights?