LHookins

Except for "settled science" of course. You know how that works. Hook

I doubt the one on Sesame Street was homicidal. 😄 Hook

When they first started talking about Pay TV in the 50's or 60's, everyone hated the idea. We didn't realize that it would show better content and all ad free. When I got back from Germany in 1976 (I was in the Army) and moved to a house around 1980, we couldn't get TV reception and had to get cable. I very quickly decided it was well worth the price, along with a bundle of movie channels like HBO, Cinemax and Showtime. A few years ago we dropped Dish because it didn't have local channels and went to rabbit ears. Currently using rabbit ears to receive digital TV local channels but my wife is the only one watching. Hook

I stopped watching TV decades ago because of the ads. We already had mute buttons on our remote controls and it wasn't enough. I went to the movies several years back (paid full ticket price, of course) and they had ads. Not trailers, ads for products. I was the only one in the theater who voiced a loud complaint. I watched a video ("Hogfather") on Amazon Prime a few days ago and it had ads. A few years ago all the cool quirky features I used to watch on Prime started requiring subscriptions... many different subscriptions. Prime price keeps increasing and I'm beginning to wonder if it's worth it at all. I don't mind paying for Kindle Unlimited as I read 185 books in the last year, almost all were Unlimited. I use AdBlock Plus which deals with YouTube ads fairly well but may have a memory leak of some kind as my base memory usage goes up slowly when I watch YouTube. Doesn't matter, I can reboot often enough. Hook PS. Cool quirky feature on Prime: "Rubber" about a living car tire. An actual tire, live action. They somehow gave it a personality. I wanted to watch it again but it was subscription only. It's currently unavailable "in my location" but you can see the trailer. PPS. The last time I went to the theater the first thing that came up was the Netflix logo. My group and another group were the only ones there. It didn't even take up the full screen area. I think the movie was "Starship Troopers", a satire made by a guy who didn't read the book. Cool visuals though. PPPS. Is a VPN worth it? H.

I had two cats at the same time that weighed 19 pounds each and they weren't overweight, just big. Gotta love big kitties. It may have been the Tender Vittles we fed them every day all their lives. They just seemed normal sized to me at the time. Hook

The total eclipse is so different from anything we're used to that the experience is magical. And it's beautiful. It's very well worth doing a bit of travelling to see one, but I don't know if I'd get on an airplane. Four hours in a car? Totally fine. (heh! See what I did there? Totally accidentally of course.) Three days later and I'm still feeling a sense of wonder. Hook

A lot of gorgeous aircraft in this thread. For me, the aircraft that looks the most like I think an aircraft should look is the DC-3. Does it look beautiful, or does it just look right? Hook

Ok, that was impressive. Bonham (northeast of Dallas) had a good view, only a few clouds but no obscuration. Got to see the diamond ring at the beginning and end, and totality for a few minutes. It got DARK, the outside lights came on. It got cooler and a bit of wind. Animals didn't really react that we could tell. Wife came out but wouldn't look directly at the sun, son and his wife went out during totality and enjoyed it but were at the back of the house rather than the front where we were. Yes, we had eclipse glasses. I feel very honored to get to watch a total eclipse from my front yard. Next one in 20 years in case you missed this one. Try not to miss the next. 😄 Hook

Martin, you have it exactly backwards. We are growing the trees to harvest them for wood, perhaps to make paper shopping bags for cats to play in. Any additional carbon dioxide will help them grow. Surely you wouldn't deprive your cats of paper shopping bags? 😄 Hook

Cue Monty Python Lumberjack Song. o/` Oh, I'm a lumberjack and I'm OK... o/` Hook

As long as you have more than enough trees that it takes "10 to 40 years" to get back around to where you started, you'll never run out of trees. There are plenty of trees. Except on Easter Island, where they cut them all down. And on Iceland, where apparently they never grew. At least Easter Island has a program to replant the trees going on now. You can even see this in MSFS. If only there were a way to increase the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. This would make the trees grow even better. Hook

The paper bags were healthier for my cats to play with, but I had one cat who would stick his head through the loop on a plastic bag and wear it around for a while. He'd get upset if you took it off. "Casey's being Supercat again." He also used to dig through my son's toy box to find things to play with. Yeah I miss him. Hook

The Challenger disaster was the first world event I heard about first online. I worked with a guy whose girlfriend had helped start an online outlet called The Source, and he heard about it there. He came running in the warehouse to tell us. The Challenger disaster was the major "flashbulb event" for that generation, like the Kennedy assassination was for us. I remember a lot of details about what was going on with both of these. For example, with the Kennedy assassination I remember what shirt I was wearing. With the Challenger disaster I remember where everyone in the room was standing. I don't think I'll be watching the movie either. Hook

When I was 21 years old I had a Honda CB450 as my sole transportation. I rode it on the highway, off road, did some hill climbing. My girlfriend, who became my wife, weighed 84 pounds and was 4'11" tall and was the perfect rider. Couldn't tell she was even there. She accompanied me off road and climbing hills. 😄 The first argument we ever had was when I sold the bike. A few decades later I got a BMW, forget the model. This was not a particularly nice motorcycle. A half hour of riding and my hands were numb from the vibration. I eventually rode it into the back of a car stopped at a green light when I glanced at my instruments. I flew over the car and the worst part of it was being on the Texas summer asphalt... don't wanna cook to death. My best friend and I were at the bike shop a few days later when he exclaimed "OMG, come check this out!" He had a Honda Goldwing up on the center stand with his hand on the seat. I'm tellin' ya, there was absolutely NO vibration in the seat. I bought the Goldwing the next day, about $1000 or a bit more and never regretted it. It might have been the perfect bike. This was my sole transportation for several months (it's more practical than you'd think, I did grocery shopping and even went on a job interview in my $1500 interview suit in the driving rain with a Marine rain suit) and loved it. My daily commute was 80 miles each way, no problem. Almost entirely highway with only two stop signs and two red lights. One day I was within a mile of work with extremely heavy dew on the roads, going around a corner at about 2 mph when my front wheel slid out from under me and I landed on my wallet. I claimed that if it weren't for my "sound financial buffer" I'd have "lost my a$$". Had to retire the pants. No damage to the bike. I decided I was getting to an age where I could break something that might not heal, and sold the bike to my best friend (mentioned above) who took it from Texas to California, up Highway 1 to Vancouver, and back through Yellowstone. I envy him that trip. Me? I found a good used Mercedes 300D (with air conditioning!) for about $7500 and drove the wheels off it. There was an old Honda ad that claimed, "Sometimes just knowing it's there is enough" which certainly applied to my 450. Also, "You'll never see a motorcycle in front of a psychiatrist's office." (The doctor usually parks in back 😄 ) These days my son has several bikes and he might even ride them once in a while. My riding days ended with the Goldwing. Hook

I had a quick look through that and it looks really good. I wish we'd had those hair regs when I was in the Army. Certainly better than the unionized Dutch army at the time. 😄 Not to mention their 5 liters of beer ration per day. I met a US Army guy who was assigned to a Dutch army bartender unit. His beer ration was somewhat smaller. We had one guy who slicked his hair down on duty, but off duty had the most beautiful head of hair you can imagine. I guess you can get away with anything if your commander doesn't mind. When I first got to my unit and met the First Sergeant, he was wearing his cap indoors. He had no hair whatsoever below the cap. My first thought was, "I hope this isn't the haircut policy!" even though I was bald on top by this time. It turned out he'd had rheumatic fever (I think it was) as a kid and had no hair anywhere on his body. I occasionally got called, Top Junior. ("Top", slang for Top Sergeant) What surprised me the most from the new regs was pregnancy uniforms (hopefully only for women). In the mid 70s in the Army it was a civilian blouse with a nametag. "Um, Chris? Isn't that the standard pregnancy uniform?" "Yup." "Oh. Ok." This guys *eyebrows* couldn't have passed muster. I saw a video of him with his son once, and the son had the same eyebrows. 🙂 They commented on it. Hook