I’m a pilot, and thus like 85% of my friends are ALSO pilots and one of them is just this delightful older guy that named Bruce. Bruce is a man of simple pleasures, he likes mediocre bbq and to take his vintage J3 Piper Cub out like, every other week just to have the old girl not look so sad in the hangar. We also live about 30NM south of an air base and, according to him, there was a squad of fighter planes out and they wanted some guys to go up in their planes for intercept practice (with pay, obviously) so the guys could get real time practice looking for unfamiliar aircraft.
Bruce, a man who doesn’t need it but wants to say he flew with some fighter jets, takes them up on their offer and takes the old girl up for them. Now, if you’re unfamiliar with a J3, this thing is slow as shit. Like, horrendously slow. And there was a decent headwind that day blowing in off the coast and Bruce gets the brilliant idea that he’s going to do something they can’t. So Bruce turns that old cub into the wind and just flies slow enough that he’s genuinely flying BACKWARDS and the next thing he knows are these three jets screaming past him, wings wobbling something fierce as they’re all about to stall, and the pilots yelling over the radio like “How are you DOING THAT”
He likes to say he owned the air force something awful that day.
i love that motorcycles exist. like i’m genuinely so glad that someone was like “what if bikes were as fast as cars and could turn you into roadkill if you hit a pothole”
what if there was a vehicle so dangerous you had to wear armor to drive it
More pets go missing around the Fourth of July than any other time of year. If your cat is afraid of fireworks, keep them inside and STAY HOME. Make sure they have cozy places to hide. Play music to help cover the loud noises. Keep windows shut - cats can easily bust through screens if they are scared enough. Draw the curtains to block out flashes of light. Use a calming pheromone diffuser such as feliway if you have one. And if they are up for it, play with them for distraction!
i want people to appreciate pigeons. not “ehehe skrunkly little trash gremlins. so adaptable and resilient”. nothing wrong with that sentiment towards racccons and opossums, but when people do this about pigeons, it shows a fundamental misunderstanding about a pigeon’s place in the world.
pigeons were beloved. they were pets, they were tools, they were food. we found use and pleasure in everything about them. then they became obsolete. then they stopped being popular. an animal that we have literally thousands of years of deep history with, completely discarded by mankind to the point most people are ignorant of their existence outside of “rats with wings”.
“Young trees are so keen on growing quickly that it would be no problem at all for them to grow about 18 inches taller per season. Unfortunately for them, their own mothers do not approve of rapid growth. They shade their offspring with their enormous crowns, and the crowns of all the mature trees close up to form a thick canopy over the forest floor. This canopy lets only 3 percent of available sunlight reach the ground and, therefore, their children’s leaves. Three percent—that’s practically nothing. With that amount of sunlight, a tree can photosynthesize just enough to keep its own body from dying. There’s nothing left to fuel a decent drive upward or even a thicker trunk. And rebellion against this strict upbringing is impossible, because there’s no energy to sustain it. Upbringing? you ask. Yes, I am indeed talking about a pedagogical method that ensures the well-being of the little ones. And I didn’t just come up with the term out of the blue—it’s been used by generations of foresters to refer to this kind of behavior. The method used in this upbringing is light deprivation. But what purpose does this restriction serve? Don’t parents want their offspring to become independent as quickly as possible? Trees, at least, would answer this question with a resounding no, and recent science backs them up. Scientists have determined that slow growth when the tree is young is a prerequisite if a tree is to live to a ripe old age. As people, we easily lose sight of what is truly old for a tree, because modern forestry targets a maximum age of 80 to 120 years before plantation trees are cut down and turned into cash. Under natural conditions, trees that age are no thicker than a pencil and no taller than a person. Thanks to slow growth, their inner woody cells are tiny and contain almost no air. That makes the trees flexible and resistant to breaking in storms. Even more important is their heightened resistance to fungi, which have difficulty spreading through the tough little trunks. Injuries are no big deal for such trees, either, because they can easily compartmentalize the wounds—that is to say, close them up by growing bark over them—before any decay occurs.”
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The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate—Discoveries from a Secret World
as a whodunit/detective fiction lover i just dont get true crime fans. moral issues and harm to the victims aside, murder is not nearly as interesting in real life as it is on tv. like on tv u get this guy whose involved w this crime syndicate funded by the government that got poisoned by a plant that was previously unknown to man. but irl 99.9999% of the time the answer is misogyny, racism, or organized crime. wheres the thrill.
A woman whose epilepsy was greatly improved by an experimental brain implant was devastated when, just two years after getting it, she was forced to have it removed due to the company that made it going bankrupt.
Specifically, because she couldn’t afford to buy the implant from the company. They basically took her implant back to recoup their losses. This is what happens when you privatize healthcare and health research. The group providing her with this implant should not have been able to go bankrupt in the first place, let alone repossess her implant to pay off their debts.
This is what disabled people mean when we say that cyberpunk horror is just a reality for us. This woman was literally forced to undergo a surgery because she couldn’t pay to keep the implant already inside her brain. How long till companies start repossessing pacemakers and transplants?
Durable medical equipment companies in the US already do this.
DMEs will repossess your medical devices if you rent it through them and lose your insurance or your living situation. This includes feeding tube pumps and higher value mobility devices like motorized wheelchairs. I specify living situation because even with insurance they see homelessness as a liability to the medical equipment.
They have no qualms with letting you die and in the case of feeding tubes, they have no issues with letting you starve a bit faster.
The music is not the worst part of Repo the Genetic Opera, folks!
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