Homercles

Let the balloons pay the ballon tax, I pay the Homer tax

Fire, engine failure, loss of control…and sticker falling off the camera?

All of this. If I hear Skinny Love again I’m gonna stab a motherfucker. That two year period where every fucking song had Hey or Hey Ho in it: Of Monsters and Men, Lumineers, etc And different genre but DJ Mustard with his chorus of dudes shouting ‘hey hey hey’ in every song he produced…well I hope they butt raped him to retirement. I will say that Iron and Wine at ACL that one year was an epic experience half drunk and stoned, the performance was very different live…dark and trippy, reminded me of STS9 almost

Any of y’all read Kitchen Confidential, the book Bourdain wrote that started his career outside the kitchen? In it he talks about the death throes of a restaurant…closing on Mondays, wild menu changes, bringing in consultants, etc. These potential tweet limits reminded me of that. I work on a team that manages a $9M Azure sub, and our customers wouldn’t tolerate sudden restrictions like that…you gotta squeeze efficiencies out of your core while easing the users into new governance.

Y’all are forgetting that the RVR (runway visual range) was like 600’ or something godawful. There’s no little webcam there that’d be able to penetrate that. Also should have been your first clue that video was from FSX or something.

That’s fine but let us never speak of dubstep again

I tend to use it for any solid Simpsons reference.

That’s where I was commenting above that this isn’t Heathrow trying to squeeze max utilization from just two runways. Of course it seems the WN pilot took his sweet time getting rolling, but it’s possible he needed warmup time after a single engine taxi or to ensure anti ice was up to temp. In hard IMC like that it seemed needlessly close, but I’m just an armchair aviation fan.

Then do what I suggested and read this: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/why-shooting-down-chinas-spy-balloon-over-the-u-s-is-more-complicated-than-it-seems

So you’re saying it’s trivial to shoot one down from 60,000 feet at a precise location that minimizes risk of the impact and maximizes opportunity to recover the debris? It’s a challenging target given its minimal radar signature, high altitude, slow speed and intent to keep it intact as possible. You’re entitled to your opinion, but doing it right on the first try was impressive to me. There are other articles on The Drive/Warzone site that discuss in detail why you don’t just zip up there and riddle it with bullets. But you do you, maybe next time you can go knock it out.

Great transcript of the radio calls to knock that balloon out, impressive display of coordination and goes to show taking it out at the right place with one shot was no easy task https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/the-operation-to-down-chinas-spy-balloon-in-moment-by-moment-audio

We’d almost certainly lose a war with China over Taiwan…I’m sure our stockpiles are taking a hit as noted above, but ‘empty bins’ crying over sending aide to Ukraine is just someone pushing a narrative. We wouldn’t lose because we ran out of stingers and artillery during an amphibious campaign, we’d lose because China is roughly 100 miles from Taiwan. Our logistics train across the Pacific Ocean would be an absolute nightmare, rife for targeting by all kinds of harassment. Traditional escorts as part of a carrier group would be extremely risky against their ballistic missiles, there’s only so many beans and bullets you can jam into a C5, and their fanatical devotion in communist China probably wouldn’t match our morale whether they’re uniformed or civilians facing the loss of cheap shit from Amazon. So you build a deterrence posture and pivot (especially USMC) towards a decentralized, network-centric organization that would make invading Taiwan very expensive for China…both militarily and economically. Meanwhile you undertake the incredibly slow process of relocating key manufacturing elements out of harms way. Ultimately you can’t stop them, but certainly slow them down while bleeding them. So long as we don’t end up in a real, official shooting war with China this may ultimately be good for our country as a whole. Pull back on globally distributed, long-lead, lean JIT manufacturing that’s screwing military and business (see Boeing and the 787) alike + reorient your military into a flexible structure that’s more survivable with a missile-heavy near-peer and also appears to work effectively against a communist (ie central control) regime like we are seeing in Ukraine. TLDR: We won’t be able to stop China but long term the changes it’s forcing may prove beneficial for both the military and economy.

Speaking of China, seeing those videos of the Ohio train wreck made me think of this…one of the most insane videos I’ve ever seen, with hilarious commentary. The Tianjin explosion.

Dude made a visualization (in severe-clear) based off available data. Damn close.

Maybe and I hear you but given the massive amount of ramp space, two runways, and no airspace to share with nearby major airports I don’t think it’s insane enough to call a quick takeoff in those conditions without at least an ‘expedite’ call. I feel like San Diego with the unique approach / single runway / volume and Nashville with their narrow alleys would be more challenging for overall operations.

Austin is pretty busy for a non-Bravo airport, but clearing a 737 to takeoff when there’s a 767 on short final in CATIII visual conditions seems like a very poor choice…this isn’t Heathrow or JFK where runway utilization has to be absolutely maximized. Hats off to the FedEx pilot for staying cool and focused. That felt ‘Air Canada landing on the taxiway’ levels of danger close.

On the social media angle I’m glad it appears RRISD deleted a few comments on their Facebook page, when they announced school is open tomorrow. Within five minutes of the announcement there were 3 people griping about how can they send their kids to school when there’s no power or what are the plans to get rid of the dangerous hanging limbs. 90% of the time it’s women who seem to never want their kids in school. If our house didn’t have power I’d be itching to get the kids into a warm environment with some mental stimulation beyond Roblox or riding their bikes. Pisses me off. Home school them if you need 24/7 control or have them take another day off…a couple unexcused absences won’t keep them out of A&M. Either way, whining on Facebook isn’t going to influence an entire district.

Was WN taking longer than tower expected when they said they were ready for departure? Wondering if they had to do a static takeoff to run up the motors in icing conditions, and tower was cutting it too close with FedEx on short final. I’d imagine one of the scariest things as a pilot has to be starting a go around with a similar-performance bird underneath you, and being unaware if they’re aborting or on the roll.

Got nothing to add except my heart/prayers/juju/naoch goes out to y’all. In 2021 we went about 14 hours without, then sporadically on/off for three more days but never reached Mogadishu-levels of frozen household…and it was still misery, plus y’all don’t have any snow for the kids to play in. Can’t imagine 100 hours.

Well what good is our billion dollar Jewish space laser if we aren’t going to use it?

Damn you for not having this two years ago. I’d have been all over it.

Sheets of ice are randomly falling off my roof and I cringe as it sounds just like trees crashing. I have ptsd from ice and trees. Fuck you ‘mother’ fucking nature. Lil bitch

Yeah waking up to play ‘thunder or tree’ is not a fun one