Your yearly reminder that the original Paddington Bear stuffed toy was designed and made by Shirley Clarkson and given to her son: Jeremy Clarkson.

Yes, that Jeremy Clarkson. You know, the “Speed and Power!” guy.

(Although this was not the origin of the character himself. Michael Bond bought a generic toy bear from a toy shop and named it after nearby Paddington station. He wrote some stories using the bear as a character, and then they got published, and then he probably got very rich.)

You just need one water bucket.

Glunk. Tss, tss, tss, tss, tss.

You bought a diamond pickaxe too, right?

Ah, I see. So it’s cool when we do it (fossil fuel and ag subsidies, the auto industry bailout in 2008, etc.) but not when they do it.

Got it.

undermining regional carmakers

I think the word they’re looking for is in fact “outcompeting.”

Yutaro-Katori-with-butterfly-meme: Is this capitalism?

The nomenclature I always hear is, “Experiencing a higher than expected call volume,” and since no one can prove how low their expectations actually are there is no crack in which to insert the prybar of legal complaint.

America.

Retailers are allowed to disclaim the merchantability and fitness for any particular purpose of the items they sell and most do. The customer is free to refuse, of course, via the simple expedient of going away and buying it somewhere else.

This is partially a blame-shifting exercise to reduce costs, yes, but it’s also a shield against the ceaseless horde of dipshits we have in this country who will willfully misuse a product and then immediately try to sue the retailer they bought it from when it doesn’t work or they hurt themselves with it via their own stupidity. It is much easier from a legal perspective to make a blanket “we don’t imply this product is applicable for any purpose” statement vs. having to explicitly predict whatever cockamamie thing someone might try it on and have to say “no, moron, that chainsaw is not suitable for cutting bricks,” etc.

Read all that fine print on the back of your receipt some day. You will be enlightened and, most likely, also infuriated.

For the classic 1950’s atomic war scenario, probably more for flying glass and so forth.

Obviously it’s not going to save you from a direct hit. You need to get in a fridge to be protected from that sort of thing…

I have nothing of value to add other than I used to have those exact same plates. I bought them at K-Mart.

All it did to you was cosmetic.

Windows 10’s “feature” updates consistently also re-enable the “fast startup” option on my machine when they install. Which, on my particular motherboard and SSD combination, causes Windows to take about 30 minutes to boot when left enabled for reasons I have never been able to comprehend. A regular cold boot only takes like 20 seconds, so… I definitely tend to notice when it does this behind my back yet again.

How is bird so smol, but also so tall.

Important note: This is not Photoshopped.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SRLBQ8trhk

It is an actual thing that was built.

Was it actually him? I was under the impression that history did not relate what happened to him afterwards, nor who he was. That’s not to say the CCP did not murder a couple of thousand people during the crackdown regardless, because they did, but I have never seen a verifiable claim that a picture of any particular corpse actually was the Tank Man. There are numerous theories I’ve seen floated over the years alleging what may have happened to him afterwards ranging from him being caught and imprisoned, executed, living anonymously in China, or fleeing to Taiwan. All of them are unverified and, of course, mutually exclusive.

The tank operators absolutely did attempt to (and succeeded at) avoid running him over. That much is plainly visible in the video. Whatever happened after the video ended is undocumented and pure conjecture. Plenty of well documented atrocities actually were committed that day, before and after that moment, so there’s not much sense in inventing new ones and bickering over details we haven’t actually got.

The cojones on this dude.

That’s probably because the current Abrahamic incarnation of god and his attributes are carefully designed to be a non-falsifiable claim.

So the point is actually rendered moot. God is according to the True Believer invisible, intangible, only works in “mysterious ways,” and cannot be observed to have any influence on the universe, nor leaves any evidence of his existence except “faith.” By those metrics, it’s irrelevant whether he exists or not. A hypothetical force that exists but doesn’t affect anything is interchangeable from a functional standpoint from something that doesn’t exist.

See also: Russel’s Teapot.

I got my FZ6R that way. I bought it for $3000 with 299 miles on it. Not a typo. Two-nine-nine. Homeboy told me he rode it once. His dad put the remaining miles on it, but apparently much preferred his Harley.

Whatever. Mine now.

I have one of each…

What happens is, the alcohol component would get cooked out of it near instantly. Same as with cooking with wine.

The only bees with stingers are the female ones, though.

For anyone wondering, belay carbiners typically lock in some manner but those used on quickdraws for anchors and removable protection (nuts, cams, etc.) typically don’t.

A carbiner is strongest when its gate is closed, which is why load rated ones will have not only a gate closed rating (the highest, usually 20-22 kN or even more for steelies), a gate open, and also a lateral load rating. Your belay carbiner, that is the one clipped to your harness and is keeping you affixed to the rope so you don’t hit the deck, is typically not redundant. It absolutely, positively, cannot fail. This is typically the biggest, meanest, strongest 'biner you own and will also be a locking one. You do not want brushing up against things, knocking against it, etc. to cause it to come open. You don’t want it to be open if it suddenly experiences a shock load, i.e. you fall off the wall, or conversely on your belayer’s end if it needs to bear the load of you falling off the wall. And you don’t want it coming unclipped and lost when you’re halfway up, because that’s how you die.

Meanwhile, the 'biners on your anchors and protection theoretically have some redundancy, i.e. you should be clipped to more than one point along your route with more than one anchor and carbiner. But you need to be able to clip and unclip these readily, because you may well be doing so with one hand while you’re dangling from your fingernails with the other. Thus they do not lock, and you can clip them to something by just slapping the gate against it.

Your keychain says “not for climbing use” on it. My keychain says Desert Eagle .50 Petzl Angie S, 20 kN gate closed, 9 kN gate open, and 7 kN laterally.

Or Geoff.