Octopus Overlords

Daehawk wrote: ↑Thu Jun 02, 2022 8:04 pm I was just thinking of the great comedians I grew up on in the 70s that you never hear of now days. Granted a lot died years ago but they never play their specials or tv shows anymore from way back.

People like Nipsey Russel , Rich Little , Flip Wilson , Redd Foxx , Andy Kaufman.

These were guys I grew up on in my young childhood. Either they had their own tv shows or were guests many many times on other's shows.

EDIT: For an offbeat comment I will say I loved Monster Squad in the 70s! .... I used to get it and Mod Squad mixed up..but it was Monster Squad I enjoyed.

LordMortis wrote: ↑Fri Jun 03, 2022 7:24 am Izzie, I need you! I can't find out if Costco quit carrying Folger's coffee. This figures directly in to whether I renew my membership in July. The best I can find is "out of stock" when it comes to looking at their online warehouse.

Anonymous Bosch wrote: ↑Fri Jun 03, 2022 11:09 am Not that it necessarily means anything to you in the Mitten State, but I was in Costco earlier this week and they had plenty of Folger's coffee stacked floor to ceiling. Also, product availability on Costco.com does not correlate at all with the products available at your local warehouse. So, if you want to find out for certain whether or not your local warehouse will still be carrying Folger's coffee, I'd suggest contacting them directly by phone.

Isgrimnur wrote: ↑Fri Jun 03, 2022 11:47 am Remind me, do they check membership cards on entry? And aren't the alcohol and food court available to non-members? If so, you can always go browse.

Isgrimnur wrote: ↑Fri Jun 03, 2022 11:47 am Remind me, do they check membership cards on entry? And aren't the alcohol and food court available to non-members? If so, you can always go browse.

According to Dr. Bret Collier, associate professor of wildlife ecology at Louisiana State University’s School of Renewable Natural Resources, “No, not at all, period. Ticks are not, in any manner, selected for by Virginia opossums.” He cites a 2021 peer-reviewed paper called “Are Virginia opossums really ecological traps for ticks? Groundtruthing laboratory operations,” by Dr. Cecilia Hennessy and Kaitlyn Hild of Eureka College’s Division of Science and Mathematics.

The assertions related to the tick-destroying powers of opossums mostly trace back to an August 2009 published study in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B journal, called “Hosts as ecological traps for the vector of Lyme disease.”

In that study, researchers in New York placed six captured species of small mammals and birds (white-footed mice, chipmunks, gray squirrels, opossums, catbirds, and veeries) into cages and then “inoculated” them on their heads and necks with 100 larval ticks. For the next four days—the amount of time deemed sufficient in the study for a tick to gorge and drop off a host—researchers counted the number of ticks that fell from the cages into a collection pan. Any ticks not accounted for directly were assumed to have been consumed or destroyed as the animals groomed themselves.

Squirrels and the half-dozen opossums in the study seemed to rid themselves of the most ticks, allegedly killing 83 to 96.5 percent of the ticks, with the opossums on the higher end of the scale. From these numbers, people extrapolated that opossums can eat up to 5,500 ticks each season, making them an “ecological trap” for ticks and a “net reducer” of the parasites.

According to Collier, the 2009 study looked at captive opossums, while Hennessy and Hild’s later work focused on wild ones. “[Hennessy and Hild’s] paper reviewed all the science—23 papers in all—on opossum foraging, stomach contents, and scat,” says Collier.

In the 2021 study, Hennessy and Hild used a dissecting microscope to look for ticks or tick body parts in the stomachs of 32 Virginia opossums from central Illinois. They found absolutely no evidence of ticks and concluded that ticks are not a preferred diet item for opossums.

Jaymann wrote: ↑Sat Jun 04, 2022 2:50 pm You can't write a valid check for $9,990,000 if you only have $1,000,000.

I think they meant $999,990.

Blackhawk wrote: ↑Sat Jun 04, 2022 4:00 pm

Jaymann wrote: ↑Sat Jun 04, 2022 2:50 pm You can't write a valid check for $9,990,000 if you only have $1,000,000.

I think they meant $999,990.

You also can't write a check for $999,990 if you just closed your account.