Octopus Overlords

You know a lid is too tight when you run it under hot water and still struggle to open it using channel locks.

Volusia County deputies free a stuck Mola Mola fish with a lasso

VOLUSIA COUNTY, Fla. — Talk about the one that didn’t get away: Two Volusia County Sheriff’s Office deputies help a stuck Mola Mola fish. The pair hoped into action to save the large, flat fish stuck in a shallow area near Ponce Inlet. The deputies used a lasso to drag it from the shore. The unique sea creature is also known as an ocean sunfish and can be quite big: 14 feet vertically and 10 feet horizontally and weighing about 5,000 pounds. Experts say they eat jelly fish and usually don't pose a threat to humans.

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Mola mola........mola mola.

Sounds like a song from the sixties.

Ah, Wooley bulley.

dbt1949 wrote: Wed Feb 05, 2025 8:46 pm Mola mola........mola mola.

Sounds like a song from the sixties.

Ah, Wooley bulley.

Daehawk wrote: Wed Feb 05, 2025 10:02 pm

dbt1949 wrote: Wed Feb 05, 2025 8:46 pm Mola mola........mola mola.

Sounds like a song from the sixties.

Ah, Wooley bulley.

Same thought I just had (possibly because I just recently saw that.)

I’m reasonably sure I’m the only person wearing a Blood Incantation t-shirt to the corporate Top Golf event tonight.

Skinypupy wrote: Thu Feb 06, 2025 12:49 am I’m reasonably sure I’m the only person wearing a Blood Incantation t-shirt to the corporate Top Golf event tonight.

When you cant be cool be different ...They have some great artwork for their band though.

dbt1949 wrote: Wed Feb 05, 2025 8:46 pm Mola mola........mola mola.

Sounds like a song from the sixties.

Ah, Wooley bulley.

Our high school song started with
Bohla, bohla.
Or whatever the spelling was.

Utah? Would not have guessed that. I have no doubts about Florida's growth, we travel around the state occasionally and the new housing developments and the new apartment complexes are springing up constantly. Still, as a rep from the Florida department of Forestry mentioned in a presentation a few month ago, half of Florida is still covered with forest. Add to that places like the Everglades and the protected wetlands, the farms and the ranches, and it's no wonder that construction seems to be packed into areas rather than spread out.

jztemple2 wrote: Fri Feb 07, 2025 2:48 pm Utah? Would not have guessed that.

/shrug
If you consider the math behind "% based increase" - then I could easily see Utah being the winner of all the 'wastelands' (don't get me wrong, I think Utah is gorgeous), it has the most expansive urban/suburban areas that explain that % growth. It's easy when you start with a really small population.

Skinypupy wrote: Thu Feb 06, 2025 12:49 am I’m reasonably sure I’m the only person wearing a Blood Incantation t-shirt to the corporate Top Golf event tonight.

Way to mix business with pleasure!

Unagi wrote: Fri Feb 07, 2025 2:59 pm

jztemple2 wrote: Fri Feb 07, 2025 2:48 pm Utah? Would not have guessed that.

/shrug
If you consider the math behind "% based increase" - then I could easily see Utah being the winner of all the 'wastelands' (don't get me wrong, I think Utah is gorgeous), it has the most expansive urban/suburban areas that explain that % growth. It's easy when you start with a really small population.

There's been a TON of tech growth in Utah over the past 10 years. Silicon Slopes is legit and has brought an absolute shitload of people into the state...as afternoon traffic can attest.

Alexa : "When was the first Pacman Arcade Game"


Curious what insane answer anyone else gets.

This whole thread is a riot. (Context: superbowl.)

Jack the Ripper definitively id'd?

Jack the Ripper’s identity revealed after DNA match, historian says

Aaron Kosminski was found to be a 100% DNA match to Jack the Ripper
Historian Russell Edwards made the discovery
A descendant of Kosminski made the revelation possible

He became a barber once in the British capitol.

Indeed.

The "evidence" doesn't seem to have a particularly rigorous chain of custody and the DNA analysis may be seriously flawed.

In September 2014, author Russell Edwards claimed in the book Naming Jack the Ripper to have proved Kosminski's guilt. In 2007, he had bought a shawl which he believed to have been left at a murder scene and gave it to biochemist Jari Louhelainen to test for DNA. A peer-reviewed article on the DNA analysis was published in the Journal of Forensic Sciences in 2019. Scientists from Innsbruck Medical University criticised the paper and its conclusions, substantiating that there were mistakes and (mis)assumptions made by its authors, and the journal printed an expression of concern.

Overall, this feels more like tabloid fodder than serious science. It's kind of old news, so I don't know why it's popping up again now.

Why in the world would FedEx tracking be impossible with a generic ad blocker turned on. Why should they need a gazillion intrusive ad features functioning to provide paid for customer service?

A lot of ad blockers also block scripts that some sites use legitimately.

The problem is, getting the blocker to allow those scripts while blocking the intrusive ad scripts is a pain in the ass, as it's not easy to sort through 50 different technical script names to find the one that's causing the problem, especially when unblocking one script often triggers a dozen more that need to be checked.

In other words, they break it in such a way that the only practical solution is to turn off your ad blocker.

I usually solve it by opening the page in a Firefox container tab (which isolates everything related to the site, and keeps it away from other site data/tracking.) I allow it until I get the info I need, then everything it left behind vanishes when I close the tab.

In the case of tracking, I use a third-party tracker anyway. I started doing that when they all started obscuring the package progress info ("Your package is in the system and headed to you".) Just copy-paste the tracking number in.

https://parcelsapp.com/en/tracking/

https://www.parcelous.com/

Nice. Thank you!

New renters moved in. New attack dog left outside all of the time even in this cold. Who'da guessed?

LordMortis wrote: Fri Feb 14, 2025 8:54 am New renters moved in. New attack dog left outside all of the time even in this cold. Who'da guessed?

What state?
There may be animal cruelty laws.

Punisher wrote: Sat Feb 15, 2025 10:34 pm

LordMortis wrote: Fri Feb 14, 2025 8:54 am New renters moved in. New attack dog left outside all of the time even in this cold. Who'da guessed?

What state?
There may be animal cruelty laws.

Michigan. Looked in to them. Too specific and hard to pursue. In the meantime, I'd have to worry about retribution while waiting for a municipality that would think I'm just being the difficult one.

LordMortis wrote: Sun Feb 16, 2025 6:21 am

Punisher wrote: Sat Feb 15, 2025 10:34 pm

LordMortis wrote: Fri Feb 14, 2025 8:54 am New renters moved in. New attack dog left outside all of the time even in this cold. Who'da guessed?

What state?
There may be animal cruelty laws.

Michigan. Looked in to them. Too specific and hard to pursue. In the meantime, I'd have to worry about retribution while waiting for a municipality that would think I'm just being the difficult one.

Do they have any shelter for the dog at all? That seems to be a requirement in MI. Since they are new renters, maybe putting an anonynmous printout of the MI law on their door would give them a heads-up that "the neighborhood" cares about it?

(this made me think of those "Don't turn into your parents" commercials. This is exactly the advice my mother would give. So - yeah, feel free to 'reality' it)

Unagi wrote: Sun Feb 16, 2025 9:21 am Do they have any shelter for the dog at all? That seems to be a requirement in MI. Since they are new renters, maybe putting an anonynmous printout of the MI law on their door would give them a heads-up that "the neighborhood" cares about it?

(this made me think of those "Don't turn into your parents" commercials. This is exactly the advice my mother would give. So - yeah, feel free to 'reality' it)

Two tenants ago made a simple junk plywood doghouse. That was when neighbors went from simple having attack dogs to somehow having an amenity where they want to leave them outside all of the time. The landlord should demolished the thing but now I think he uses it as selling point. He should get rid of the illegal firepit but I think he uses it as a selling point. He should clean the kitch and pallets of out of the yard but there they remain. Etc... If the city doesn't hold slumlords accountable and the slumlords don't do anything about the tenants, my recourse is to get out. I'm too stubborn and tired to go back to work to get another mortgage because I was too dumb to walk away from this one when everyone else did circa 2009/2010 and slumlords got a strong foothold in the area. Unfortunately, I felt like in a civil society you do the right thing and I did not see that slumlords would buy up houses at auctions and then leave the area ruinous.

To your anonymous question, everyone has monitors nowadays and notes just leave people to take offense. I've debated sending complaints to the landlord and documenting them but ultimately the municipality wants you to work with your neighbors first. I've tried polite and friendly working with different renters in the past, when the world was less openly hostile and police presence was more responsive than it is now. It has never worked well. At least two frozen weeks in, these guys look better than the last guys who were way better than two tenants ago.

it is was it is. I just sphexishly vent as every change brings MotS and will continue to do so until it's time to pay rent again and move to a retired community of renters. That won't be in the budge for more than a few years to come. Maybe one day, I will find a new F2F social circle both making venting less a thing and venting to them instead of a BBS. I probably shouldn't do it in random randomness. Maybe I'll make an "Ignore me while I'm venting thread."

Edit: Dog might actually be inside right now. It didn't come out to attack the fence line while shoveled the driveway. Oh please let this this be a thing.

Perhaps report them to a third-party animal welfare group?

It's kind of fascinating to think about how much work goes into keeping Wikipedia accurate and useful.

I finally for once had good dreams last night. I had a bunch of different dreams and they were all slightly connected with each other but not by much. But every one of them were nice dreams . I loved it. Woke up feeling refreshed more than I have in a long while.

Isgrimnur wrote: Fri Feb 21, 2025 12:31 pm Exhausted Friends Slowly Realize They Were Playing Board Game Wrong Entire 6 Hours

Isgrimnur wrote: Fri Feb 21, 2025 12:31 pm Exhausted Friends Slowly Realize They Were Playing Board Game Wrong Entire 6 Hours

:p

It gets much more enjoyable if you remove "powerful birds card" aka ravens IMO. That's not even just a house rule anymore but rather an actual recognized game variant, as it is an available option in BGA/Steam, etc... Now if they could do the same thing for eagles in Ark Nova. I'd like you to get on that, please.

Oddly enough, Wing is on of the few boardgames I've bought in the last six or seven years where I didn't need to go get an FAQ or read through BGG for rules clarifications. Even my current favorite, Forrest Shuffle, hits me with confusion with the mole and carpenter bee enough that I had to have them clarified.

I got an email saying Amazon coins will be phased out soon. They will disappear and the app store along with it. They suggest you use them quickly. But they also state all apps from the store will cease to work too...so seems wasted money. It says any coins still owned will be refunded but it doesn't say how or what they are worth. I have 1000. i contacted support and they can only tell me the same info..so just wait I guess.

I've never heard of Amazon coins.

Funny enough me either and I had 1000. I never purchased any so I guess I got them from purchases over time..maybe game ones.

From what I can gather, this shut-down seems to affect the Amazon Appstore on Android (who knew that was a thing), but it will still remain active on Fire devices. It seems like a nothingburger if you've never actually purchased or installed something on a non-Fire Android device from the Amazon Appstore rather than from the Google store. I'd imagine that the Amazon Appstore on Android used "coins" as a way of getting around paying Google its platform take, but that's just a WAG.

The only Amazon apps I have on my phone were installed from the Google store, not the Amazon Appstore, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I guess.

Don't go and spend your coins. If you have any that aren't spent as of the cutoff date, they'll be automatically refunded.

The Appstore was garbage, for what it's worth. I had sideloaded Google Play onto my Fire tablet within minutes of first turning it on. And given that they're not just removing the Android version, they're also removing the coins, it makes me think that they'll be providing even less support for the terrible version left on their tablets. That leaves them with the Chromebook of tablets with minimal app support.

A couple of weeks ago they announced that they were locking down their ebook downloads for product owners. Now they're apparently reducing future functionality for their tablets. Amazon is not known for treating their customers well, and they seem to be doubling down.

At the barbershop getting a haircut for one of the Wonder Twins. Whatever ESPN variant they have on is currently showing the Rock Skipping National Championships. The announcers are taking this all VERY seriously, which just adds to the hilarity of it all.

In case you’re wondering, the world record skips is 88.

EDIT: They just signed off with “It’s a great day to toss your rocks!”

Skinypupy wrote: Sat Feb 22, 2025 1:47 pm At the barbershop getting a haircut for one of the Wonder Twins. Whatever ESPN variant they have on is currently showing the Rock Skipping National Championships. The announcers are taking this all VERY seriously, which just adds to the hilarity of it all.

In case you’re wondering, the world record skips is 88.

88? That's insane. I would have guessed like 16 or so.

Jaymann wrote: Sat Feb 22, 2025 2:48 pm

Skinypupy wrote: Sat Feb 22, 2025 1:47 pm At the barbershop getting a haircut for one of the Wonder Twins. Whatever ESPN variant they have on is currently showing the Rock Skipping National Championships. The announcers are taking this all VERY seriously, which just adds to the hilarity of it all.

In case you’re wondering, the world record skips is 88.

88? That's insane. I would have guessed like 16 or so.

Based upon my own personal experience, 6 would be more likely.