Weekend Open Thread

The smoke from your F5 key wafted over the North Wall just a second to late, Mr. Stone. Have a Ratty Cong for your Firstness.

I’m calling foul. Did anyone else’s monitor show a Red Hat Software test pattern as soon as the WOT dropped?

And it’s HACK-A-DOODLE-DOOOOOO time.

And here I was fucking around playing Apex legends on Xbox cause I took the day off and completely forgot it was 3 o’clock.

😭🥺🎉🥳. WOMP WOOOOOOMMMPPPP

JUST LIKE THE LADIES AT THE VIEW AND THE ENTIRE LIBERAL RHINO DEMOCRATIC ESTABLISHMENT

Happy Fuckery Friday to all of you 🖕🤪

… you can actually hear a plant growing? The rhubarb plant, famous for the pies one can make from it, grows up to an inch per day, and as it does, it pops, squeaks, and makes other noises. (I’d rather eat one than hear one, but it’s interesting nonetheless.)

… scientists are of two minds about why Venus rotates clockwise? The other seven planets in the Solar System rotate counterclockwise, but not Venus. Nobody is really sure of why, but there are two prevailing theories. One holds that, during the early days of the Solar System, Venus rotated just like all the other planets do, but a collision with another body of planetary size actually knocked its rotation in the opposite direction and slowed it down considerably. The other theory says Venus’ north pole actually flipped to point in the opposite direction due to the very dense, thick atmosphere of the planet. The heavy air combined with the Sun’s gravity and the friction between the mantle and core of the planet caused it to flip upside down. If that’s the case, then Venus does indeed rotate counterclockwise, but inverted. Additional trivia note: A day on Venus is longer than a year on Venus. In Earth terms, one Venusian year is 225 days. But one day on Venus lasts 243 Earth days. (Not that it matters, unless you’re on Venus.)

… raising a toast with your drinks has a historical source? In ancient Rome, people would drop a piece of toasted bread into their wine for good health. That’s where the “toast” came from. (I’ll drink to that.)

… which came first, plants or seeds? A botanical version of the old “chicken or egg” gag, the actual answer is that plants came before seeds. Early plants were more like moss and reproduced with single-cell spores, while multicellular seeds didn’t evolve for another 150 million years. (Now if they could only figure that out for chickens and eggs.)

… a portion of the Moon landing in 1969 was actually faked? No, not the flight, nor the landing itself. Those actually happened, despite what some silly people say. The faked part was the quarantine that Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong (1930-2012), Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin (born 1930), and Michael Collins (1930-2021) were required to stay in for 21 days once they arrived back on Earth. Though NASA was indeed concerned about the possibility of the astronauts bringing back some form of microbial life from outer space, they knew ahead of time that the quarantine they would be using wouldn’t have been much good if indeed some alien bugs managed to hitch a ride. And, as it turned out, no microbes came back, so the whole thing was for show.

… the Michelin “star” restaurant ratings were created to sell tires? In 1926, the Michelin Tire Company of France began awarding star ratings to restaurants. But the ratings had little to do with actual food, service and ambiance. Rather, they were awarded to encourage people to drive farther distances to eat, and thus wear down their car tires faster – and force them to buy more. (Ulterior motives exist everywhere!)

If you really want them to blow a gasket, ask them how Kamala Harris could possibly lose an election to the next Adolf Hitler.

PS
Derby Line VT