balki1867

27 minutes ago, The Evil Genius said:

 

Seems like they'd be setting themselves up for a lawsuit though if someone followed the fake part of the map and drove across the lawn/in to the house.

This is actually small potatoes for the mapmaker.  One of my favorite stories was the complexities of rendering a map in Kashmir-- the disputed region between India and Pakistan.

Legally speaking-- they had to render a different map depending on whether a device was in India or Pakistan.  If you were in India, the map of India showed the India-Pakistan border as if Kashmir was completely part of India.  Likewise, if you were in Pakistan, it was rendered as if Kashmir was completely part of Pakistan.

More practically speaking, the region is split by a line of control and India and Pakistan each control a piece of Kashmir.  If you're on the Indian side of the LOC, you get the Indian version of the map, etc.

Now here's the really tricky part-- if you're trying to drive from one part of Kashmir to another, theoretically speaking, regardless of which country Kashmir belongs to, you should be able to drive between two points of the region.  In reality though, you might be crossing a military checkpoint between the two countries and it's not realistic to drive between those two points. So basically, they have to render one map based on one set of logic to appease political entities, while computing directions based on a completely different map that's based on reality.

Wash/rinse/repeat this in every disputed border in the world- Korea, Ukraine, Israel/Gaza/West Bank, China/Taiwan (luckily you can't drive this one :D), etc.

The mass short on $DJT might end up having the opposite effect on the stock. At some point people will need to cover their short and actual shares will be in short supply. It’s already speculated that trump is using the stock offering to let his Russian pals invest in him. They’d be more than happy to refuse to sell and create a short squeeze.

Also WTF happened to Dean Cain?

LOL, Paul McCartney is like 80 years old and is out there collaborating with Beyonce, while Kid Rock is busy starting a feud with... check notes... Planet Fitness.

7 hours ago, GhostofSparta said:

Well the good news for Kyle is that with scores that low he could still easily become a cop. He just has to hope that score doesn't make him TOO smart for most police forces.

you joke but… https://abcnews.go.com/amp/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-cops/story?id=95836

“A man whose bid to become a police officer was rejected after he scored too high on an intelligence test has lost an appeal in his federal lawsuit against the city.”

13 hours ago, zCommander said:

It took Google a whole week+ to realize the bridge is no longer there? It should have been done in mere hours instead. 

i used to work for a competitor to Google maps and it turns out that outside of the technical reasons for a lag in officially removing a segment of road (e.g.: replication across multiple clouds, internal processes to make sure major segments of road don’t get removed haphazardly), people also get really emotional about maps.
 

We literally dealt with riots because of how disputed international borders were drawn, or how a controversial road was named.
 

It seems silly but it would’ve looked really insensitive to just remove the Key bridge from the map while Baltimore was still dealing with the crisis. Marking the road as closed for a few days instead achieves the same result.

LOL, one of the few bright spots of the Jan 6 was the video clip that surfaced of all the nutjobs at DCA waiting for their flights, spotting Lindsey Graham and then harassing him. I guess we've lost that now.

Streaming the game on mlb.tv-- Jim Palmer just went on a random stream of consciousness rant about Mickey Tettleton, Elton John and Blink 182.

1 hour ago, Koolblue13 said:

<Without glory, it’s just a hole>

Jerruh Jones knows the feeling…

3 hours ago, Destino said:

I heard the bridge was vaxxed, weakening the steel with estrogen DNA. 

 

 
Pfizer or Moderna though? I need to figure out how to link this to Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift.

56 minutes ago, Metalhead said:

The dude was probably in a state of shock and having survivor's guilt. Give him peace.

Seriously. If I somehow came out of an experience like that unscathed, I’d just want to go home. He or she is processing the likely deaths of 6 coworkers, while being grateful to survive, while also processing the guilt that goes along with that. That’s a lot to unpack.  

I know it's popular to rip on the ineffectiveness/incompetence of government agencies, but the actions those individuals took this morning, literally in a matter of minutes, was outright heroic. They had processes and systems in place to get the SOS signal and do something about it.  And when the time came, they took action and probably saved dozens of lives. 

My heart goes out to the six people that are likely dead, but this could've been so much worse than it was.  There's no way they respond this quickly without having assessed the risk beforehand, making plans for how to address it if/when it happens, having communications in place to hear the SOS and talk to each other, and then putting competent people in place to take action incredibly quickly.

1 hour ago, The Evil Genius said:

Cue blaming the bridge accident on the covid jab and wokeness. 

 

Oh and DEI.

 

Probably MS13 too since it's near Virginia.

If we can blame things on DEI, can we also go back in time and blame random events on the lack of DEI? 

If so, then I contend, without any proof whatsoever, that Abraham Lincoln wouldn't have been shot if he'd hired black bodyguards.

Just for everyone's reference-- the sizes of container ships in 1970 (when the bridge was designed) versus today is different by a huge factor.  Ship sizes are measured in 'twenty foot equivalents' (TEUs) which is basically the number of containers the ship can hold.  (I am NOT a shipping expert but feel free to correct me).

In 1970, when the bridge was built, the typical ship was 1,000-2,000 TEUs.  Today there are ships out there that are well above 20,000 TEUs. (I'm extrapolating from this article: Evolution and Upsizing of Container Vessels (marineinsight.com)). This is having all kinds of impacts on the shipping industry and the cities and thrive off it.

Even if the bridge was designed for a collision with a boat, there's no way it was designed to withstand a modern container ship.

This is awfully horrific.  I watched the video of the last 2-3 minutes and watching all those headlights traversing the bridge made my stomach turn.

3 hours ago, tshile said:

The “<whatever party> is now doomed and won’t exist much longer” stuff gets play every time a party loses, it seems. 

I think it’s 100% different this time. The previous iterations of this sentiment were driven by over-reaction to demographic trends or the oddities of our electoral processes (republicans felt invincible after 2004– they won the election mightily and red states were slowly growing larger. Their confidence was completely logical until Virginia flipped from red to blue, and Colorado ceased to be a swing state).

In this instance though, the Republican Party is literally becoming a criminal organization. I don’t think hardcore MAGAs will suddenly change their political views but I do think they won’t have a party to represent them after our courts bury the GOP.

Serious question— what happens after the Republican Party destroys itself? I’m pretty liberal but a system where there’s only one major party is not a good thing— we need a legitimate conservative party that actually has conservative values. All of the third parties waiting in the wings are also wackos. 

13 minutes ago, Cooked Crack said:

All the terrorists flying on Spirit

LOL does this libertarian scholar have any ideas on how a large building should prepare itself for JetBlue plowing its fuselage into their 78th floor under his new guidelines?

Also relevant (jump to 3:56):

Another Boeing accident in Houston this morning…

Bible fan-fiction is a genre I never thought would exist, yet here we are.

Have they announced what time Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce are coming to each person's house to take our guns and forcibly transition our kids' genders? I got a couple of things going on during the evenings this week, but I wanted to be home to get a selfie with them.  I even filed my 1040 extra early this year to get to the front of the list.

On 2/3/2024 at 6:59 PM, Cooked Crack said:

 

 

I just had my annual performance review too. It’s not always fun but the feedback is critical.

5 hours ago, Destino said:

 

LOL, that’s a great point. If it wasn’t for Taylor swift, the Republican self-victimization machine would be preaching about how the fix is already in for those hippie San Franciscans to defeat the Real Americans who work for a living and live in Kansas. (Yes I know Kansas City isn’t in Kansas, but I’m just running with the complete lack of logic)

On an unrelated note, I also have tickets to see Madonna in concert tonight-- between that and the new Billy Joel song, I'm not sure what decade it is.  Just need some Joe Gibbs and Cal Ripken, Jr. to round it out.

I'm a massive Billy Joel fan and based on the way they're promoting this, the lyrics of this song and how chummy he's been with the producer on Instagram, I have to think he's teasing a full album.

I'm also loving the fact that my 17-year-old niece listened to it this morning when it was released on Spotify and texted me because she was floored.