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We can all be glad you weren't in tanks, I guess.

Balderdash. A body does not just explode into obliteration like a water balloon on impact. It's more like a sack full of steaks, sausages and bones. Sure, stuff breaks, cracks, splits, leaks, and what-not. But the body as a whole usually remains pretty much intact. Even on hard-as-concrete sun baked desert dirt. If Cooper went in, it might be grim and gory, but he would be laying there easily recognizable as a body, still in the rig and his clothes.

Yes, skydiving deaths occur. I used to read the back of the skydiving magazine at the place I skydived, that's where the recent deaths were reported. As I remember, we were most concerned with bumping into another jumper (not an issue with Cooper) and then concerned with hitting power lines (Cooper may have hit those, but then where is the body?). Point is, skydiving deaths occur for many reasons. The percentage of jumps to deaths is very low. Many of the deaths occur due to an accident in the air, or on the landing. If Cooper got the chute open, then history would lean towards his survival. How many skydivers die from a no pull? How many of those no pulls were due to hitting another jumper, or having a heart attack, etc? Once you dig into the deaths, the percentage of deaths to jumps is very digestible. It also seems that you're suggesting if he didn't pull that there would not be much to find. No body? No parts? No bones? Do the bones disintegrate? What about clothes? The rig, the money bag? You stated "I agree with all that as stated. I don't have a "died in the jump" theory, I'm just saying the raw facts would suggest someone disappeared forever that day or shortly after, and the only reason we resist that conclusion is because it sucks as an end to this story." I disagree that the only reason we resist the conclusion is that it sucks as an end to his story. Most of resist this conclusion due to our interpretation of the information. I personally think people like to say he died simply because that's what they've been reading for years. Sure, he could have died, but I lean towards him living. Plenty of cases go unsolved forever. I find dying in the jump a lot more exciting than he took a flight home and went back to his blue collar job and then died when he was 80.

Definitely. When people think they need guns to protect themselves 24/7 - when they think they need guns in the SHOWER in case they get broken into - things are broken. They have been sold a bill of goods by gun manufacturers, and that message has been reinforced by politicians who use fear to manipulate and control them.

Hey, another school shooting/mass casualty event will really trigger the libs so they're not that bad. I mean, thoughts and prayers and all that but DAMN that really pisses off those stuck up woke libtards! Woohoo!

Of course you'll claim it was a joke or an intentional libtard trigger, but it wasn't. You think that way like you were still wearing a green suit to work; your identity is your guns. Like your climate change position it works for you because it is in the face of others. Both make you feel more powerful. How you are unable to see that publicly promoting a cache of unnecessary, and frankly ridiculous, guns isn't a major part of what drives the gun culture in America is a mystery.

Brent has to rely on things nobody says in this forum to argue against. He'd lose otherwise.

Nobody has said that. Several people have repeatedly made the point that the mass shooting can’t occur without them…but I guess a few more dead kids is a small price to pay for a kick-ass picture of a kitchen counter full of guns!

The general thought pattern for new Cooper people is that they initially believe he most likely died in the jump but as they learn more they shift toward survival.. that is based on learning the data and information from jumpers.. not from wanting him to have survived. Take the jump in isolation, set aside the other variables like money find, search, missing people and no body.. in Cooper's jump conditions, over that terrain the jump was very survivable if he pulled. The primary determinant for life or death for Cooper was whether he pulled or not. It is possible he pulled and died but that is a very low probability. When you fold in all the other variables it becomes a complex system that can't be analyzed easily or even linearly.

It's ALWAYS something other than guns. It couldn't possibly be guns despite the biggest difference between US and other western cultures is the ready availability of guns in the US.

As the Russian Duma votes to keep its members tax affairs confidential, there's plemty of the same going on here. Nadhim Zahawi was briefly Chancellor of the Exchequer last year (in charge of all the nation's money including revenue), while it now turns out he was negotiating a massive tax settlement and penalty for non payment with the revenue service. So 20 years ago he founded a company, and every single one of his shares in that company were registered as belonging to Balshore Investments, an offshore company run by his non-domiciled father - both things that provide a clear pathway to UK tax exemption if his father actually owned the shares. Then, when Zahawi sold nearly thirty million pounds worth of shares in that business he decided not to pay any tax whatsoever on the proceeds until HMRC noticed and said 'hang on - that actually belongs to you and now you owe us a lot of money'. Now that it's become public Zahawi is pretending that it was all a completely innocent mistake, as if trying to cheat the nation out of millions of pounds in tax was not the entire point of the corporate structure he chose in the first place. Bonus points - at the time he repeatedly threatened to sue anyone reporting the absolute truth that he was under investigation over unpaid tax and facing a massive penalty. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-64410490

The dysfunction is in the culture not the guns.

I have to appreciate the mini-14 at the bottom. Back east where I grew up they used them to get rid of ground hogs in the cattle pastures. Perfect tool for that job.

but it wasn't a risky jump if he pulled the ripcord,, I thought that it was for a long time but the data and jumpers convinced me that the jump itself in those conditions was easily survivable.

Of all the things related to this case, the one I most wish I wasn't able to say I know something about, is this one. It turns out it's the one thing I have some "expertise" on. Without going into too much detail, there just wouldn't be much to find. The best reference point I can give is when David Letterman used to chuck stuff off a 5-story tower. Remember that almost none of it landed with a "thud," like in the movies. In fact, the whole point of that schtick was to watch what actually happened to the stuff. Human bodies are essentially water balloons. There's not much holding us together. An impact in a car at 40mph is plenty enough to kill us. What happens to us after a fall at terminal velocity is not pretty, and doesn't leave much over. It's not like in the movies. I see the "auger" statement made here; that is not how physics works. We are the water balloon, the earth is the brick wall. That energy has to go somewhere. It goes into the water balloon. It is not the slightest bit unimaginable that this happened under some brush, and by the time the spring or summer came around, anything organic was eaten by animals and anything else was covered over by debris. The point is, a body not being found does not in any way mean one didn't fall there. The more rare outcome would be to find one.

Because it allows grown men to feel like naughty boys Wendy P.

Neat image of Cooper Copycat Francis Goodell's money bag. Looks to be roughly the same dimension as the package described by Milnes: 1 foot x 1 foot x 8 inches. While not exact it's a decent analog for Cooper's money bag.

But not Elise Stefanik. She see's no comparison to the horror that is Biden's transgressions: "In the case of Vice President Mike Pence, he came forward and proactively reached out and is following the process. In the case of Joe Biden, he has had classified documents going back to his time in the Senate where he started serving before I was born. So this is a long-standing national security threat," Stefanik said. and "Well, let's highlight the difference here in what the consequences have been. You had the FBI raid Mar-a-Lago. You did not see any of that happen for President Joe Biden who illegally did this," Stefanik added. "What also is different is President Trump as president has the right to declassify documents," Stefanik claimed. "So the media should cover the fact that the FBI has been weaponized against President Trump and clearly has covered up for sitting President Joe Biden." The blatant hypocricy of these people is gobsmacking. Horrendous challenges on the world stage, potentially life altering for all alive, staring us all in the eye and these pathetic demagogues can't abstain from being stupidly petty for a single moment. And it's not just in America, it's everywhere. Surely this condition marks the denouement of human civilization.

And with that fine leadership example of criminal Lt. General Michael Flynn.

Clearly not that different. Look - if you don’t think these films are too dangerous to show to kids, Disney doesn’t think the films are too dangerous to show to kids, and the films are still on show… what in the fucking shit are you actually whinging about? Seriously, what kind of rampant snowflakery is it that you’ve managed to become offended by Disney showing films that you think should be shown? And you wanna talk about hypocrisy? The entire right wing anti-cancelling culture war is based around the idea that things should be talked about. A University students association decides to bar a holocaust denier? Well why don’t you talk to them and defend your case through argument instead!? As if there was any argument that hasn’t been won a 100 times over at this point. Some venue decides to ban a pro-Confederacy speaker from appearing? Well why don’t you turn up defend your case through argument instead! As if there’s any argument left to win. And now, here’s Disney saying look, some small parts of these films aren’t 100% ok by modern standards but they’re not that bad and it’s more worthwhile talking about the changes in society than hiding them. And that’s not fucking good enough for you all of a sudden! You still find an excuse to bitch and moan and cry about how unfair it is because that’s all the modern right knows how to do these days. There’s literally nothing Disney could do to stop you pretending to be their poor defenceless victim because you’ve decided that they’re on the other side of this so called culture war you’re all so desperate to push. Just get the fuck over it already.

Indeed. But until Trump decided to actually steal classified material we didn't know that having some in your exit box was normal. Trump will skate because of this reality, and he should. But regardless of your political flavor you really need to wonder just how secure our secrets are and who should have access.