yoink

edit: this deserves a proper, non-phone post. While the US has more guns per head than any country on earth, the majority of those gun owners are both untrained and unorganised. Ask any military professional and they'll tell you that simply being able to shoot a gun doesn't mean that you'll use it properly when faced by an opponent trying to kill you. That's why we spend so much on training our military rather than just giving everyone an M16 and saying 'go to it, boys!'. The idea that the general populace could withstand an invading professional army in the current age is hollywood fantasy. And while it's true that a dedicated guerrilla force CAN make life difficult for an invading army, the idea of a land invasion scenario isn't how a big war will really pan out in the modern era. You don't NEED to put boots on the ground if you can control a country's power, communications and general infrastructure remotely.

Fuck. Fine. I fell for it.

Not unless it’s part of an Arabic language class, IMO.

I’m not a fan of gifs usually, but there are times when only this will do. Confused

What?

I’m in an at risk category, despite only being 40. Fingers crossed they don’t fuck up too badly this time. While, like Wendy I’d prefer to wait for more thorough testing, this virus would probably kill me if I catch it, or at the very least put me on a ventilator. Even a normal cold gives me severe bronchitis every time, sometimes multiple times a year... my lungs are shot. Because of that I’ll be getting it early. Maybe not immediately - I can work from home for a while and mitigate my risk by continuing the measures in place, but certainly in the first issue of the vaccine. If I was healthy I probably wouldn’t.

The promise is that in an equal contest we haven’t been beating the Chinese. Your statement indicated it’s not an equal contest. We were deliberately underplaying our hand, and I agree. But that’s a stupid point, because the Chinese will do exactly the same thing, so we’re back to equality. Which we lose at. Unless you’re contending either that the Chinese don’t hide their strength or that the US is hiding exponentially more powerful solutions than the Chinese are hiding, in which case I’d ask for your reasoning.

Ever occur to you that if we do that then China would probably be doing exactly the same?

They're going to do that to whoever is picked, regardless of if it's true or not. What Biden needs is an attack dog. Someone who can bite back, because that ain't Joe's strength.

Replying to these emails is the absolute worst thing you can do. It tells the scammer there's a real person reading the emails and that it's a monitored email address. If nothing else, that person can now sell your email to another criminal as a verified email address they might want to target with a different scam, or use in other nefarious ways. It's a real economy in the dark web. Just delete it.

My family in Torrence and Tarzana (LA) are thinking the same thing. All of them got what they describe as the worst chest infection they’ve ever had. One was diagnosed with bronchitis, another with pneumonia.

Hahahahaha!

A drug that has heart conditions as a side effect causes higher mortality in patients it's not approved for??? Color me shocked. Where did the idea of chloroquine being used first come from, anyway? Why THAT particular drug? It's not like we just started tossing every single drug available at a bunch of patients and had a paper come out on each saying 'nope, doesn't help'.

The worst thing is that they know it worked last time and fuck all was done about it. It's going to go into overdrive for this election.

Three times now, a drone from a nearby neighbors house has taken off and loitered about 50ft over our back yard while my wife is in the hot tub. It's a large drone with a camera on it. We've not seen or heard it flying at all at other times. I can see where it takes off from and lands. The owner is a young 20-something guy who lives with his mother and walks all over her. The police say they can't really do much as while it's illegal, it's not criminal. They could ask him to stop but that's about all and a restraining order is unlikely to be a quick or easy process. The law states that you are not allowed to interfere with or destroy the drone as it's technically running under FAA rules. There have been many stories of people being sued after doing this. So what do you do? My solution - The last time, I followed it back and walked into the back garden of the house as the guy was picking up the drone and asked him politely to stop flying over my house. I may or may not have been holding a baseball bat. I've not seen the drone since.

Conversely, back here I was stood near a guy who was very vocally complaining about being asked to leave a supermarket because he wasn’t wearing any protective gear and was handling all the fruit and produce (despite signs everywhere saying that masks are mandatory and to avoid touching anything you’re not buying). Actual conversation: ’FUCK YOU! It’s OPTIONAL! You can’t stop me shopping here’ ’Sir, This is my store and I can. Our rules are clearly posted. Please leave before I call the police.’ The manager got a round of applause.

I like this too. Can't believe it took ONE post to turn this into a Trump thread when it could have so easily been about applauding those doing an impossible task.

Ah. I’d forgotten that. Thanks!

If only I thought that Sanders could remotely compromise or work with anyone else a Biden/Sanders ticket could win. Bur he’s too inflexible, too idealistic and too proud to be a VP. I see your list is all women - I’m still not sure if a female VP will bring more votes to Biden than it will for Trump by people opposed to women in power.

I can tell you right now that most of the beaches down here have been closed for nearly 2 weeks with police enforcement. There are two notable exceptions. Imperial beach, in a very depressed area with a high Mexican population that no-one gives a shit about because they're poor, and Coronado beach, in in incredibly rich, white area who don't think rules should apply to them.

I’ve done about 160 on a bike on a UK motorway (topped out a Ducati 998). That’s the most scared I’ve ever been in my entire life, even with all the other dumb shit I’ve done. Even thinking about it now gives me the jibblies.

At the moment, people who knowingly act illegally and get hurt shouldn’t be admitted to hospital. Do it if you want, but don’t expect society to pick up your pieces when it’s struggling in a crisis. You get put to the back of the queue.

Absolutely. In fact if you disregard ALL the current cases then we're doing amazingly!

Time to put down the bourbon, Joe.

Hahaha! I've heard the reference before but I've never seen this until now. Fantastic!