@cinoclav AND… keep the rhino from raising your car in the air like a trophy after you cut it’s buddy into thirds?
Seriously though… what is your kid up to in school these days (grin). That is just the kind of thing late grade school kids seem to like. I ran a 5th grade school sleep over outdoor science camp and a non-sleepover 6th grade physics science camp and relating stuff to weird shit, farts, ducks that sink, albino skunks, spitting lamas, etc, they found endless fascinating.
@Kidsandliz he’s rocking along. starting 2nd grade next week (remotely for now). this was just some random thing i wondered after reading an article about a sinkhole that measured “6-7 washing machines across”. i figure if they’re not going to give measurements in metric/imperial, then i might as well start giving them in raccoons and rhinos.
@carl669@Kidsandliz
Digital Equipment Corporation VMS systems have a system parameter called TIMEPROMPTWAIT (the amount of time a booting system will wait for manual time entry if the time in its ‘time of year’ clock is invalid).
The value is given in microfortnights, which are about 1.2096 seconds each. For more information (though missing out on the DEC connection) see the FFF system of measurements
@carl669@duodec You sure they meant that to be in base 10? Seems to me it would be far more logical to make it in another base like, I don’t know, maybe base 669 in honor of carl? (snicker). Hmm probably isn’t a base 669 out there. Too lazy to google.
Bases are useful though. My uncle always engraved the combination to a lock on the back in base 7. My cousins were very well versed in base 7.
@Kidsandliz@unksol the average raccoon is 18-28", including tail. so, I just took the average of the average and used that. seems like a valid measurement.
@Kidsandliz@unksol well… there’s only 8 raccoons if using the average of the average raccoon size. but, if you take all 11 measurements of a raccoon 18"-28" (18,19,20,etc), the standard deviation is 3.3. or something like that.
@carl669@Kidsandliz@unksol
But isn’t that assuming a uniform distribution of racoon sizes? That confidence bracket has got to be yuuuge. Like at least ±4 racoons.
And if you had chosen to measure in beavers, you would have had to use a logarithmic scale.
@carl669@f00l@Kidsandliz@mike808
I mean once you start using a porpoise we probably need fractions and then a raccoon might be closer. I lemmings are shorter and I hear line up well. How many raccoons to a porpoise? Lemmings to a racoon? Hamsters to a lemming? I really don’t want to start doing beetles.
At some point one is going to start eating the others and then it’s just a mess
@carl669@f00l@Kidsandliz@mike808 sounds like roman numerals via median animal lengths. But you would have to find a base animal. Avoiding spiders. Then V is an average whatever. I would like to see a chart of this. Sounds like a. XKCD what if.
What if the base 10 numeral system had been defined by animal length?
@carl669@Kidsandliz@mike808 couple things. An inch is not base 10 because the inch is not metric. Nor is a foot or a yard or a mile…
Second thing. I was suggesting instead of V being 5 inch worms. Each number would have to be equivalent to one below but a different animal.
So let’s say I is an inchworm. H might be a average hamster length which looks like it might be 4. I guess technically an inchworm would will be the base unit it. But you’d call 4 a hamster. HI a hamster and worm. Not 5 worms. Scale up to a blue whale. Roman numerals were dumb
@carl669@Kidsandliz@unksol
Inches (and all of the “legacy” units we have here in dumbfuckistan) are formally defined in terms of their metric counterparts. So we ackchyually do use the metric system. Since the '60s, no less.
The new conversion factors were announced in 1959 in Federal Register Notice 59-5442 (June 30, 1959), which states the definition of a standard inch: The value for the inch, derived from the value of the Yard effective July 1, 1959, is exactly equivalent to 25.4 mm.
@carl669@Kidsandliz@mike808@unksol Are you implying that we should eliminate the standard banana measurement system in favor of the lemming hamster raccoon whale (LHRW) system?!
@carl669@mehcuda67@mike808@unksol Well if we don’t abandon the banana for those creatures, perhaps a centipede would be acceptable (since apparently the inchworm isn’t). The problem is that if we use a banana you’d likely slip up on occasion.
@carl669@Kidsandliz@mike808 yes they have been fixed per standards and there are fixed conversion to metric and technically you could argue that because of that they are base 10 and use the conversion factor in all your equations…
But has anyone since 1960? I’ve only done that in chem and physics labs… Cause they are in metric. in like 2006…
My tape measure is in inches and so is my 2x4 stud. Lengthwise obviously at 8 feet/96"… Everyone knows a 2x4 is 1.5"x3.5" and has been forever except those idiots trying to sue who can’t measure… Obviously the US and UK will never switch from imperial measurements… Too ingrained
@carl669@Kidsandliz@mehcuda67@mike808 centipede’s lie about their feet and move to fast. Plus there are giant centipede’s… And I think smaller poisonous ones.
I mean it are geico?
Nope he got away. He’s going to eat ratatouille. That’s terrifying.
@carl669@Kidsandliz@mehcuda67@mike808 I’m simply stating that carrying forth fucking @carl699 animal fucking based fucking mesurements to a fucking actual animal fucking numeral system that does not fucking ever involve fucking centipedes would be interesting.
I never want to fucking have to fucking Google giant fucking centipede again.
@carl669@Kidsandliz@mehcuda67@mike808 idk how you think guys measure bananas. Or how you measure. I assume conversation facto… Shit conversion factor to incorporate
good lord. you people have taken my simple, humble, raccoon measurement system and run
a-fucking-mok with it.
And we thank you for giving us a topic for some entertainment (grin). Excuse me. I forgot. Some fucking entertainment with it. Is that better?
Actually when your kid is old enough to understand fractions, if he gets trapped in to science projects a really fun one would be what if our measuring system was based on something else and what happens if what we use isn’t all the same size. Like raccoons. Or common things found in the outdoors like a certain species of cockroaches (or different species and so how our system would change)… Or sea shells… or shark teeth… or whatever… And then something that can be found naturally that is typically the same size regardless of where you find it or its age. Like uncut grass, uncut for the entire pandemic I don’t know what I’d have to research that. There is probably nothing you can see with the naked eye and so this is why we do what we do now.
@mehcuda67@mike808@unksol@ybmuG
Hey @carl669 you should be proud of how we hijacked ran with your topic and let it go to the dogs Very good entertainment, not to mention 51 replies (so far) to @cinoclav’s one comment which might be a fucking forum record.
@carl669@Star2236@unksol You might not want to get anywhere near them also because you might get carried off by some too. Some raccoons do serious weight lifting too. When canoeing in the Okefenokee Swamp and camping on a platform (can’t remember if it was college students doing bio of the swamp or adjudicated youth I worked with) a giant fucking raccoon took off with a 55 gallon black garbage bag full of food. We were about ready to stash it inside the outhouse to keep it safe from critters when the sucker boldly ran over, grabbed it and took off.
We did get it back by chasing him through the mud, yelling and throwing things. He finally dropped it and took off. Had he not done that likely we wouldn’t have caught him as we were sinking in the mud and he was skimming across it.
@carl669@Kidsandliz@Star2236 I think standard practice is to hang from a tree? I wouldn’t have picked the out house. Not that that’s relevant. Sneaky fucking racoon
@carl669@Star2236@unksol It was the Okefenokee Swamp and we were camping on a platform because there was no solid enough ground to camp on. No trees to hang from that would have been useful. We tried food in a canoe a couple of times on a long painter (rope) so it drifted into the waterway and woke up one morning to a panther in the boat fishing (seriously cool but sort of scary since tents are not exactly protection against them or bears or some other wild animals I have encountered - although in the canoe it would work against the alligators and the eagles aren’t interested) and holes in a few things. The outhouses had a shelf up high we were going to stash the garbage bags on. No less sanitary than anything else. Not like we were storing the food down the hole.
Speaking of outhouse holes, in Canada at the rock climbing site, a porcupine was busy eating the outhouse and would bridge the inside (under the hole you sat over) and chew. You had to kick the outhouse to get him to waddle out so you didn’t put your butt over a porcupine. Saw wolverines there too on multiple occasions. And moose. I am more scared of moose in rut than bears, well except the polar bear that was paralleling us on the shore, watching us (we were rafted up and going down the river as one unit with a sail rigged) on the Albany River (It was pretty wide at that point) close to James Bay. Very cool but more than a bit unnerving as polar bears are the only species on the planet that view humans as prey.
@carl669@Star2236@unksol Well a but full of needles wouldn’t be fun but kicking or hitting the side would evict him and he’d calmly walk over to the edge of the woods and come back when we were out of the outhouse.
I also learned that raccoons average 16-28 inches in length. If you average that, the average raccoon measures 22 inches. 8 such raccoons are 176 inches, or 14.67 ft. The average car length in the US is 14.7 ft, making @carl669’s car just slightly shorter than average. That means that @carl669 might drive a Ford Escape, which is 14.4 in long. This is also the moment that I learned that I lost interest in this before I started googling other car lengths…
@heartny If you learned that on Wednesday and Thursday then if “tomorrow” is not Friday, umm what kind of calendar are you using? Hopefully one with two Saturdays or something?
@RiotDemon that movie so fascinated yet creeped me out. DB Sweeney is in one of my all time fave movies, The Cutting Edge
/image The cutting edge movie
@moonhat that movie still creeps me out. Fun fact: I saw this in the movie theater when I was like 10. I was terrified in the movie theater to the point where my feet were up on the seats. That night when I got home to go to bed, there was a thunder and lightning storm. I had fallen asleep in my bed with my curtain open so at some point in the middle of the night I get up to close my curtain and lightning flashes reflecting what looks like a handprint on the window, very similar to the scene where he’s in the phone booth and there’s a slimy handprint on the phone booth glass.
The scene with the needle and the eyeball still skeeves me out.
More Animal Maths Vast size of prehistoric megalodon shark, which had a fin as long as a human, revealed for the first time CNN Megalodon article
Seems the dorsal fin is one scuba diver in height.
And maths, as promised…
it had teeth as big as hands, and a fin as tall as a human adult.
Researchers at the University of Bristol, in southwestern England, and at the Swansea University, in south Wales, used mathematical calculations to work out the size of the megalodon shark from rare fossil remains of its teeth.
Researchers told CNN that the giant shark species would have grown up to 18 meters (59 feet) in length and weighed about 48 tons, which is larger than any other shark known to have existed and more than twice the size of a great white shark.
With teeth as big as human hands, it would have had a bite force of more than 10 tons, dwarfing that of a great white shark’s bite force of two tons, researchers said.
Its tail would have been as long as 3.85 meters (12.6 feet) and its fin would have stood at 1.62 meters in length (5.3 feet) – the height of a human adult.
Chlorine’s usefulness was short-lived. Its color and odor made it easy to spot, and since chlorine is water-soluble even soldiers without gas masks could minimize its effect by placing water-soaked - even urine-soaked - rags over their mouths and noses. Additionally, releasing the gas in a cloud posed problems, as the British learnt to their detriment when they attempted to use chlorine at Loos. The wind shifted, carrying the gas back onto their own men.
@sammydog01 mustard gas kills your bone marrow which is how it eventually kills you. They make bendamustine (a chemo drug for a couple of the non-hodgkin’s lymphomas) from that so even though it is a chemical weapon at least something good came from that. Actually the Nazi’s developed that drug and so everyone refused to use it because it was tested on the folks in the concentration camps so it took until the 1990’s to actually be used. It’s pretty effective as chemo.
The most commonly used gas in WWI was ‘mustard gas’ [bis(2-chloroethyl) sulfide]. In pure liquid form this is colorless, but in WWI impure forms were used, which had a mustard color with an odor reminiscent of garlic or horseradish. An irritant and a strong vesicant (blister-forming agent), it causes chemical burns on contact, with blisters oozing yellow fluid. Initial exposure is symptomless, and by the time skin irritation begins, it is too late to take preventative measures. The mortality rate from mustard gas was only 2-3%, but those who suffered chemical burns and respiratory problems had long hospitalizations and if they recovered were thought to be at higher risk of developing cancers during later life.
And wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustard_gas#Development_of_the_first_chemotherapy_drug
Which is not a first rate but list sources…
Chlorine was easy to avoid. Mustard gas was not as easy and would allow you to over run an enemies trench if you timed it right while they were impacted. Not a dangerous nerve agent. They led to the ban on chemical warfare but in modern context?
Not the drug part… Or the later cancer. Everyone assumes mustard gas was a kill them thing. It was a knock them off balance and hit then but it wasn’t a nerve agent
Sorry. I didn’t realize there were two mustard gasses. I knew about nitrogen mustard and you were talking about sulphur mustard. It is the nitrogen mustard that can kill you via killing your bone marrow if you are exposed to enough of it and so was refined into chemo for blood cancers and some other cancers. It was occasionally used as a chemical weapon too.
I know about it only because I had bendamustine (brand name treanda) and rituxan and it killed enough of my bone marrow (a side effect for some) after just 4 rounds rather than the usual 6 that I had to stop chemo (luckily I was in remission).
@unksol My grandfather was a pilot in WW1. Apparently it was seriously dangerous to fly planes then and was one of the most dangerous jobs there was then. Or so I’ve been told (you may know better). He said when he was learning how to fly his roommate was who was eventually going to become Jackie Kennedy’s father. Said he was a “real cad”. LOL Heard stories about their escapades but have no idea how much the stories were embroidered in the retelling. As young kids we found his stories about his experiences as a pilot fascinating.
@Kidsandliz planes in WWI extremely dangerous… but mostly read about WWII… my grandpa went down in a glider on d-day in WW2 as a radio operator and they had to leave him when it crashed. Made it back some how but I never met the man. Some other disease got him first
Today I learned that my windows have feet and those feet need to wear shoes or the window won’t go up and down. And a nice man on YouTube showed me how to get the feet into the shoes which is nice because I was beginning to cry.
@carl669 How the fuck did you get the raccoons to line up and stay that way long enough to measure them?
@cinoclav AND… keep the rhino from raising your car in the air like a trophy after you cut it’s buddy into thirds?![:rofl:](https://dj5zo597wtsux.cloudfront.net/emojione/assets/3.1/png/64/1f923.png)
Seriously though… what is your kid up to in school these days (grin). That is just the kind of thing late grade school kids seem to like. I ran a 5th grade school sleep over outdoor science camp and a non-sleepover 6th grade physics science camp and relating stuff to weird shit, farts, ducks that sink, albino skunks, spitting lamas, etc, they found endless fascinating.
@cinoclav @Kidsandliz i have my ways.
@cinoclav congrats on adding to @carl669 's fuck count. I clean forgot to do that.
@Kidsandliz he’s rocking along. starting 2nd grade next week (remotely for now). this was just some random thing i wondered after reading an article about a sinkhole that measured “6-7 washing machines across”. i figure if they’re not going to give measurements in metric/imperial, then i might as well start giving them in raccoons and rhinos.
@carl669 @Kidsandliz
Digital Equipment Corporation VMS systems have a system parameter called TIMEPROMPTWAIT (the amount of time a booting system will wait for manual time entry if the time in its ‘time of year’ clock is invalid).
The value is given in microfortnights, which are about 1.2096 seconds each. For more information (though missing out on the DEC connection) see the FFF system of measurements
@duodec @Kidsandliz 49.6 fortnights to a minute, 2976 to an hour. seems pretty easy.
@carl669 You do know what you are setting yourself up for with your kid. Right?![:rofl:](https://dj5zo597wtsux.cloudfront.net/emojione/assets/3.1/png/64/1f923.png)
@carl669 @duodec You sure they meant that to be in base 10? Seems to me it would be far more logical to make it in another base like, I don’t know, maybe base 669 in honor of carl? (snicker). Hmm probably isn’t a base 669 out there. Too lazy to google.
Bases are useful though. My uncle always engraved the combination to a lock on the back in base 7. My cousins were very well versed in base 7.
@carl669 @Kidsandliz but are you including tails? Also I find my raccoons are imprecise. But the tails would introduce a much larger margin of error.
@Kidsandliz @unksol the average raccoon is 18-28", including tail. so, I just took the average of the average and used that. seems like a valid measurement.
@carl669 @unksol Well that might work for your average coon, but if you randomly selected coons what would be the standard deviation of your answer?
@Kidsandliz @unksol well… there’s only 8 raccoons if using the average of the average raccoon size. but, if you take all 11 measurements of a raccoon 18"-28" (18,19,20,etc), the standard deviation is 3.3. or something like that.
@carl669 @Kidsandliz @unksol
But isn’t that assuming a uniform distribution of racoon sizes? That confidence bracket has got to be yuuuge. Like at least ±4 racoons.
And if you had chosen to measure in beavers, you would have had to use a logarithmic scale.
@Kidsandliz @mike808 @unksol only a fool would measure in aquatic based mammals.
@carl669 @Kidsandliz @mike808 @unksol
You fucking rang?
Present and fucking semi-accounted for.
/giphy aquatic mammals
![](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIABAP///wAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==)
@carl669 @f00l @Kidsandliz @unksol
Only a fool with porpoise.
@carl669 @f00l @Kidsandliz @mike808
I mean once you start using a porpoise we probably need fractions and then a raccoon might be closer. I lemmings are shorter and I hear line up well. How many raccoons to a porpoise? Lemmings to a racoon? Hamsters to a lemming? I really don’t want to start doing beetles.
At some point one is going to start eating the others and then it’s just a mess
Obligatory fuck
@carl669 @Kidsandliz @mike808 also sir you forget the platypus. Who uses a beaver
@carl669 @f00l @Kidsandliz @mike808 sounds like roman numerals via median animal lengths. But you would have to find a base animal. Avoiding spiders. Then V is an average whatever. I would like to see a chart of this. Sounds like a. XKCD what if.
What if the base 10 numeral system had been defined by animal length?
@carl669 @mike808 @unksol You could always use inch worms. Just sayin’![:wink:](https://dj5zo597wtsux.cloudfront.net/emojione/assets/3.1/png/64/1f609.png)
@carl669 @mike808 @unksol Nah otter use a beaver.
@carl669 @Kidsandliz @mike808 couple things. An inch is not base 10 because the inch is not metric. Nor is a foot or a yard or a mile…
Second thing. I was suggesting instead of V being 5 inch worms. Each number would have to be equivalent to one below but a different animal.
So let’s say I is an inchworm. H might be a average hamster length which looks like it might be 4. I guess technically an inchworm would will be the base unit it. But you’d call 4 a hamster. HI a hamster and worm. Not 5 worms. Scale up to a blue whale. Roman numerals were dumb
@carl669 @Kidsandliz @mike808 I do love otters… But beavers build the wetlands.
@carl669 @Kidsandliz @unksol
![](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIABAP///wAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==)
Inches (and all of the “legacy” units we have here in dumbfuckistan) are formally defined in terms of their metric counterparts. So we ackchyually do use the metric system. Since the '60s, no less.
@carl669 @Kidsandliz @mike808 @unksol Are you implying that we should eliminate the standard banana measurement system in favor of the lemming hamster raccoon whale (LHRW) system?!
Heretics.
@carl669 @Kidsandliz @mehcuda67 @mike808 @unksol
/giphy base mammal
![](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIABAP///wAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==)
@carl669 @mehcuda67 @mike808 @unksol Well if we don’t abandon the banana for those creatures, perhaps a centipede would be acceptable (since apparently the inchworm isn’t). The problem is that if we use a banana you’d likely slip up on occasion.
@carl669 @Kidsandliz @mike808 yes they have been fixed per standards and there are fixed conversion to metric and technically you could argue that because of that they are base 10 and use the conversion factor in all your equations…
But has anyone since 1960? I’ve only done that in chem and physics labs… Cause they are in metric. in like 2006…
My tape measure is in inches and so is my 2x4 stud. Lengthwise obviously at 8 feet/96"… Everyone knows a 2x4 is 1.5"x3.5" and has been forever except those idiots trying to sue who can’t measure… Obviously the US and UK will never switch from imperial measurements… Too ingrained
@carl669 @Kidsandliz @mehcuda67 @mike808 centipede’s lie about their feet and move to fast. Plus there are giant centipede’s… And I think smaller poisonous ones.
I mean it are geico?
Nope he got away. He’s going to eat ratatouille. That’s terrifying.
@carl669 @Kidsandliz @mehcuda67 @unksol
![](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIABAP///wAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==)
Definitely need to keep the
/giphy banana for scale
@carl669 @Kidsandliz @mehcuda67 @mike808 I’m simply stating that carrying forth fucking @carl699 animal fucking based fucking mesurements to a fucking actual animal fucking numeral system that does not fucking ever involve fucking centipedes would be interesting.
I never want to fucking have to fucking Google giant fucking centipede again.
@carl669 @Kidsandliz @mehcuda67 @mike808 idk how you think guys measure bananas. Or how you measure. I assume conversation facto… Shit conversion factor to incorporate
@carl669 @Kidsandliz @mehcuda67 @unksol
![](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIABAP///wAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==)
I can understand why googling “giant fucking centipede” would be problematic.
@carl669 @Kidsandliz @mehcuda67 @mike808 I did not use the word human. Just no.
@carl669 @Kidsandliz @mehcuda67 @mike808 I’m sorry did that look fun to you??
@Kidsandliz @mehcuda67 @mike808 @unksol good lord. you people have taken my simple, humble, raccoon measurement system and run
a-fucking-mok with it.
@carl669 @mehcuda67 @mike808 @unksol
And we thank you for giving us a topic for some entertainment (grin). Excuse me. I forgot. Some fucking entertainment with it. Is that better?![:rofl:](https://dj5zo597wtsux.cloudfront.net/emojione/assets/3.1/png/64/1f923.png)
Actually when your kid is old enough to understand fractions, if he gets trapped in to science projects a really fun one would be what if our measuring system was based on something else and what happens if what we use isn’t all the same size. Like raccoons. Or common things found in the outdoors like a certain species of cockroaches (or different species and so how our system would change)… Or sea shells… or shark teeth… or whatever… And then something that can be found naturally that is typically the same size regardless of where you find it or its age. Like
uncut grass, uncut for the entire pandemicI don’t know what I’d have to research that. There is probably nothing you can see with the naked eye and so this is why we do what we do now.@carl669 @Kidsandliz @mehcuda67 @mike808 I mean… Where the fucking else would you prefer we run than a-fucking-mok.
You wanted to do math. I certainly didn’t
How do we do racoon in binary and hexadecimal
@Kidsandliz @mehcuda67 @mike808 @unksol
raccoons are already binary. it’s either a raccoon or it’s not. gtfo with this hexadecimal measurement. you trying to bring down civilization??
@carl669 @Kidsandliz @mehcuda67 @unksol
“Hexadecimal” you say?
@carl669 @Kidsandliz @mehcuda67 @mike808 honestly I just don’t want to see you teach how fractions work with racoons. Too much blood
Algebra probably is fine. No trig
@carl669 @Kidsandliz @mehcuda67 @mike808 in think technically a warlock. But sure go Monty Python lol
@Kidsandliz @mehcuda67 @mike808 @unksol
what about geometry? raccoons are pretty bendy.
@carl669 @mehcuda67 @mike808 @unksol
I’d think snakes for geometry would work well.
@carl669 @Kidsandliz @mehcuda67 @mike808 @unksol Wombat poop is cubes, so that could be used for volume calculations
![$args](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIABAP///wAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==)
/image wombat skat cube
@carl669 @Kidsandliz @mehcuda67 @mike808 @ybmuG nice shit
@carl669 @Kidsandliz @mehcuda67 @mike808 @ybmuG and this boys and girls is why it’s called…
![$args](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIABAP///wAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==)
/image Maths
@carl669 @Kidsandliz @unksol
You haven’t seen the raccoons at my dads house, they look like massive dogs!
@Kidsandliz @Star2236 @unksol interesting. please measure these dog raccoons so that i may update the raccoon measurement system.
@carl669 @Kidsandliz @Star2236
I had thought about adding a dog to the lions but now I want a dogoon. Also the fucks up all our work
@mehcuda67 @mike808 @unksol @ybmuG
Very good entertainment, not to mention 51 replies (so far) to @cinoclav’s one comment which might be a fucking forum record.
Hey @carl669 you should be proud of how we
hijackedran with your topic and let it go to the dogs@carl669 @Kidsandliz @unksol
I’m not getting near those giant fucking raccoons, they probably have giant fucking rabies all around them.
@carl669 @Star2236 @unksol You might not want to get anywhere near them also because you might get carried off by some too. Some raccoons do serious weight lifting too. When canoeing in the Okefenokee Swamp and camping on a platform (can’t remember if it was college students doing bio of the swamp or adjudicated youth I worked with) a giant fucking raccoon took off with a 55 gallon black garbage bag full of food. We were about ready to stash it inside the outhouse to keep it safe from critters when the sucker boldly ran over, grabbed it and took off.
We did get it back by chasing him through the mud, yelling and throwing things. He finally dropped it and took off. Had he not done that likely we wouldn’t have caught him as we were sinking in the mud and he was skimming across it.
@carl669 @Kidsandliz @Star2236 I think standard practice is to hang from a tree? I wouldn’t have picked the out house. Not that that’s relevant. Sneaky fucking racoon
@carl669 @Kidsandliz @unksol
Yeah I don’t know that I would stash my food in an outhouse either, I try to avoid going in them at all cost.
@carl669 @Star2236 @unksol It was the Okefenokee Swamp and we were camping on a platform because there was no solid enough ground to camp on. No trees to hang from that would have been useful. We tried food in a canoe a couple of times on a long painter (rope) so it drifted into the waterway and woke up one morning to a panther in the boat fishing (seriously cool but sort of scary since tents are not exactly protection against them or bears or some other wild animals I have encountered - although in the canoe it would work against the alligators and the eagles aren’t interested) and holes in a few things. The outhouses had a shelf up high we were going to stash the garbage bags on. No less sanitary than anything else. Not like we were storing the food down the hole.
Speaking of outhouse holes, in Canada at the rock climbing site, a porcupine was busy eating the outhouse and would bridge the inside (under the hole you sat over) and chew. You had to kick the outhouse to get him to waddle out so you didn’t put your butt over a porcupine. Saw wolverines there too on multiple occasions. And moose. I am more scared of moose in rut than bears, well except the polar bear that was paralleling us on the shore, watching us (we were rafted up and going down the river as one unit with a sail rigged) on the Albany River (It was pretty wide at that point) close to James Bay. Very cool but more than a bit unnerving as polar bears are the only species on the planet that view humans as prey.
@carl669 @Kidsandliz @Star2236 all of that is excellent and terrifying. I’d be more concerned about an ass full of needles.
@carl669 @Star2236 @unksol Well a but full of needles wouldn’t be fun but kicking or hitting the side would evict him and he’d calmly walk over to the edge of the woods and come back when we were out of the outhouse.
@carl669 @Kidsandliz @Star2236 right but someone had to have learned he was in there in the first place and design the eviction method.
Today i learned that a Ford Escape is quite small, barely over a foot in length.
@Impulse The 1/12 scale model certainly is.![:grin:](https://dj5zo597wtsux.cloudfront.net/emojione/assets/3.1/png/64/1f601.png)
I also learned that raccoons average 16-28 inches in length. If you average that, the average raccoon measures 22 inches. 8 such raccoons are 176 inches, or 14.67 ft. The average car length in the US is 14.7 ft, making @carl669’s car just slightly shorter than average. That means that @carl669 might drive a Ford Escape, which is 14.4 in long. This is also the moment that I learned that I lost interest in this before I started googling other car lengths…
@shahnm
![](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIABAP///wAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==)
@shahnm Set up a excel spreadsheet to deal with the math. Problem solved (grin).
Yesterday I learned that it was not Friday yet and today I learned the same thing. I suspect I may learn that lesson again tomorrow as well.![:-(](https://dj5zo597wtsux.cloudfront.net/emojione/assets/3.1/png/64/1f61e.png)
@heartny If you learned that on Wednesday and Thursday then if “tomorrow” is not Friday, umm what kind of calendar are you using? Hopefully one with two Saturdays or something?
@heartny @Kidsandliz
Yesterday was Tuesday. Today is Wednesday. Tomorrow will be Thursday.
At least when he posted on Wednesday. Did no one else have to do this in kindergarten?
It was at 11:16 PM which is close enough to midnight it might have flipped the day on your end depending on how meh displays time to us/uses timezones
@heartny @unksol Ahh I misread and thought “yesterday” was Wednesday in that post. Fortunately today really is finally Friday. Right?![:wink:](https://dj5zo597wtsux.cloudfront.net/emojione/assets/3.1/png/64/1f609.png)
Today I learned that in the Fire in the Sky movie that was about Travis Walton’s abduction, that the real Travis Walton was an extra.
I also learned that the actor, D.B. Sweeney has been in a ton of stuff since then.
/youtube fire in the sky
@RiotDemon that movie so fascinated yet creeped me out. DB Sweeney is in one of my all time fave movies, The Cutting Edge
![$args](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIABAP///wAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==)
/image The cutting edge movie
@moonhat that movie still creeps me out. Fun fact: I saw this in the movie theater when I was like 10. I was terrified in the movie theater to the point where my feet were up on the seats. That night when I got home to go to bed, there was a thunder and lightning storm. I had fallen asleep in my bed with my curtain open so at some point in the middle of the night I get up to close my curtain and lightning flashes reflecting what looks like a handprint on the window, very similar to the scene where he’s in the phone booth and there’s a slimy handprint on the phone booth glass.
The scene with the needle and the eyeball still skeeves me out.
@RiotDemon oh my god that scene with the needle heading to the eye. That’s not something anybody with eyeballs can ever forget!! :shudder:
I learnt nuttin.
/giphy nothing
![](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIABAP///wAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==)
@f00l you just learned nutting today?
@unksol
Just.
@f00l you got a lot to catch up on. Might want to take the week. Monday is a holiday anyway
@f00l @unksol Prob best not to use the work computer during your research.
Today I learned that @carl669’s car is about 8 raccoons, or 1.3 rhinos long. (give or take 1/10th of rhino depending on what kind)
More Animal Maths
Vast size of prehistoric megalodon shark, which had a fin as long as a human, revealed for the first time
CNN Megalodon article
Seems the dorsal fin is one scuba diver in height.
![](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIABAP///wAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==)
And maths, as promised…
![](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIABAP///wAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==)
@mike808 but what is it in racoons?
@mike808 @unksol Or 1/12th scale Ford Escapes?
for people who want the entire story (saw it on my facebook feed this morning so @mike808 beat me to it):
https://www.sciencealert.com/palaeontologists-predict-megalodon-wasn-t-just-long-its-fins-were-as-tall-as-a-human/?fbclid=IwAR1MndCoVCwd8RL0ZfAyy7NHT_PJdCsDJQ5RjhPRAxKqv-oorvz9xg3WkT4
@shahnm @unksol @Kidzandliz
![](https://external-preview.redd.it/WsrRVrGuhgoz7mxQSTNVdcFeHmM8C2SbuVHiJGXqgkE.jpg?auto=webp&s=1a3f79988360fd8874e45b488ec0d1044a783d9b)
No idea on racoons or 1/12th scale Ford Escorts. Maybe somebody does maths?
Today I learned that you can survive a mustard gas attack by peeing on a piece of cloth and breathing through it. Good to know.
@sammydog01 no. You can’t. You’re referring to chlorine gas. Which is water soluble and any water would do.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_weapons_in_World_War_I#1917:_Mustard_gas
http://www.kumc.edu/wwi/medicine/gas-in-the-great-war.html
Chlorine’s usefulness was short-lived. Its color and odor made it easy to spot, and since chlorine is water-soluble even soldiers without gas masks could minimize its effect by placing water-soaked - even urine-soaked - rags over their mouths and noses. Additionally, releasing the gas in a cloud posed problems, as the British learnt to their detriment when they attempted to use chlorine at Loos. The wind shifted, carrying the gas back onto their own men.
@sammydog01 mustard gas kills your bone marrow which is how it eventually kills you. They make bendamustine (a chemo drug for a couple of the non-hodgkin’s lymphomas) from that so even though it is a chemical weapon at least something good came from that. Actually the Nazi’s developed that drug and so everyone refused to use it because it was tested on the folks in the concentration camps so it took until the 1990’s to actually be used. It’s pretty effective as chemo.
@Kidsandliz @sammydog01 I’m not even sure that’s correct. From the same article
The most commonly used gas in WWI was ‘mustard gas’ [bis(2-chloroethyl) sulfide]. In pure liquid form this is colorless, but in WWI impure forms were used, which had a mustard color with an odor reminiscent of garlic or horseradish. An irritant and a strong vesicant (blister-forming agent), it causes chemical burns on contact, with blisters oozing yellow fluid. Initial exposure is symptomless, and by the time skin irritation begins, it is too late to take preventative measures. The mortality rate from mustard gas was only 2-3%, but those who suffered chemical burns and respiratory problems had long hospitalizations and if they recovered were thought to be at higher risk of developing cancers during later life.
And wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustard_gas#Development_of_the_first_chemotherapy_drug
Which is not a first rate but list sources…
Chlorine was easy to avoid. Mustard gas was not as easy and would allow you to over run an enemies trench if you timed it right while they were impacted. Not a dangerous nerve agent. They led to the ban on chemical warfare but in modern context?
Not the drug part… Or the later cancer. Everyone assumes mustard gas was a kill them thing. It was a knock them off balance and hit then but it wasn’t a nerve agent
@sammydog01 @unksol
Sorry. I didn’t realize there were two mustard gasses. I knew about nitrogen mustard and you were talking about sulphur mustard. It is the nitrogen mustard that can kill you via killing your bone marrow if you are exposed to enough of it and so was refined into chemo for blood cancers and some other cancers. It was occasionally used as a chemical weapon too.
Doing some searching I found this that explains its legacy
https://www.sermo.com/chemotherapys-war-legacy/
I know about it only because I had bendamustine (brand name treanda) and rituxan and it killed enough of my bone marrow (a side effect for some) after just 4 rounds rather than the usual 6 that I had to stop chemo (luckily I was in remission).
@Kidsandliz @sammydog01 that sucks. Sorry. WWI but mostly WWII nerd… Mustard gas triggers history nerd
@unksol My grandfather was a pilot in WW1. Apparently it was seriously dangerous to fly planes then and was one of the most dangerous jobs there was then. Or so I’ve been told (you may know better). He said when he was learning how to fly his roommate was who was eventually going to become Jackie Kennedy’s father. Said he was a “real cad”. LOL Heard stories about their escapades but have no idea how much the stories were embroidered in the retelling. As young kids we found his stories about his experiences as a pilot fascinating.
@Kidsandliz planes in WWI extremely dangerous… but mostly read about WWII… my grandpa went down in a glider on d-day in WW2 as a radio operator and they had to leave him when it crashed. Made it back some how but I never met the man. Some other disease got him first
@unksol Too bad you didn’t get to meet him with your interest in WW history.
What did I learn today? That you can play jump rope with wind mill.
https://www.gif-vif.com/g/How-high-are-you/?fbclid=IwAR1lCHODtb4byeHeZLHGlsBM7ymCgxJlZcDGJ72ScfEurRqF7YIvxsHcDgg
Today I learned that my windows have feet and those feet need to wear shoes or the window won’t go up and down. And a nice man on YouTube showed me how to get the feet into the shoes which is nice because I was beginning to cry.
Thanks, YouTube guy!