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Paper_jam

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Everything posted by Paper_jam

  1. There were all kinds of dark clouds and rainbows and shit around my house but not a drop of actual fuckin precip. Very disapoint.
  2. Yeah, but $2.50 in 1962 is equivalent to $25-30 today, so not as cheap as it sounds. (But still cheap compared to current tix)
  3. The coverage now seems really sanitized, compared to how I remember crashes and injuries being covered on American TV in the 70s and 80s. ABC's coverage of the Indy 500 routinely showed guys on fire and limp bodies hanging out of shattered racecars, replayed from every possible angle.
  4. It turns out deep space is still really into disco. With this being an IR telescope, how do they translate that into a visible "color" image? And why do some objects have giant diffraction spikes? I thought that was an optical phenomenon.
  5. If we get to a point where a state legislature sends electors that pick a candidate who didn't win the election, the people of said state need to burn it all down.
  6. If this is a yearbook-type document, it could mean Roll of Honor. But that's just a guess.
  7. Surly today because I have at least SIX partially-full spray bottles of Tilex, Tru Grit Bathroom Cleaner, etc. which I can't use because the spray pump mechanism doesn't work, leaks excessively, or just breaks off. Including two almost full bottles. Now I have a bathroom cabinet full of household haz waste that I can't use or dispose of easily. When you put caustic chemicals in a plastic spray bottle, for fucks sake use high quality chemical-resistant materials that are appropriate for the fucking job. All the people who design and sell shitty container packaging like this should be EXECUTED and I will happily pull the trigger myself.
  8. A decade or two ago, you'd hear a lot about Africanized bees in Texas, and after an attack like this there'd always be something said about getting some kind of analysis done to confirm if the swarm was Africanized or "standard." But in recent fatal bee attacks I rarely even see that question asked or answered. Are Africanized bees still a thing here?
  9. I keep hearing suggestions that high energy prices are because environmental nuts have killed production of fossil fuels. But based on the data I can find, domestic oil production is only a few percent down from it's high (2019): 2018: 5,588,101,000 barrels of crude oil + petroleum products 2019: 6,246,598,000 barrels of crude oil + petroleum products 2020: 6,023,457,000 barrels of crude oil + petroleum products 2021: 6,052,509,000 barrels of crude oil + petroleum products The EIA says 2022 oil production is running above 2021, and forecasts that 2023 will set a record for US crude oil production. https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/steo/report/us_oil.php When it comes to natural gas, the story is about the same--steadily increasing US production with a peak in 2019, a slight decline in 2020, and we are now nearly back up to 2019 production levels. So at least for oil & gas, the numbers I can find don't support the theory that we've slashed production. Whether current production is enough to keep up with demand is another matter. Now coal production in the US has indeed fallen off a cliff in the last 10 years. I'm not too broken up about that as coal is nasty and I'd prefer it only be used in situations where natural gas isn't available in sufficient quantities.
  10. Those front wheels & tires look tiny. How does it not understeer like crazy?
  11. Y'all are some energy hogs. I'm doing my part at 79 F, which is tolerable with ceiling fans. Think what Jimmy Carter would want you to do. I don't think my AC is even strong enough to keep my house at 72, on a hot day.
  12. It looks to me like Travis County new cases are creeping up to (very roughly) 200+/day, where we were more like 100/day a month ago. That's based on the DSHS data in the lower left panel of the site linked below. I hate to see the trend inching up, but I'm certainly not surprised given that so many people, including me, are back in the office, starting to dine out, travel, etc. https://austin.maps.arcgis.com/apps/dashboards/39e4f8d4acb0433baae6d15a931fa984
  13. Using a BOGO is fine with me; the even more pro move would be to get her to pay for the "buy one" part. Yeah I'm still single why do you ask?
  14. I can see a point not too far off where my property taxes will equal or exceed my federal income tax liability, unless my income goes up a lot unexpectedly. (And I only own one home.) Glad I bought when I did--despite a higher salary now than in 2002, I couldn't buy my own house again based on it's current value and my current salary.
  15. My sleepy and unfashionable location in remote NE Austin usually gets a bit of a break, but up 55% this time.
  16. Let's say I live in Austin and want to watch Astros games this season. I have Youtube TV as my provider. What channel(s) are going to carry the Astros? (This is where you tell me, silly boy, the Astros games won't be on any regular basic cable network, they're only on some AT&T-exclusive bullshit. And even if an Astros game happens to fall onto a basic cable channel, it's going to be blacked out in Austin for reasons.)
  17. I see a 70% chance of rain for Austin coming up soon, but the NWS precipitation forecast maps look dire. Is this another nothingburger?
  18. I hope it's OK to start a thread on this; I ran a search and found threads for prior tax years, but not for TY 2021. To start things off, I'll ask about something that happened to my TY 2020 return, which may affect my filing for TY 2021. This is a 1041 return for a family trust. For TY 2020, when preparing the 1041 I calculated that I had overpaid by (approximately) $2000. Instead of requesting a refund, I selected the choice to have that overpayment credited to my future 2021 return. A few months after filing the 2020 return, I received a terse notice from IRS stating that I owed an additional $700 (roughly), which I paid promptly by check. The notice did not indicate how the IRS arrived at the additional amount due, or what it meant for the amount that I had previously requested be applied to my 2021 taxes. So now I'm uncertain if I can still claim that full $2000 amount as a credit towards my 2021 taxes, as intended, or if some or all of it was actually "consumed" by the IRS towards my 2020 tax liability, which was apparently more than I had calculated. When a taxpayer indicates the choice for an overpayment to be credited to next year's return, does IRS "lock it in" for only that purpose, or can IRS apply some or all of that "overpayment" amount to the current-year tax due, if additional tax liability is discovered? Thanks for any feedback.
  19. Black boxes are tough as shit but I'd be really surprised if they made it through this impact. Hope I'm wrong because that data/voice would be key to the investigation.
  20. The transition from level flight (autopilot) to screaming dive is scary fast. I gotta go with severe failure or malfunction of horizontal stabilizer and/or elevator. Or suicide. (But if I was a suicidal pilot, I'd wait to start my death plunge from a lower altitude.)
  21. If shit were to hit the fan, what are the most likely targets (in Central Texas) for a strike? Warhead counts are not as high now as they were 30-40 years ago, so I don't know if we'd just have one or two bombs coming to our fair city, or a whole slew of them. I'm not a Russian war planner but off the top of my head, the following come to mind: Downtown Austin & Capitol area UT area ABIA Pickle Research/IBM area Decker power plant Fayette power plant Samsung plant Fort Hood Mansfield Dam? Cedar Park & Round Rock? and lots of military stuff in/around San Antonio
  22. What concerns me is that if you're far enough away from potential targets that you don't get vaporized immediately, but still within 10 miles or so, it may take some time (a number of seconds anyway) for the blast wave to reach you...during which time you will be literally roasting alive from the radiant heat of the fireball. It would be anything but a quick, painless death.
  23. Will interest rates on things like traditional savings accounts and CDs ever be enough again to actually matter? Or would that only happen in a hellworld of hyperinflation anyway, negating any benefit to the consumer? I'm old enough to remember when my parents were raking it in (seemingly) on CDs and such in the 80s.
  24. I thought we de-MIRVed our inventory, but maybe this is out of date now: https://allthingsnuclear.org/emacdonald/the-end-of-mirvs-for-u-s-icbms/
  25. Jesus wept, are those prices typical? My last system (Carrier AC & gas furnace, in 2012 I think) was less than $5k and I thought that was outrageous at the time.
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