Our pilots, with training, regularly can get to inside a circle patch of flat land 100 ft in diameter. They generally pick a very specific spot on the runway (like the numbers) and then aim to end up there. And they practice straight down, 90 degree left, 90 degree right* 180 degree, and on occasion 360 degree (for when the spot you want is directly below when your engines fail, and feels like you are corkscrewing to your doom). Obviously practice is different than an actual emergency, but I felt confident the pilots could get us down safely in the event of a dual engine failure.

So honestly if it’s over mountainous areas, I’d rather be in the helicopter looking for a place to hard land than a fixed wing aircraft (that needs a runway or at the very least a long grassy field with no obstructions).

I have flown in helicopters most of my career, and we regularly did auto-rotation emergency drills, where we cut the engines output back (to simulate dual engine failure) and then “glide” to a particular spot, using the air pressure from descent to drive the blades.

With a good pilot, you just kind of go zero-g for a second or two, and the. A somehwat faster than normal descent, followed by a big flare (tail down, nose up, like a diving bird pulling back and fanning its wings out) at around 80 feet, then quick (less comfortable) drop to the deck.

With a good pilot, it’s mildly uncomfortable, with a mediocre pilot, it’s some back pain and some extra maintenance inspections, but you aren’t crashing.

If you take inflation into consideration, high quality products still exist at about the same price. Its just that there are now MUCH cheaper options now.

I think the Sam Vimes Boots Theory of Socio-Economic Unfairness plays a part as well:

The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. … A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. … But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet. This was the Captain Samuel Vimes ‘Boots’ theory of socio-economic unfairness.

Swinging with right hand, holding with left (for right-handed people). So you can see what you’ve done so far as you go, just like writing with your right hand from left to right.

The best thing I have learned to do with age is embrace the awkwardness. You do something ridiculous and awkward, you laugh, call it out like it’s something funny for both of you, and then you move on.

“Gow’s it hoeing? …wait… that’s not right. Hoooow’s… itt… gooooiiing… there we go, nailed it.”

Both are yes but also no.

Each person is responsible for their own actions and choices.

Also, often systemic issues make certain behaviors far more likely, and rather than suggesting there is something inherently wrong with a person or group of people who have made those negative actions or choices, we should address the issues that contributed.

If a person beats their kids, saying they came from an abusive household does not absolve them, but if there has been a culture of ignoring (or encouraging) child abuse, addressing that would go a long way toward reducing child abuse in the next generation, for example. But the person who abused their kid still deserves the punishment they get.

I use command hooks on the wall. It feels more orderly.

Back when I was at university, I was in the band, and there was one guy in my section that was super annoying, and who couldn’t talk with a person without squaring up to them (and then talking at them).

One time my best friend (also in the section), in the middle of the guy’s sentence with a bored expression on her face just… turns and walks away as if he had stopped speaking.

The rest of us were thinking “wait… we can do that? I didn’t realize that was an option.”

The local bars near me have that, and I can reach them from my house.

My playlists always begin and end with Photograph by Nickleback, and in between is… interesting. I like to ease in with a few weird-for-a-bar but not bad (My Heart Will Go On, some Babymetal, etc) and work my way toward the really weird (showtunes, especially from Avenue Q), ending with the bad (like the 30 minute Sufjan Stevens song). Then Nickleback again, and back to your country music.

Zeus: Wow. Just… rude.

Damn, you weren’t kidding. I was expecting a cop car, not six.

To anyone looking, you have to get the corner/mid-intersection shot to get the mess of police. If you’re just going up Pine, it looks pretty benign.

Got that Alaskan Airframe and Powerplant license, I see.

“My days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle.”

-Malcom Reynolds, CAPT.

Anakin wouldn’t have accepted that, and Palpatine would have made sure that Anakin saw it as an insult.

Yeah, but it would be disappointing. Still plenty I’d like to do, and I’m only a handful of years from retirement, so I would be just shy of some well-earned down time.

As far as fear? I’ve never been afraid of dying. The time immediately prior to dying, yes, that is potentially scary. Being dead isn’t something you experience, though, so what is there to fear?

Oh, yeah, I loved ToTK even more. It was an engineering game cosplaying as an RPG and I was loving it.

I realized how overpowered i was when I was launching laser/cannon drone strikes on lines of Bokoblin, but I definitely felt how weak I was getting through the underworld area without a fan scooter.

Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

But not like you think. I was fairly early in the game, and I was just treasure hunting in the castle to get some good gear before I continued on (good swords and bows that respawn regularly but break over time). Also, if you’ve never played it, the game is not entirely linear, you have four main powers you can gain from fighting and freeing four spirits in different zones, as well as shrines for additional powers and health. But you could spawn at the beginning of the game, do the initial questline to get the paraglider, and then go straight to the castle to fight the BBEG. And you’d die, but you could try!

So I was treasure hunting and I accidentally fell down a hole and ended up fighting the final boss. And then won. And then had to reset to the previous save before falling in. I spent the rest of the game thinking “I don’t actually need this to win, it’s all for overkill.” And it was. So much overkill. It really wasn’t fair at all. The separate storylines were really good and worth doing anyway, though. Beating the game was just kind of a fight tacked on to the end of a fantastic story.

Short, memorable stories that show people getting punished for misdeeds and others rewarded for positive deeds is much easier to impart onto peasants than the nuances of collectivism.

I would agree if the stories consistently portrayed that. In the Bible and Torah, Job is the most righteous and good and gets fucked because of that. David has a faithful soldier that goes so far as to refuse to go home to his wife while his comrades were still fighting, and David has him killed in a fucked up way (told his general to send him where the fighting was worst and then have everybody pull back from him), all to try to cover up fucking the soldier’s wife. David’s “punishment” was he married the hot widow and the child conceived in the affair was miscarried. And as soon as she miscarried, David shrugged it off and moved on with his life.

Also, the entire Christian religion is based on absolution for whatever evil you do, you just have to be part of the club. If Hitler had “come to Jesus” right before he died, he would be in heaven while an atheist who spent their whole life doing good would be in hell. Deeds are irrelevant for punishment.

And let’s not even get into Greek Mythology, where how good or bad of a human you were was completely irrelevant to what happened to you at the whims of the gods. Same for Norse.

I don’t know how it is for any other religions, as I haven’t studied them, but I don’t think religion was required to establish a moral code and accountability. The Code of Hammurabi didn’t require religion to have a legal code (while recognizing the relief at the top showing the god of justice handing it to Hammurabi, it seems pretty clear that was artistic expression), and it pre-dated the Ten Commandments.

Someone could point to the horrible acts done in the name of religion, but just imagine if those people didn’t have the fear of god in them.

I just… what kind of argument is this? Do you think the people running the Spanish Inquisition would have tortured harder if they didn’t have the “fear of god” in them? That the Crusades would have been bloodier? What reason do you have to think that the horrible acts done in the name of religion would have been worse if it wasn’t for religion?

A significant concern 80k years ago (though with lack of communication, few would know that the disembodied hand represented), not even a consideration now. 1 person dies from The Hand in the world each day? More people die of aneurysms each day, I would imagine, and it’s effectively the same thing.

Also, does it stop following a given person if they escape it by the end of the day? If you could hop in a car and just drive until the day is over to escape it, it would be more of a “hey, watch out for the hand” kind of thing. But it would be so rare I don’t even think it would be on anybody’s mind.

congratulations you are in the top 0.1% of parents/dads

This right here is what this whole question is directed at.

No, doing the basics does not put them in the “top 0.1% of dads,” like it’s some sort of anomaly (they might be, but it’s not because they changed diapers). Almost every dad I know is heavily involved in their kids lives, including when they are babies. I’m never the only dad at the park or the birthday party, and everything else. I have had many discussions with other guys about taking care of our babies, and it is very clear that it is a shared responsibility.

Do more men bail on their kids or dump responsibility on their spouse than women? Sure. Is that currently the common thing, or what 99.9% of men do? Absolutely not.

Stop perpetuating this stereotype, especially in a post about negative stereotypes.