Spin off company - McJeanolds

Yes he did! I just called him that!

I mean, joking aside, props to the man for his impressive accomplishments. I searched for him and it looks like he’s a living legend.

^{(But I still don’t know why he’s in the picture.)}

Why is Methster Clean the focus of this image?

That’s the reason I killed IPv6 on my network.

It grows so slowly that disturbing it undoes decades of growth, and since it takes hundreds of years to convert rock to soil, messing with the moss is well, first, just upsetting the natural beauty, but also robs future generations of the land for just a few moments of “huh, neat.” Our tour guide was pretty reverent when he talked about the role that moss plays.

Also they’ll fine you and maybe bar you from returning.

I’ve been there on tour once, and I just looked at an online map to make sure I didn’t misremember. I also follow a guy on YouTube that talks about geology and has been focused on Iceland lately, so I think that makes me a complete expert.

Joking aside, the road to Grindavik is sort of out of the way, but it is the connector road between the south coast and the airport, so it’s like a 45 minute diversion to get to the airport from the south coast (and vice versa). And like an hour+ diversion if you’re going from the south coast to the Blue Lagoon/the geothermal power/hot water plant that provides power and heat to the airport and (I think) most of Reykjavik.
Unfortunately the power plant/Blue Lagoon is very close to the fissure, and it’s possible a future larger lava flow could damage them. (It is expected more fissures/flows will occur, but the location and size are unknown.) I’m sure both the civil engineering and tourism folks are working on spinning up alternative sites.

Grindavik, for what it’s worth, keeps bouncing between being evacuated and residents griping so much they get let back in. The Icelandic government has an offer on the table to purchase people’s homes in the town, so they move out. I think the plan is probably to abandon the town, since it’s possible this eruptive period could last hundreds of years. (Or not! We have no idea, really, just past data and informed guesses.)

I follow a guy on YT (An American geology professor) who is pretty into this situation. One of his viewers is a superfan and lived in Grindavik, giving him on the ground updates.

This eruption is expected to be part of a periodic cycle of increased activity that could last hundreds of years.

In a recent-ish video, he said the Icelandic government was offering to buy the home of anyone who wanted to sell in Grindavik, and that his superfan’s house had been purchased by the government.
I think the long term plan is probably to abandon the town.

This won’t be the most narrative experience of the event, but basically, the town was mostly destroyed, however they were able to use firefighting boats to selectively cool the lava, resulting in not just saving their harbor (the main economic driver for their island), but also improving it, by making it more protected from the ocean.

Wikipedia - 1973 Eruption on Heimaey Island

Honestly, no. I have mentioned it to my doctor, but for something that occurred once every 2-4 years from the ages of 9 to 22 (Oh, crap, I guess it’s been almost 20 years since the last flair up), they viewed it as a low priority when I got health insurance and got over my fear of asking for medical help in my early 30’s. (Cost reasons, not doctor phobia.)

Which I get - “Hey doc, I have an allergy to something - I don’t know what it is and it hasn’t occurred in 10 years. What do we do about it?” They gave me the advice I was already following - which, 10 years ago, was to take Benadryl and record the ingredients for everything I ate, so we could try to figure it out. I will slip a line into the document I keep for my yearlies to ask after what is an appropriate replacement for Benadryl, however.
Although, with my current knowledge and economic level, I’d probably just rush to the ER if anything above my chest swelled up. My insurance will blunt the cost just fine and I’ve got too much going on to choke to death.

In Iceland it’s pretty cold a lot of the year - not insanely, but colder than a lot of plants prefer. So the rock to soil conversion happens via moss.

While on tour there last year, our guide pointed out the ages of certain lava fields, and he noted that the existing lava fields around Grindavik were between 700 and 1300 years old. My photos from the area show that they’re about 60-70% rock, with moss covering the rest. I suspect if you scraped away the moss, you’ll find slightly crumbly rock underneath (But don’t do that - do not mess with the moss in iceland). I’m not sure how long it takes for the lava to be converted into soil, but I would guess it’s more on the scale of multiple thousands of years.

This page (up until the waterfall) has some good photos of a few lava fields and gives dates for the eruptions that created them. Meandering Wild - Lava and Moss
(The photos are at the bottom of each blurb, not the top - so Eldhraun is the one with the rounded rocks and moss at 350 years old, and not the black rocks, and Dimmuborgir, at 2300 years old, is the one with the treetops shown below the craggy rocks.)

Another banger from our tour guide was that (according to him) the locals say if you get lost in an Icelandic forest, just stand up. Which is… sorta true. They only tree of real quantity there is birch, and the tallest birch I saw was about 16ish feet (5ish meters). They do not grow heavily, so they’re a bit comedic and stringy. Decades old stands of them sort of look like 1-2 year old stands planted in warmer climates - without any ground cover, of course, because while grass will grow, the usual complement of weeds, vines, and what-not does not.

My dog eats shoe soles when she gets separation anxiety, and miraculously, she hasn’t managed to need surgery (for that) yet.

That one was free, but the next dog fact is gonna set you back $10k.

(And we know the shoes are an issue. The last 3 were a friends shoe that was accidentally left here in a place we didn’t spot them, our dog sitter’s mom’s shoe (from her closet!), and my wife’s shoe from the ’no dog area’ when we forgot to close a baby gate.)

Try putting a space between the octothorp and the text.

# Try putting a space between the octothorp and the text.

What’s the consensus on the rules of the game for the chosen card?

Would a Cards Against Humanity black card, which does not require mana to play, be playable? Would other players have to ‘respond’ with a card from their hand?

If you get multiple of these (or recall from graveyard) can you play the card if you also bring in the activation mana/cost whatever?

Is mana equitable across games? If you pull a card from a game that uses the same color mana as your deck, can you play the card? (For example, the game Not Enough Mana uses blue mana that is represented by a water drop.)

Thank you. I appreciate the head’s up. And I appreciate that you’re out here spreading the word. We need folks looking out for others.

I am aware of the risks, but I have a use case, as much as I don’t like that I do. I have an unknown food allergy that crops up randomly. I’m not even sure if it’s a singular food allergy or if it’s an allergy that only occurs when certain foods are combined.         
In the situation above, my face swelled similar to how Will Smith’s face swelled in the movie Hitch (except it was my forehead/scalp). I was 17 and did not know what an anaphylactic reaction was at the time, and we were all so poor that we just did not go to the hospital. Fortunately, the last time it occurred was 15ish years ago (and we got the reaction before any swelling occurred), but I do still keep some around, just in case. It’s definitely not something I use normally.
I hope that my daily allergy medication use (Allegra) will help stave off any future reactions.

Today I feel like telling you all some trauma because I’m avoiding work while I wait for Adderall and coffee to do their thing.

Many years ago I was a highly ignored, heavily traumatized kid. Despite living in a fairly big metro area, I lived on a long dead end street that was accessed via a 4-lane road that was technically a highway. The side near to the highway had several businesses with no close homes along the highway, and the 7 houses on the street were deeper in. There were some kids my age and they also were mostly ignored and heavily traumatized.

The neighbors parents were interesting. They were sort of like mine. Dad was blue color, an addict/drunk. Mom was a nurse. They weren’t financially okay as us. My dad had been given a successful plumbing business by my mom’s dad, but their dad drove a dump truck for a construction company. Their mom was an LPN (licensed practical nurse/lower paid nurse), and my mom was an RN (registered nurse - higher pay).
Weirdly, our parents didn’t seem to get along.

I always regarded their mom as being a better mom. She loved having kids, and really cared about her boys. And me, too, when I stayed with them. When she went to work, she packed lunches for us. At my house it was ‘find what you can.’ Anyway - their dad, though. He would spend his entire paycheck the day he got paid. Sometimes he’d buy something dumb - a new TV to set on top of the TV he’d bought just 6 months before, a bunch of fishing gear he’d use once before realizing he didn’t like fishing, shitty plastic chrome ‘upgrades’ for his car. But mostly, he spent it on booze. He even sometimes took us to the bar with him. We loved it - ordering virgin daiquiris at the American Legion and poorly playing pool at a table we could barely see over while he got intensely drunk. Then he’d careen down side streets to take us back home. He came across as jolly and even happy to most folks, but when his guard was down he was intensely angry, and very emotionally abusive. Once, and only once, in my teens, he even attempted to become sexually abusive, but apparently it is possible for two 14 year olds and a 13 year old to topple and hog tie a 500lb man.

I’d already started to fall out with the boys by then. My life path had taken my different places. My parents split up when I was 6, and by the time I was 8, we lost the house, and my mom had moved across the country to escape my dad, who died maybe a year and a half later. We came back to the area and I resumed my friendship, but from a different part of the city, and different schools. The older brother, who I’d always been friends with had changed. He got mean. He started picking on people for fun. Started thinking being an asshole was funny. The younger brother became more of my friend. He was kind, but always tried to please folks. He kept getting traumatized by now not only his dad, but his brother.
We hung out a few more times, but really, the last time I hung out with them was when I was 17ish. I drove over intending to hang out for a bit, but ate something that triggered an allergic reaction and wound up taking a bunch of Benadryl and staying the night. Their mom out to work a double overnight - I think I saw her in the morning before I left. At that point their dad had stopped working due to health issues. They had a girl there - 15-16ish, and apparently the dad was giving her his Vicodin, presumably in exchange for money (god, I hope it was money). She was gone in the morning before mom came home, but apparently she just hung out there while mom was at work and went into the nearby woods while she was home.

Their dad died about 5 years later, and at the funeral, I didn’t speak. I couldn’t. I had nothing nice to say. There’s a lot more that I cannot convey in this comment to you, reader, nor that I can even fully recall, but I remember looking at this family with that deep well of experience and emotion. They were my childhood best friends. Two damaged people that really, really didn’t get a fair shake. Both boys wearing stained T-shirts because they didn’t have nicer clothes. Didn’t finish high school. Didn’t have jobs. And the mom, who loved them all, and never got supported.

Leaving, I talked to the oldest. He said he was ‘working with’ a cousin that was showing him how to drive a big truck on the sly, so that maybe he could start driving dump trucks.
We stopped at his car, and he asked me if I wanted to go drinking with him - he told me he was gonna get shiftfaced. It was a Tuesday at 11 AM.
I politely declined as I read his bumper sticker - the first time I’d ever seen one - “Ass, Grass, or Cash, no one rides for free.”

It struck me as really sad and appropriate.

We do what we must. But sometimes the best self care is just those few minutes we claw back from the hustle and bustle.

Same. Then I got diagnosed for ADHD, went on (prescribed) methamphetamines and realized I was binge eating.
In the last year I’ve lost 40 lbs (~18 kg) because I no longer eat second meals after a meal.

Tell them the ultimate expression of masculinity is confidence and security in themselves regardless of societal expectations.

And then get their measurements, just in case you see something good on sale.

I had no idea. That’s pretty rad, to be honest.

His doctor was like “Hey man, you gotta take your turban off and put on a motorcycle helmet.”
And he was like “Nah, bro, what if I just wore a bigger turban?”
And his doctor was like “Dude, you’d need a turban that’s like 100lbs to offer you the same protection as a good helmet.”
Avtar: “Bet.”