Sometime in the mid-nineteenth century, King Ferdinand II of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies decided to go on safari in Africa. He killed a lion, an eland, and a hippopotamus, keeping the mounted heads for himself, and awarding the skins to three of his squires back home.
Thus, the three squires became known as the Lion Squire, the Eland Squire, and the Hippo Squire. They wore their respective skins at every official occasion to show their rank and the favor that Ferdinand held for them.
As the years passed, the Lion Squire and the Elsand Squire’s skins became threadbare, and the squires were very jealous of the Hippo Squire, whose thicker hide produced a patina on the leather as time wore on. So, they hatched a plan to assassinate the Hippo Squire and divide the hippo skin between them equally.
Now the Lion Squire had four sons, and the Eland Squire had three sons, but the Hippo Squire was childless. The Lion Squire and the Eland Squire sent their seven sons to kill the Hippo Squire, but the Hippo Squire drew his sword and single-handedly slaughtered all of them.
And thus, it was proven once and for all that the squire of the hippopotamus is equal to the sons of the squires of the other two hides.
If you were wondering why there are so few female libertarians…
Did I mention that there are very few female libertarians?
My wife isn’t a libertarian. Memes like this are probably why.
Well, it’s possible that there’s more than one reason…
Oh, bravo!
Seconded
I call bullshit. No one can kill a hippopotamus .
I actually know a guy who killed a hippopotamus. I set up the rifle that he used for his second safari, after his first attempt ended up with a broken extractor and he and his PH hiding in a tree…
THAT’S NOT FUNNY!
I assume Swiss didn’t see this one in the article queue.
Content desperation is desperate!
I feel guilt.
Must be. They scheduled my waste of pixels already.
I’m torn between wanting opera applause for at least the pun (but honestly the memes as well) and backing away slowly before the Catbutt Of Doom is called in as an orbital strike by Swiss.
Boo!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQ7rMBmJ80E
There is a rather elaborate joke I was told by a friend. I won’t bother with the elaborations.
A guy and his wife were travelling (So long ago gas station attendants still pumped the gas). The guy gets out to stretch his legs. He and the pump jockey are making small talk, and when he tells the guy where they are from, the pump jockey leans in and murmurs, “Yeah, I been there. Had the worst sexual experience of my life with a girl I met.”
When he gets back in the car his wife asks him, “What did that guy say to you?”
“He thinks he knows you.”
Maybe they were in New Jersey.
Oh, the stick-it-where-it-stinks joke eh?
Cavalry Sgt.: How do I know this is your horse? Paden: Can’t you see this horse loves me? Cavalry Sgt.: I had a gal do that to me. It didn’t make her my wife.
Good grief – how long have you been saving that one up?
Speaking of last night: Franz Ferdinand is astoundingly underrated, at least for two albums. And though I don’t know about their other work, Interpol’s Turn on the Bright Lights is fucking *fantastic.*
You and I have seemingly random overlapping Likes. Curious.
Funnily enough w singing lessons, though I for some reason decided to go with Michelle by the Beatles, “Michael” by FF was my front-runner, a) because it’s a fun song, and b) I think it would kinda match my still-developing range.
Huh. Also an odd overlap. Michael and Michelle, with no internal thought behind it, other than ‘I really like these both.’
Not to all: Straight dude with no inner desire to trans into the unknown. *looks around warily* At high school and early college, I ran in the gay theater crew, though I’m not gay nor in theater (but am a musician). DAMMIT, so many missed opportunities as the only straight dude there. *kicks self*
Amused, I am.
Two hunters are out in the woods when one of them collapses. He doesn’t seem to be breathing and his eyes are glazed. The other guy whips out his phone and calls the emergency services. He gasps, “My friend is dead! What can I do?” The operator says, “Calm down. I can help. First, let’s make sure he’s dead.” There is a silence; then a gun shot is heard. Back on the phone, the guy says, “OK, now what?”
I LOL’d. Bravo.
“world’s funniest joke” I found the exact text on Wikipedia.
Someone did a study two or three decades looking at language/culture impacts on humor. A joke that is funny in one language/culture doesn’t translate well into other languages/cultures.
So they had people across the globe rate a lot of different jokes. This is the one that scored the highest. Meaning that the humor tends to cross language and cultural boundaries better than the other jokes that were scored.
And it is quite funny actually.
Ok, well done. I know you and was looking, but I didn’t catch the punnery. I went back. I eventually got it. Took me a few tries. That was well-played.
I am not necessarily a smart man.
The “women’s section” made me laugh. Picking nail polish and eye-lash whatevers was an annoying hassle cuz they aren’t organized in the same way ‘normal’ things are. Hint: Look for the specific name of the color. They’re often ‘humorous’ (in their own way), like “Plumpest Pink” or “Tease-y Does it” and similar.
I loved getting it right, but good lord when they didn’t have it. “Suggest substitution:….” I was wise enough to know I ain’t ever gonna pick an ‘acceptable’ sub. I was told to never make subs for milk or eggs, for reasons I don’t necessarily understand.
Question for the car-glibs:
Is their something unique about Subaru, or a post-2015 thing that causes this problem? The battery fails without giving any indication whatsoever. Previously, I could tell that a battery was getting old, but this car has had two batteries go from “starts exactly like normal” to “absolutely nothing, not even a trickle to power an LED.”
I would look to the alternator at that point.
ECM, starter and light relays and many other things can fail and create a near-dead short to the frame. If you have the equipment start to look for current flow while the car is turned off. If you have no current measuring equipment, look for inexplicable warm spots while the car is stopped and cooled off.
Or if it dies while you’re driving it and can’t restart, I had an ECM module’s housing crack on my ’94 Mustang. it would start fine, run for awhile, ann then the heat from the engine would allow the housing to expand, which broke a circuit and would cause the car to stall and not be able to restart until the engine cooled down.
I have never seen that but only have one vehicle post 2015.
https://www.subaruforester.org/threads/2019-repeated-dead-battery-merged-thread.805125/
Voltage readings at the battery before and after “wake up” and start might help.
I have also had good results from running a battery desulfator every now and then. 24V and 12V.
1 year extension on the plane battery and still going, will see on the F350.
If you charge the battery with an external charger “after death” does it work?..
Choices:
Bad battery.
excessive parasitic load after shutdown (bad alternator diode)
poor charging (bad alternator again)
Bad battery will show 13.5+ volts when charging, but probably < 12v in "wake up" and "trying to start"
Parasitic load will need a DC current detector, but if you disconnect the battery between shutdown and the next start and it works would indicate this.
poor charging won't show 13.5 V when running..
The one that failed in the summer would not take a charge after jumping, replaced it in the parking lot of the first parts store I could locate.
The one that failed over the weekend DID recharge after I jumped it and took the dog for a drive. So alternator is looking ok.
The jump pack that I bought at a local NAPA after the previous battery failure was completely nonfunctional when I tried using it this weekend. Fortunately the amazon.com next-day delivery one worked like a dream (and is smaller than the NAPA one to boot) The thing that breaks my brain is that it charges itself off of household power through a USB C connection. Something that claims to deliver 1000A can be recharged with a 2A device?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ub37OQCP1RM
Do New Lithium Jump Packs Beat Old School?
I have a NOCO and it’s worked well for me. As for batteries and newer cars – They won’t turn over or click the starter relay, but I’ve never had one go from starting yesterday to stone cold dead then next day. However, with newer cars I never noticed slow or hard starting like I did in times long ago.
One more if you are interested.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4N5txe7oZA
A good channel for honest and creative tool reviews. His day job is as a mechanic.
I’ve been testing with a Harbor Freight charger/conditioner.
https://www.harborfreight.com/2815-amp-automatic-microprocessor-controlled-battery-charger-56796.html
as for the 2A vs 1000A… the 1000A is a chimera (supercap system?) .. The actual battery/CAP will have an Amp/Hour listing.. 2Amp@ x hours will recharge it.
So, 2 amp for 10 hours = 20Amp-hour… and then 1000A for 1.2 mins.
That technically during a test that they could discharge the entire system in 20 seconds, doesn’t mean much. The cables alone couldn’t withstand that steady state current. Starter assist systems are to just give the battery some help.. not start from scratch.
Now I look at a supercap system says 5 min charge at 12v/2A. so 10A-min… at 1000A discharge that would be .6 seconds of power.. Spec-manship at its best.
I’m trying to think of a joke about lesbians and vibrators, but I’m coming up empty.
Lesbians and Estim?
Sounds like you’re in a pickle that’s missing something – will some dill do?
Seems to be a newer battery thing. I had one that we drive to the Corvette museum. I had load tested it before the trip. We stopped for lunch, everything was fine. We stopped for gas a couple hours later and everything was fine when I first cranked it to turn on the windshield washer sprayers because the station was out of juice in the bucket. Shut the car off, finished filling and then absolutely nothing. I couldn’t even pop the trunk with the dash button. Fortunately, there was a NAPA 1/4 mile away.
If you have the equipment start to look for current flow while the car is turned off.
Quick and dirty- pull the ground strap off and see if it sparks when you touch the terminal. New cars always have a small draw, I think, but a problem should be obvious.
this car has had two batteries go from “starts exactly like normal” to “absolutely nothing, not even a trickle to power an LED.”
Bizarre. If it was a chassis problem you (I) would expect the new battery to have problems immediately. Did they both fail in the winter?
One was Sunday morning (~25 degrees?), the other one was in the summer.
Speaking of car electrical stuff- my ’05 Element, when it’s not running and I turn the headlights on, makes a humming noise which sounds like a pump. Weird.
It’s pressurizing the blinker fluid system.
I wondered where the story was going, but the fact the Hippo Squire defeated the sons means he is greater than the sons, not equal.
My geometry teacher in high school told his version of that story. It involved two native chiefs arguing over whether one fat squa was better than several thin squas. They were put on animal hides to be weighted, etc. But this was in 1987.
One of my high school math teachers kept being distracted by getting one of their kids into college.
Always going off on a tangent about needing to cosign their loans.
My calculus teacher used what she claimed were original stories as an integral part of her lessons, but I found them to be derivative.
I’m sure a fraction of them were solutions for her problems trying to teach you miscreants.
One was Sunday morning (~25 degrees?), the other one was in the summer.
Did they come back to life on the charger, or was it just a “Your battery is junk, you need a new one” situation?
Summer one was bad, winter one recharged.
It’s bizarre to me that there was no noticeable degradation in the starting from the summer/legitimate bad battery one as it was degrading. It’s almost as if instead of directly starting from the battery, the battery was charging a capacitor that then turned the starter. Or there was some ECM for the starter that is involved with new(er) cars.
Key Statistics & Trends:
High Frequency: The 1970s had the most terrorist attacks in U.S. history, with 55% of all incidents between 1970-2013 occurring then.
FBI Data: The FBI recorded over 2,500 domestic terrorist bombings in just 1971 and 1972, averaging nearly five per day.
Annual Counts: Specific years saw high numbers: 468 incidents in 1970 and 1,318 in 1977.
Whenever I contemplate what is happening in this country at this time, I try to related it back to my formative years (coming of age from age 13 till 20).
Terrorism was constantly in the news. Leftist terrorists, both here and abroad, were attacking institutions both private and public. The 1972 Olympics were a defining moment in my freshman year of high school. Terrorism seemed ever present and never ending.
And yet, I never had the feeling that the US was going to come undone because of it.
That’s no longer true. We no longer have loose networks of terrorist groups scraping together odds and ends to fabricate IEDs.
Now, we have some of the richest people on the planet funding, coordinating, and organizing “actions” which are intended to disrupt the lives of as many people as possible without stepping over the line into criminal behavior (or stepping briefly over the line to provoke a response before stepping back and complaining about police overreaction and brutality).
It is designed to destabilize the country, and it seems to be working.
I should write an article, but I am too depressed about it to put more effort into it.
Bottom up, not not down. There’s a large chunk of this country’s population that is hostile to its stated values and history and is supportive of foreign invaders. That chunk is both native and immigrant.
We do seem to be repeating history, minus the bombings. I am not sure why. It seems inevitable.
I might just be snarking a bit here, but I get the feeling that the 60’s and 70’s radicals were a lot more technically proficient than our current crop of low-agency emoters.
Would you try to build a bomb if you knew that you couldn’t change a tire or set up your home theater?
Envy, it’s always envy.
Hitler reacts to the new generation of Nazis:
https://x.com/triggerpod/status/2013290456432390231
That is beautiful.
*golf clap*
It’s bizarre to me that there was no noticeable degradation in the starting from the summer/legitimate bad battery one as it was degrading.
One would think so. Starter get a little draggy, or something.
I have seen systems that use a relay on the starter/battery cut out absolutely when the battery didn’t have enough power you would get a little bit of starter movement and then both the starter solenoid and battery solenoids would cut out.
I have seen relay systems for starters also go “click”.. but not hard enough to engage the bendix. This was fixed by putting in another relay that triggered much lower than 12V. These were tractor specific. There was plenty of battery to run the starter, but not the start solenoid. odd right? The particular circuit was the safety switches (Seat, transmission, PTO, etc) that ran all around the tractor.. over time resistance in the wiring and connectors would be too much for the normal solenoid.
Early afternoon ray of sunshine
Apparently Teslas don’t need full Self-Driving Mode in order to be directed by otterpilot.
Wallets. Yes, I get the joke. But this is my objection:
I have things that are 30-40 years old that I love. I’ve gone looking for things I loved in the past and I use them and love them.
FURTHERMORE!!!! I had things I’d used for decades and then I got a careless XY. Like that time I bought a 1950s Pyrex double boiler WITH A LID. Guess who broke the lid almost immediately.
I went looking for a 1970s avocado green Crockpot (when I was still deluding myself that Crockpots don’t boil meat and that all the shitty meals coming out of one is user error, except doing it in a deep skillet is faster, easier, and comes out right) (spoiler: Crockpots boil meat). I found one at a thrift store. I hadn’t even paid for it yet when the clerk dropped the lid. DAFUQ. My eyes lit up like Homelander’s.
Lastly, I would NEVER give my husband a new wallet. He would NEVER give me a new purse. That shit’s personal, man.
I thought about your writing and how you would look at the relationships in Absentia.
The show is about a dangerously crazy woman who is sufficiently hot enough to have her pick of men. If you have Netflix, watch Season 2 episode 4 to see a (to me) truly disturbing scene wherein she’s self-sabotaging, he decides to prove how strong and steadfast he is by refusing to leave her and Bad Things Ensue.
Is this an anthology or should I catch up to that episode?
The show itself is three ten-episode seasons.
I don’t know if you need to have watched the 13 previous episodes to understand that scene or not. I think you could get away with only watching Season 2 — or just know that the heroine is seriously damaged goods and the dude she’s banging is a stereotypical nonconforming renegade detective that’s not afraid to bend the rules etc.
Thanks. I’ll watch that.
I’m cogitating a post on writing what you USED to want or are still attached to because of nostalgia that, as you get older, are kind of like, WTF. OTOH, most people are fucked up in some way or another and you can exploit that to a certain extent (meaning, truth is stranger than fiction), and writing normal (or shy) people is actually quite difficult.
Oh man, that double boiler…I could make so much Hollandaise sauce in that thing…
WAIT WHAT 🤯
How do you make Hollandaise sauce in a Crockpot???
It was actually your double boiler that I was drooling over.
There are many ways to make Hollandaise sauce (https://italianchef.org/microwave-magic-quick-easy-hollandaise-sauce-in-minutes/) but I get the best results with a double boiler. Most of the quickie methods yield a sauce that melts too quickly when served.
Oh, reading comprehension! Geez. Yes, that’s why I got it.
The expression of horror is totally worth it. 😂 😂 😂
Now you’ve got me thinking about Eggs Benedict for dinner…
I bought my wife a purse once.
She never used it.
I think that’s the only gift I’ve bought her she didn’t like.
I have bought my wife many purses (when the older ones are too small/worn out)… it just goes on my credit card, but I have to push her to go shopping.
I’m 20 years on this wallet… I have a backup, but preferred this one, perhaps I can buy the same model again.
I can understand not wanting to give up a wallet that is just starting to get broken in. I have a ten-year-old wallet from Saddleback Leather that’s just now starting to develop a nice patina.
But in that case, my sympathy is with the Mrs. That wallet isn’t broken in, it’s worn the fuck out, and looks like a cheap synthetic leather piece of junk to boot…
I find that interesting since I think I’ve only bought myself one wallet over my lifetime — others were gifts from my parents or my wife. And I never thought twice about it, honestly.
But I certainly agree that I’d never buy her a purse (mainly because I assume whatever I chose would be wrong for some reason or another).
https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/20/investing/stock-market-us-europe-tensions-greenland
US stocks fell sharply Tuesday afternoon as investors continued to express concern about President Donald Trump’s clash with European leaders over ownership of Greenland.
The Dow was down 861 points, or 1.74%, in early afternoon trading. The broader S&P 500 fell 1.96%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite slid 2.2%. The S&P and Nasdaq wiped out their gains for this year.
The S&P and Dow were set for their worst day since October. The Nasdaq was set for its worst day since November.
The lemmings have taken control of the market.
This morning I saw half the population of Greenland on TV chanting “Greenland belongs to Greenlanders!” and I thought to myself, “Um. No, it belongs to Danes.”
All 13 days of it?
THE HORROR.
Speaking of history lessons – this is a novel one.
And needless to say – Democrats one and all.
That is an… interesting way to frame the opposition. Never change, The Hill.
All of us are tax slaves and second-class citizens. Nice argument.