Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

Conservatism: there are some people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

We still have time to mess this up!

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

This blog will pay for itself.

I was promised a recession.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

Consistently wrong since 2002

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

Americans barely caring about Afghanistan is so last month.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Olympics Open Thread and Stuff

Reader Interactions

216Comments

  3. 3.

    Suzanne

    YAY WALTER!! Does he fart a lot, BTW? There is a book series called “Walter the Farting Dog”.

    Good news about the electrical. Did you have it tested for hazardous materials, specifically asbestos and lead paint?? This is critical.

  7. 7.

    MomSense

    Woot woot! Maybe Walter was just the karma your house needed. Please give him some skritches for me. His salty snout reminds me so of my old lab.

  15. 15.

    Pogonip

    Cole, congratulations on winning the gold medal in the prestigious Porch-Falling-Throughing event. You are an inspiration to us all.

    Also, can you elaborate on this exciting box?

  19. 19.

    jl

    “MY NEW HOUSE DOES NOT NEED TO BE REWIRED AND HAS A BRAND NEW BOX!”

    Glad to hear that. I was worried about what the electric repair Coleaccidentpix would look like.

  26. 26.

    CaseyL

    @jl: Crispy critter Cole!

    Congrats on the house not needing new electrical. That’s a few thousand you can spend on the plumbing, instead :)

    Re borked blog: I can get into comments but the comment format option buttons and the text box itself are looking mighty peculiar.

  27. 27.

    Eric U.

    my mom’s house had a new circuit breaker panel, but was knob and wire for much of the house. Had to get rid of the old fuse box on the back porch to sell the house, they had just wired around it when they put in the circuit breakers

    Just glad I didn’t have to get rid of the knob and post, would have been a nightmare

  31. 31.

    Jack the Second

    If you’ve got an old house, there might still be old wires lurking here and there. My old house also has a brand new box with (luxury!) circuit breakers, but it also still has a hundred feet or so of old two-stranded wire here and there.

  32. 32.

    eclare

    @Suzanne: I have an old house (1920’s) with asbestos and lead paint. As long as you leave that stuff alone, you’ll be ok.

  35. 35.

    dmsilev

    @jl: I had a repair tech out last week to look at my air conditioner. After swapping out a bad motor, he started the thing up and then decided to reach inside and feel whether the motor was running hot. There were a couple of exposed contacts….

    It was a rather bright arc, and thank goodness for circuit breakers. He was ok, just a bit shook up (20 A of 240 V will do that)

  38. 38.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @raven:
    @seaboogie:

    It was fucked up for me too, but I closed everything down, wandered over into the fever swamps of Facebook for a couple of minutes, and when I came back here it was all better.

  39. 39.

    lahke

    Totally reminding me of a Sophie Tucker joke:
    Ernie says to me, he says “Soph” (he calls me Soph), “Soph, your chest is too flat and your box is too small.”
    “Ernie”, I says (I call him Ernie), “Get off my back!”

    John, hope your box is just right.

  40. 40.

    Sloane Ranger

    Good news on Walter. Give him my best. Congrats on house. Do you mean the electric box? Finally, yeah GB! A good day for us. I was beginning to panic.

  43. 43.

    jacy

    Great news on both counts! Here’s hoping for continued good news on the house front — as someone who just bought an older home, there’s always something else that needs fixing or replacing……..

  44. 44.

    Betty Cracker

    I can’t find an Olympics coverage schedule that makes any goddamned sense. I’m not looking for anything fancy — just the NBC network coverage.

  46. 46.

    Suzanne

    @eclare: I’m an architect. If you can leave both of those materials COMPLETELY undisturbed, then you are okay. The problem is that leaving those completely undisturbed is very difficult, especially when one is renovating, as Cole is planning to do. Asbestos ceiling can crumble just from dusting, and lead paint peels and flakes off. There is often asbestos in adhesives, and if you remove an old piece of tape and replace it, then you likely just let a whole bunch of that stuff into the air. Also, we find asbestos in buildings built after 1978 alllllll the time—manufacturers started hiding it as a proprietary ingredient in building materials.

  47. 47.

    dmsilev

    @jl: Could be worse, I could have shared some horror stories from work (30A 480V 3-phase circuit wired in such a way that one hot phase could be connected to chassis ground… Etc.).

  48. 48.

    raven

    @Betty Cracker: Here remember they mix live with stuff that is already done. There were quite a few finals today. It takes a real effort to stay uninformed, we even get dopes here that have to blurt out results.

  49. 49.

    Iowa Old Lady

    @dmsilev: I had someone here today planning to recharge my upstairs AC, but when he checked the compressor, a mouse had gotten in it and chewed up the wiring. It was cheaper to fix that than recharging would have been, but it was a mouse.

  50. 50.

    hovercraft

    Congrats on dodging an expensive bullet, re-wiring and electrical panels are expensive.
    And yay Walter.

  52. 52.

    Roger Moore

    It’s good to hear you have a new main electrical panel, but you still ought to see if the wiring is really what you want. Are there enough outlets? They’re only required every 12 feet, but you might do well to have them closer together than that. For example, if you know where your office is going to be, you could have a bunch of outlets put where the computer will go so you don’t need a power strip. Same thing with the entertainment center in the living room. Maybe have extra outlets in the bathrooms for automatic litter boxes. And you had talked about getting something put in so you can easily upgrade your communications wiring; no time like when the rest of the house is being remodeled.

  53. 53.

    dmsilev

    @Iowa Old Lady: Well, unfortunately for me the “fixed” motor died after 2 days, so I spent 4 hours twiddling my thumbs this afternoon waiting for a return visit. It’s now after 5 here on the left coast and I’ve just about given up. Left an aggrieved message on their office voicemail (office is closed, natch) and will express my displeasure first thing tomorrow morning.

  54. 54.

    Libby's Person

    @Betty Cracker: I downloaded NBC’s app (from their olympics website) so that I could see the full sessions of things that would never be on TV, whenever I have time. Bonus – these sessions don’t have any commentary, just the performances. It’s a clunky site to navigate, but it (more or less) does the job.

  55. 55.

    eclare

    @Suzanne: Point taken, asbestos wraps the pipes in the basement, so no contact at all. I know the paint chips, but I keep the place clean and don’t have kids, so I don’t worry too much about it. Have looked into removing both, and it’s just way too expensive. But I also haven’t done any renovations.

    ETA: more worried about the knob and tube wiring I still have

  63. 63.

    Gin & Tonic

    @raven: I know we like animals here, but I’m fed up this year. Gypsy moths ate my trees, hornworms ate my tomatoes, mouses live in the shed and the basement, I have gophers/woodchucks under the shed, deer ate the tulips, and now whatever tomatoes are left are being pecked at by the birds because we haven’t had rain in like two months and everything is parched. I feel like using napalm.

  64. 64.

    Suzanne

    @efgoldman: No, if you disturb asbestos or lead paint, you’ve freed it. Codes don’t apply—it’s just physics. And most places in the US are on the I-codes with only relatively small local variation. If you have hazardous materials, and you want them removed, then you have to have those abated by a licensed person/company. Most contractors won’t touch it and you have to have it abated before they’ll work on it for you.

  68. 68.

    Suzanne

    @eclare: Asbestos hides in lots of places….. in mastic for flooring, roofing, insulation, sound attenuation…….and we find it in buildings built after the official outlaw of asbestos about 50% of the time. In a house, it can be very difficult to not disturb it.

  73. 73.

    hovercraft

    Did any one watch Chris Hayes report on the DOJ report on the Baltimore Police Department? A supervisor in a patrol car with a DOJ official in the car doing a ride-a-long urges a cop to rouse a group of people on a corner, the officer says he has no cause to harass them, and the supervisor says make something up. Another quote, “do not treat criminals as citizens, citizens want that corner cleared.” Another case, a woman is stopped for a broken headlight, and she is then given an anal cavity search in public, nothing is found, but she is humiliated in public.
    It’s no wonder why Baltimore exploded after Freddie Gray’s death.

  74. 74.

    raven

    The coyotes have really reduced the ferrel cat and whistle pig population but they are nasty fuckers.

  75. 75.

    eclare

    @Suzanne: If I were having renovations done, would definitely be more concerned about it. Floors were refinished just before I moved in, none in attic, don’t know what sound attenuation is. When I commented, I forgot John was talking about knocking down walls and stuff. If I were doing that, yes, I would be concerned.

  77. 77.

    MomSense

    @Gin & Tonic:

    We saw a huge coyote/wolf/coydog in our neighborhood which is so unusual. My dog, to her credit, seemed totally prepared to fight it to protect us. She made herself enormous with her barking. I’ve never seen a wild coyote/wolf/coydogcoudog so close to our houses before.

  79. 79.

    hovercraft

    Average percentage of four national polls shows Trump’s support among African Americans is 2 %. He is fourth behind Clinton, Johnson and Stein. The same position he polls with voters under 35, but there his percentage is all the way up to 9 %.
    Winning!

  82. 82.

    Suzanne

    @eclare: Sound attenuation is typically seen in a house in that spray-on popcorn shit on ceilings. That shit is usually alllllllll asbestos. In commercial buildings, there is a lot of sound attenuating materials in ceiling tiles, sound batts, those panels you see in auditoria and libraries, etc.

  83. 83.

    LAO

    Is this a good news open thread? I hope so. It was a good day in my little defense firm, my law partner had a big win today in state court when an appeals court vacated his client’s murder conviction. Not even Trump can ruin my good mood tonight!

  86. 86.

    raven

    @Suzanne: My brother did a number of years in asbestos litigation for Grace. He mentioned that the twin towers would have fallen way sooner if the beams hadn’t been covered in the substance. It also may have played an important role in my dad’s death seeing how he lived in a WWI era destroyer for 4 years.

  87. 87.

    Aleta

    Good wiring and up to code box is great news. Three years ago I took on an old building that had previously been re wired to new code. Had new box. Last year electric coop said I had to put another new box in anyway because I had moved the building and it was a new account, so new higher standards that didn’t apply before. Costly.

  88. 88.

    Roger Moore

    @Suzanne:

    Sound attenuation is typically seen in a house in that spray-on popcorn shit on ceilings. That shit is usually alllllllll asbestos.

    Usually, but apparently not always. In my place, it’s apparently concrete(!). You can scrape your hand on it very nicely if you need to work on something close to the ceiling. Somebody living in the same building who had her ceiling redone said they plastered over it instead of the usual procedure of vacuuming it off.

  89. 89.

    dmsilev

    @OldDave: No, thank goodness. Under normal operation, it would have been OK just as long as nothing went wrong. Which is not really the level of safety you aspire to when dealing with electricity in the “start a fire or kill someone” power ranges.

    Note to any aspiring electricians: If a circuit calls for connecting a load between one hot phase and neutral, and there’s no neutral line available (because in this particular 3-phase circuit, the loads are connected between adjacent hot phases), don’t just assume that ground would be “just as good” as neutral…

  94. 94.

    Steve in the ATL

    @LAO: Convicted murderer goes free? That is cause for celebration!

    (just kidding–I know how the legal system works….)

  95. 95.

    Eric U.

    some small critters had a series of tunnels in the yard far to close to the house, and the dogs were digging up the yard going after them. Then one day, my wife saw a snake in the yard. Small critters are no longer driving the dogs nuts. I’m thinking about getting over my fear of snakes. Although I have no idea where it went after its snack.

    @Roger Moore: our house has sanded ceilings. It’s sand mixed with paint. I hope the ceiling heat coils in our house aren’t embedded in asbestos board, but I suppose they could be

  96. 96.

    eclare

    @raven: Weird, I once thought I might have to replace my boiler in the basement, and the quote included several thousand for asbestos removal, in addition to the cost of a new boiler. Luckily called another company and the one from the 1940’s or so is still going strong after minor repairs!

  100. 100.

    redshirt

    @Roger Moore: I’ve been thinking of that. Not a huge threat but maybe I should put up a gate on the front steps. But would that stop them?

    This morning I had a start as I left my house as a red squirrel was on the table right beside my front door. No idea what he/she was doing – there’s nothing squirrel friendly there.

    Red squirrels act very differently then Gray, so this one just inched ever deeper onto my porch (the wrong way for an easy exit) until he/she was cornered at the highest point of my deck (25 feet up). He/she then performed an amazing jump WAAAAY over to a pine tree, then shuffled off.

  101. 101.

    eclare

    @Suzanne: None of that. Again, 1920’s house with very few renovations or additions. But thanks for the info, learned to avoid popcorn ceilings! I would never mess up my plaster with that.

  102. 102.

    LAO

    @Steve in the ATL: lol. Once, years ago, I was part of a defense team on a horrible double homicide. Our client was acquitted. I was stoked. At a family gathering, my youngest brother looked at me, grimaced and said “good for you, bad for society?” To this day, that is my favorite comment from him.

  104. 104.

    Suzanne

    @raven: That was the spray-applied fireproofing, which is not the same as the popcorn shit but has a similar look. And YES, that shit likely helped hold that shit together.

    By code, buildings of that size built today have to have at least 3-hour protection on the primary structural frame. But the impact of the jet dislodged much of the fireproofing off, because that shit is brittle and crumbly AF. And the testing for that spray-applied material is not for a fire as hot as a jet fuel fire. So I too was surprised that the towers lasted as long as they did. Also, the impact of the upper floors finally falling that first time is what ultimately caused the entire collapse, and structural codes aren’t written to design for that kind of impact load.

  105. 105.

    rikyrah

    The New York TimesVerified account
    ‏@nytimes
    Mike Pence suggested that Donald Trump’s proposed ban on Muslims entering the U.S. could apply to other religions

  106. 106.

    Eric U.

    I’m not super concerned about lead, although if lead is likely, it’s best not to sand it. Homeowners can remove lead themselves, contractors can’t unless they are licensed. Asbestos is another matter.

  110. 110.

    eclare

    @raven: I would assume if I hired a legit firm to paint my house there would be a hefty charge for lead paint abatement. And I would only hire a legit firm.

  113. 113.

    Eric U.

    @eclare: you can paint over lead paint. I’m not sure plaster walls would do well with removing it. I guess if it’s peeling somewhere, you have a problem. In my mom’s house, the plaster was some local clay mixed with fine gravel and horse hair. Getting some of that in the eye was a real problem, it burned. More modern plaster is much more robust, from what I can tell

  115. 115.

    OldDave

    I just saw some footage of protesters being escorted out of tonight’s The Donald rally, and was a bit shocked to realize it was being held at my hockey team’s arena. Sad.

  118. 118.

    eclare

    @Eric U.: I’m not a DIY person, and I know there is a lot I don’t know. So I would hire someone. Have no idea what my plaster is made of, but it’s in good shape for the age.

    Horsehair is an…interesting choice.

  120. 120.

    geg6

    @raven:

    Similar here. My ex and I gutted and completely renovated a huge old 1905 colonial (over 4000 sq ft, 6 BR, parlor plus LR, butler’s pantry, servants’ staircase, five fireplaces, the works). We had it inspected and the only thing they told us we needed to do safety wise was to take out all the old knob and tube and replace the panel, which we were going to do anyway. This was in 1992. I’m sure there was lead and asbestos, but no one much cared because we have no kids. And we’re both just fine still. The coal dust we swallowed and breathed in from the house having had coal heat for about forty years worried both us more than asbestos or lead did.

  122. 122.

    eclare

    @raven: Not at all, didn’t even cross my mind. I’m sorry if it came across that way, just talking about my own lack of knowledge of this stuff.

  126. 126.

    steverinoCT

    @MomSense: I thought a coyote was using our yard as an entrance to the neighborhood; there is a spot where it could squeeze under the fence into the woods. Saw it running past in broad daylight carrying something woodchuck-like. A few days later I saw it on a side street and it paused long enough to give me a good look: a gray fox. Didn’t know they got that big: foxes are small and red, after all. Haven’t seen it lately; perhaps the litter moved out already.

  129. 129.

    Betty Cracker

    @raven: My husband found half a cat on a golf course last week. He figures a coyote that had been spotted in the area got the other half. ?

  131. 131.

    steverinoCT

    @Eric U.: Grew up in my grandmother’s house, built ~1910. She had the fusebox replace with breakers, but they missed a pair of heat-sink fuses that were elsewhere in the basement overhead. Found them when half the house went dark. They left them; just put some replacement fuses next to the box for next time.

    When my mother got the kitchen renovated, cloth-covered wiring had to be replaced.

  133. 133.

    Iowa Old Lady

    Here’s a fun article about carrying a Nobel Prize through the airport in Fargo. I thought people here might need this info some day. Sample:

    “When I won this, my grandma, who lives in Fargo, North Dakota, wanted to see it. I was coming around so I decided I’d bring my Nobel Prize. You would think that carrying around a Nobel Prize would be uneventful, and it was uneventful, until I tried to leave Fargo with it, and went through the X-ray machine. I could see they were puzzled. It was in my laptop bag. It’s made of gold, so it absorbs all the X-rays—it’s completely black. And they had never seen anything completely black.

    “They’re like, ‘Sir, there’s something in your bag.’

    I said, ‘Yes, I think it’s this box.’

    They said, ‘What’s in the box?’

    I said, ‘a large gold medal,’ as one does.

  139. 139.

    dmsilev

    @Iowa Old Lady: I’ve actually touched a Nobel medallion; when I was in grad school, we had a seminar speaker once whose father won a Nobel and the son had inherited the medallion and brought it with him to the talk (not really sure why he did that, but it was pretty nifty). Funny thing was I had a second connection to that prize; long after the father did the work that lead to the prize (work done in the late 40s and early 50s), the apparatus he built was repurposed for use as an undergrad teaching lab. And my lab partner and I were running through the lab experiment on that equipment right when the announcement of the prize was made (our professor walked in, pointed to the equipment, and said “that stuff just won a Nobel this morning”). Telling the son that story was even cooler than seeing the medallion.

  142. 142.

    trollhattan

    Jesus Christ on a canoli, Florida man!

    A 40-year-old Florida man who was on probation in connection with a road rage death was himself shot and killed on Wednesday morning after an encounter with another motorist, WFTS-TV reported.

    Police said Gary Lynn Durham got into an argument with 42-year-old Robert Padgett after Durham stopped his pickup truck in front of Padgett’s car. Padgett subsequently fired one round from a handgun, killing Durham.

  143. 143.

    Patricia Kayden

    @hovercraft: Had no idea that police behavior in Baltimore was so toxic. Thankfully it appears that the Police Chief is cooperating with the DOJ versus making excuses for its problematic officers.

  146. 146.

    LAO

    @efgoldman: I have no clue. But he certainly didn’t get a fair trial. Which is what I care about.

    (I don’t mean to sound harsh but I don’t really care because the State should never cheat to win, that is not justice.)

  147. 147.

    raven

    @efgoldman: Blood too.

    “Nigel and Mary Kerr in Lincolnshire Life, November 1987, write: “A traditional mix used in Nottinghamshire, Northamptonshire and south Lincolnshire was: ‘One third lime, one third well sifted coal ashes and one third loamy clay and horse dung from grasses'”. They add that ox blood and horse hair were sometimes included”

  149. 149.

    lahke

    @Keith P.:
    We are talking about all kinds of boxes–this is the nature of punning.

    Let us analyze another example: there was a penguin driving through the desert when his car died. He left the car at a mechanic’s and went across the street to the store to pick up something cooling. Attracted to the freezer case, he hopped in and started eating a quart of vanilla ice cream, becoming so relaxed he fell asleep. Suddenly waking and realizing he needed to go back to the mechanic’s, he waddled over and asked about the car. “Son,” says the mechanic, “looks like you blew a seal” . “No,” says the penguin, wiping his beak, “that’s just ice cream.”

    (reaction time)

    In this case, both seal and blew have more than one meaning–double the fun.
    Anybody have a triple pun to share?

  152. 152.

    Prescott Cactus

    @Suzanne:

    Did you have it tested for hazardous materials, specifically asbestos and lead paint?? This is critical.

    John,
    I did 36 years as an asbestos worker. Richard Mayhew has my e-mail addy. Hot water pipes, boiler(?) insulation are problematic. Drop down grid ceiling tiles less so and floor tiles and roof shingles are not so much at all.

    Also, since you run a strongly democratic blog which can probably offer up free ad space, if you have any problems that are covered by a union trade, you may want to speak to the apprentice Co-ordinator or Business Manager and work something out.

    ETA: I don’t do the twitter.

  154. 154.

    geg6

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    I drank beer from the Stanley Cup. Everyone did at the insane party I went to at a certain Penguin’s house once. In a swimming pool. About a hundred people drank from it that night. Crazy.

  155. 155.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @lamh36: Kornacki showed that too, he was babbling about ISIS honoring President Obama. Mark Foley wasn’t cheering that part.

    I suspect within two hours he’ll be tweeting about “many, many people say…”

  163. 163.

    geg6

    @Prescott Cactus:

    Yes, the house we renovated had asbestos in the flooring. We weren’t required to do abatement for that. We just tore that floor out. Of course, perhaps the regs have gotten stricter since we did that back in ’92.

    As for lead paint, we wore masks when we stripped doors and woodwork. And since we tore the walls down, every single one eventually, we got rid of any lead in wall paint. Wore masks for that, too, but that was more about the vast quantities of coal dust in those walls. We looked like coal miners every time we tore down a room’s walls.

  165. 165.

    Mnemosyne

    @Iowa Old Lady:

    It was cheaper to fix that than recharging would have been, but it was a mouse.

    Given the italics, I assume it was actually an ex-mouse by the time it was found?

    At work, my office had been pushing for its own generator for years in case of an emergency. The deciding factor was when a squirrel decided to walk on the wrong wire, fried itself, and knocked out the power for the whole building.

    A rat managed to do the same thing a few months ago, but fortunately the generator is now installed and working just fine.

  170. 170.

    danielx

    Walter is doing great but MY NEW HOUSE DOES NOT NEED TO BE REWIRED AND HAS A BRAND NEW BOX!

    Most excellent…one time when i was playing general contractor it cost $1800 to go from 100 amp to 200 amp service. Minor rewiring, new breaker box, new storm hood, new cable coming to the house, power company turning off power and turning it back on, etc. I have to admit the thought of Cole engaging in electrical work has its amusing side, but….no. Just no.

  171. 171.

    Mandalay

    As “accidental” police shootings go, few can have been more avoidable than this one:

    The 73-year-old was there as a student in the citizens police academy, a two-hour course intended to give an intimate look at what makes the department in the quaint Florida town work. On this night, the group of 35 would tour the station and talk with officers, an essential part of academy curriculum that has gained popularity across the country amid a heated national debate about police violence.

    When it came time to get involved, Knowlton volunteered.

    The hosting officers chose two students to role-play a lethal force simulation, a scenario intended to demonstrate how and when officers decide to pull the trigger. Knowlton played the victim, Charlotte Sun photographer Sue Paquin told the newspaper, and a Punta Gorda police officer played a “bad guy.” These scenarios are usually safe, acted out with either fake or empty weapons.

    But when the officer’s gun was fired, Knowlton — a mother, wife and career librarian — was hit with a live round.

    She was rushed to a local hospital and was pronounced dead.

    And what did the police chief have to say about this?…..

    Punta Gorda Police Chief Tom Lewis called the shooting a “horrible accident”

    As vile and offensive comments go, that one rates pretty high. Folks here long ago persuaded me that there is no such thing as an accidental shooting death.

    I guess the librarian killer has “suffered enough already” and no charges will be filed.

  173. 173.

    Prescott Cactus

    @Suzanne: Let me add curtains in old theaters and HS auditoriums.

    The manufacturer of asbestos was outlawed in the late 1970’s, BUT any asbestos containing material could continue to be sold and installed until the inventory was exhausted. Around mid 80’s the Feds provided schools with a shit ton of money to remove it.

    The danger is if asbestos is “friable” (When dry, if it can be crumbled, pulverized, or reduced to powder by hand pressure.) including fibrous enough to become airborne.

  177. 177.

    dmsilev

    @Mnemosyne:

    The deciding factor was when a squirrel decided to walk on the wrong wire, fried itself, and knocked out the power for the whole building.

    We had that happen at my old employer, and we started looking into backup power as well. My favorite memory from the presentation of one of the bidders was a photo of a moose that had gotten entangled in some high-voltage cables that had been laid out on the ground to prepare to be hoisted up to the towers. When the cables went up, the moose went up with them…

    Edit: the story, and the photo, of the poor moose

  181. 181.

    Mnemosyne

    If we’re playing “cool things I got to hold,” I got to hold two different Oscars. They are just as heavy as they say, and weirdly balanced — the base is lighter than the statuette, for some reason.

  187. 187.

    The Golux

    Re: Funky wiring

    When we renovated our kitchen, I found one outlet box that had three live feeds going into it, all from the same circuit breaker, and another box that had a single BX 3-strand cable (red, white and black) that was connected to two separate circuit breakers. The first one was almost certainly from the original house wiring; my father designed the house, and I know that wall had never been opened since it was built.

  190. 190.

    Suzanne

    @raven: The fire started at the impact area and then the extreme heat caused the steel to sag. Finally, the steel sagged enough at that impact area that the columns couldn’t hold the floors above, and the top portions fell pretty close to straight down onto the floor deck, and then the impacts were progressive to each level below in turn.

  191. 191.

    Suzanne

    @Steve in the ATL: LOL.

    The thing is, all of the structural engineers I know don’t believe any of the conspiracy bullshit. We have to deal with fire-rating steel all the time. The idea that jet fuel can’t affect steel is so ludicrous. I’m doing a two-story building with a steel structure with fire rating right now.

  192. 192.

    dmsilev

    @Mnemosyne:

    Plus Walt’s head, of course.

    Can I interest you in cryogenic storage? Our rates are very reasonable, and we can do much lower temperatures than what mere ordinary freezers can reach.

  193. 193.

    Miss Bianca

    @Gin & Tonic: I just had to trap two pack rats who were earnestly endeavoring to build themselves a nest under the hood of my car. They’re cute critters, but the pee and poop *inside* the car was getting to be a bit much. Besides, I was afraid that the bits of shrubbery and wood and crap (literal crap – they were picking up dried dog turds) they were decorating the engine and battery with were going to start a fire.

  195. 195.

    Prescott Cactus

    @geg6:
    4% of lung cancer is asbestos related.
    There is a 50 to 90% Increased risk of developing lung cancer if a person smokes and has been exposed to asbestos.

    The good news is that exposure to disease is usually 20 to 30 years. You should not worry two iota if you were exposed during one or two house rehabs. Our local had 2,000 members during my time and I’ve only heard of only 2 wifes who contracted meso / asbestosis because they would wash their hubby’s work clothes.

    The odds are with you.

  200. 200.

    Amir Khalid

    @Mnemosyne:
    Um, just what Giant Evil Corp plan to do with Walt’s head if they ever get to thaw it out? Do they plan to stitch it onto the neck of some unwitting bodybuilder? Revive Walt Disney Presents, with Walt speaking from inside a bell jar?

  201. 201.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    I never heard of this guy till people started retweeting him, but he cracks me up

    Owen Ellickson ‏@ onlxn 7h7 hours ago
    TRUMP: Hey, just wanna say: happy anniversary.
    RYAN: What?
    TRUMP: It’s now been a full 24 hours of you ducking my thing about killing people

    RYAN: I have bigger stuff to worry about.
    TRUMP: Like, say, looking like a ridiculous little coward?
    RYAN:
    TRUMP: Stuff like that, Paul?

  204. 204.

    Prescott Cactus

    @raven: If they plaster / stucco has horsehair there is a pretty good chance it doesn’t contain asbestos. Along with it’s fantastic heat tolerance, asbestos is a fantastic “binder”. Especially insulating cement, floor tiles, ceiling tiles and roofing shingles.

  206. 206.

    geg6

    @Prescott Cactus:

    Oh, I know. People get too panicked about stuff. I know what it takes to get mesotheliosis. A good friend of mine, a pipe fitter by trade, had to have a double lung transplant due to it. The guy worked in all the old steel mills here in the Pittsburgh area all though the late ’60s through the late ’80s. He helped tear a lot of them down as they went out of business in the ’80s. His exposure was enormous.

  207. 207.

    trollhattan

    @Prescott Cactus:
    Also synergistic with smoking to a significant degree. Figure between the Navy and building airplanes it wasn’t just the Pall Malls that killed my old man.

  209. 209.

    Prescott Cactus

    @trollhattan: Skipped the smoking, but was an asbestos worker who spent 25 years working in nukes. . . synergy? We’ll see. . . I had less total dose (19 REM )than my bride got in her 28 day radiation treatment (26REM).

  210. 210.

    Suzanne

    @debbie: Not sure about that. I’ve never heard that, though it could be true, of course. Obviously the towers were built under older building codes and I don’t know if the engineered connections got more robust in subsequent codes. But even so, the impacts dislodged so much of the fireproofing stuff and steel doesn’t melt but does deform with fire exposure. I am surprised that they lasted as long as they did, which was close to an hour for both towers, as I recall.

  212. 212.

    Robert Sneddon

    @Iowa Old Lady: A friend of mine was given the job of taking a Hugo Award from the US to deliver it to the winner in the UK when he flew back home. The Hugo, as some of you probably know, is a large solid-metal rocket about a foot long mounted on a plinth. It looks very much like a projectile, not surprisingly.

    Did I mention this was a few days after 9/11?

  213. 213.

    satby

    @trollhattan: That’s what my dad died from. He was a pipefitter for about 18 months waiting to get into the police academy in the early 1950s, and they covered a lot of pipes with asbestos. And a lifelong smoker, so in his case that 30 year disease progression resulted in diagnosis and death at age 54.

  215. 215.

    JAFD

    @lahke: Well, there were these three brothers, went down to Texas and started a cattle ranch. And they were doing pretty well, but, y’know, every real ranch in Texas has’ta have a name, and they couldn’t agree on what to call their place. So they figured they’d leave it up to their father, sent him the plane tickets, showed him round the spread, and after a prime rib dinner, explained their quandry and each brother put forth their preferred name.

    Dad thought a minute, and said “Why don’t you call it ‘Focus’?”

    “Focus?!?”

    “It’s where the sun’s rays meet.” (sons raise meat)

  216. 216.

    Lurker

    Methink Walter needs to move into the Cole household as the senior dog. What’s another pup when you already have three? And Steve would have a buddy its own size to play with.

Comments are closed.