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April fools?

OAN lost a distribution channel today: DirecTV dropped OAN today, rejecting GOP pleas to keep right-wing network That's a shame.

Details, details. What's important is how that picture makes him FEEL.

Hers is still above yours I think.

One big factor that hasn't been mentioned is when USPA required its group member DZs to separate high-performance landings from standard landings by either space (separate landing areas) or time (separate passes). In the late 2000s and early 2010s, collisions in the pattern could account for 25% of a year's fatalities (and they often occurred two at a time). Those have virtually disappeared.

You signed an agreement that Ukraine wouldn't be invaded if it gave up their WMD.

Reality is that you cannot see genes. Reality is that people tend to try to identify male and female visually. Reality is that leads to all kinds of problems.

That's silly. None of them were white.

Bawhahaha!!! Roger Stone Claims He’s Being ‘Censored’ on Trump’s Free-Speech App

It's easy to post this shit here, where you're not knowingly offending actual people with gender differences. I'll bet you enjoy snickering behind their backs with your buddies in the locker room (maybe you consider this your virtual locker room), and would have been perfectly happy to share racist or sexist jokes with your "buds," assuming that you'd be the one to stick around. Lucky for you, offensive posts are not against the rules. They're just offensive. As it happens, I'm female. So have at it -- post the sexist jokes about whining, breaking fingernails, parking skills, financial habits, panties in a wad, and whatever else floats your boat. We all know what it means, and the number of bros to snicker with you is going down all the time. If you don't care what we think, why post? Here, you're not in the majority or in power. Wendy P.

It would be the height of wilful ignorance to believe that there are not people who would vote against Harris based on race and gender. Your problem is that you seem to be both reading and writing an invisible “all” in these statements. But that really is entirely your problem, not ours. (BTW, WTF are you talking about with the distinction between Americans and people? What difference does that make? How on earth is it a straw man? Are you arguing that there are racist people in the world but none of them are American? Because I have no fucking clue what else you could possibly mean.)

Absolutely I am able to see what is wrong with that. I don't, as you apparently do, consider VP Harris to be a "giggling, insincere buffoon". Whereas I do, and you apparently do not, consider Trump to be traitorous, grifting, lying, narcissistic, conniving crook. Hence my thinly veiled assertion that those who would choose Trump over Harris are at the minimum racists and probably sexists, too.

Most Trump supporters, as far as I can tell, have one overriding desire - to be better than the guy next to them. So mocking the disabled guy next to them? Makes them feel like they are better than that guy. Grabbing women by the pussy and getting away with it? Makes them feel more powerful than the woman next to them. Mexicans are rapists? Blacks get roughed up - and are from "shithole countries?" Makes them feel like they are superior to those types. Waiters, bartenders and hotel clerks? Treat them like shit, thus demonstrating how much better you are than them. Golf? Cheat as much as you can, because then you are (on paper) better than the people you are playing with. Something proves you wrong? Take a Sharpie and fix it, so that you are right and the guy next to you is wrong. Two courses of action to take? Take the one that "owns the libs" because then you are superior to them. Even if it hurts you - as long as it hurts them more. Successful trans women? Mock them and take them down a peg, to make yourself feel a bit more superior. That's what makes them happy - and that's what makes them want to emulate Trump. Trump is the very embodiment of the effort to be superior to the people around him. There was a recent debate about the term "liberal." And the classic definition of liberal would apply to most people on this forum, even if the more recent definition of "liberal" is "a democrat." That's misleading because (for example) the rights to personally own property and guns are very liberal rights. However, with Trump there is a clear delineation. Trump is anti-liberal in the classic sense. A classic liberal's definition of "better" when it comes to politics is something that makes everyone (or almost everyone) in the country better. Maybe it's the right to free speech, or the right to own guns, or a nationwide road system, or an EPA that prevents factories from polluting so much and harming Americans. But for Trumpies, "better" means "better than the guy next to me." And you can get there by improving your situation - or making his worse. Both ways the Trump supporter "wins."

It sure was fun and a bit scary to be around students in the static line days! I'm surprised more DZO's didn't have heart attacks. As a young jumper at the time, watching static line students was great entertainment and sure made skydiving seem cool & dangerous. (Doing radio or dispatching them did get a little more stressful of course.) Most students of course did fine, but there were always a few problem students. All sorts of tales and horror stories to be told, as they scattered themselves across the landscape when having trouble hearing or processing the radio instructions (or even turned the radio off because they didn't like the instructor's "attitude"), moved their hands in accordance with the steering instructions....but didn't actually grab the toggles first, lied on their forms and jumped with undisclosed medical conditions ("Don't worry about that eye," said the student to the paramedic checking his pupils for proper neurological functioning after a crash landing, "I can't see out of that eye anyway."), spiralled down into the ground with one toggle still stowed (and getting lucky and surviving with minor injuries), occasionally just went unconscious, chopped for minimal reason ('the parachute was the wrong colour', 'the slider didn't go back up again', whatever), got edgy and chopped because another student had chopped on the previous load, delayed chopping for way too long, started to chop then decided not to and left the cutaway handle partially pulled and dangling, thumped down under round reserves, lost gear in fields of crop after taking gear off before walking out of the field, backlooped into their risers on exit to cause malfunctions and near main-reserve entanglements, suddenly decided to put in a full toggle turn too close to the ground, didn't flare, flared too early but then let it up, and so on. Not that tandems are perfect, but having someone experienced along for the ride really helped make things safer for the STOOOPID ones out there.

Since my first jump - in 1977 - I have seen massive improvements in equipment, training and accident rates, despite vastly larger numbers of jumps being made every year. Back in 1977, static-line students jumped military surplus gear from World War 2 surplus airplanes. The vast majority of the revenue was from static-line students. The smaller DZs used 1950s vintage Cessnas. When I earned my first instructor rating in 1982, military surplus rounds were still considered the safest for students. Over the years - but mostly the 1980s - I worked with a wide variety of student systems: military surplus S/L, civilian S/L, IAD, tandem, accompanied freefall, etc. I also saw much improvement in teaching techniques lead by Rob Laidlaw. Circa 1980, gov'ts quit selling military surplus parachutes intact, so in a mere decade, S/L students converted to large docile squares packed into piggy-back containers. The fiercely competitive capitalists who ran parachute factories constantly upgraded their equipment to minimize malfunctions. Skydivers benefitted from more reliable equipment. Despite expansion in the numbers of S/L students, accident rates remained low and I attribute that to more reliable square parachutes. Fewer malfunctions meant that solo students had to make fewer decisions during stressful malfunctions. The 1980s also saw that popularization of more professional AFF instruction. We also saw DZs shift from crude arrows to modern radios to steer students back towards the correct landing field. this further reduced the numbers of students who had to be retrieved from trees or rivers. Tandem may have been introduced during the 1980s, but it really came to dominate during the 1990s. Having a professional TI pulling the handles vastly reduced the numbers of S/L student who needed to be retrieved from the trees. Since professional TIs were trying to earn a living, they discouraged any behavior that interfered with them making a dozen jumps per day. As WW2 surplus airplanes wore out - during the 1990s - DZOs purchased more reliable turbines which can go well beyond TBO with the proper maintenance. Some DZOs start3ed to treat their investments in airplanes as their pension funds and to keep the value up, invested more in airplane maintenance. As DZOs invested more in airplanes and equipment, they became more risk adverse and the older, dirty biker type of skydiver was no longer welcome. At least not to sell recreational drugs on the DZ. With that source of revenue gone, fewer dirty biker jumpers could afford to continue skydiving. Electronic Automatic Activation Devices - Cypres was introduced in 1991 - removed the traditional 1/3 of "no pull/low pull" fatalities from USPA's data base. More fatalities were attributed to heart attacks in freefall.

1. The ISP. Find an old SIM (the blue loose leaf binder) and look at the student training section. Microscopic. 2. The IRM. Standardized training for instructors to teach a standardized training program (see ISP). 3. Equipment changes/improvements and their effects (audibles, Mars’s, AAD’s which also cause higher deployments, etc). 4. “Point Break”. This movie brought incredible number of new people into the sport, a lot of whom were professional/normal folk, eventually almost eliminating the “outlaw-no rules culture”. Most of the current “bad boy” skydivers are pretty tame compared to 20 years ago. If you don’t count the medical issues and the intentional low turns, neither of which was a factor 20-30 years ago, last years number drops in half, to 5.

Quite right, wind holds seem more common than decades ago. The availability of wind speed data is so common, and maybe that makes it more difficult to not call a wind hold, compared to interpreting a wind sock and judging it to be OK. However, this improvement in safety culture doesn't explain fatality rates changing. Very important is the big difference in pull altitudes compared to when dinosaurs roamed the earth. Also, cutting away to a round reserve was intimidating, even if a jumper had experience on rounds, even if it wasn't a windy day, even if the spot wasn't deep over the trees. We know hesitation kills, and the natural reluctance to go to a round reserve might actually explain a number of no/low cutaway incidents.

Okay, I'm a fuck up. Is there some kind of youtube tutorial that can make me smarter?

Not clear to me why Hunter Biden should be of any interest since he has not served in any administration nor been convicted of a financial crime. The Trump kids Donny, Eric and Ivanka, OTOH, are banned by court order from operating a charity on account of stealing from their foundation. The Trumps were fined $2 Million on account of this.

For the gazillionth time, it's not about how well Harris or Biden are serving our country it's about how Trump is not mis-serving our country from the oval office. And really, if you were a true patriot who wanted Trump nowhere near the Whitehouse or Congress again you wouldn't be doing your damndest to tear them down for no other reason than you have an internet connection and are perpetually bored.

I can follow that. The majority of the former POTUS's ramblings, OTOH, not so much.

Hmmm... So what would the downside be?

That would be defined as the neutron bomb. Her presidency would cause mass cardiac arrests to all republicans.

I reject the denigrating bit comparing of her to a beauty queen; in other words an airhead bimbo or whatever is the real definition behind your usage. She's vastly more than that. I am simply not concerned about her as you seem to be. Kamala Harris made Biden's presidency a reality and for that I'm grateful. As all things political are quid pro quo's I am happy to forgive her propensity to speak in word salads, or Farsi for that matter, in exchange for Trump not being our President anymore.

Golly, whoever here at SC likes to argue? Wendy P.

I guess USPAs' average opening altitude just went up about 500 feet. The skies won't ever be the same. Blue skies Scotty