A bunch of obsessives scouring the sky for additional planets probably had nothing to do with it.

Ask anyone not wearing a helmet that got hit by a car or smacked their head on the concrete after going over their handlebars. Oh, right, you can’t.

I mean, you can. Falling off your bike isn’t universally fatal. Even bad injuries aren’t unrecoverable - especially when you’re young and resilient and you’re body is still growing.

But imagine telling a 12-year-old to take off their helmet and pads and go plow themselves into a tree, because it builds character. Why would anyone voluntarily subject themselves to this? Why would anyone advocate for this?

You’re not building up some kind of robust spirit of mind or body. You’re not growing as a person. You’re just being hazed.

Can’t believe The Onion is nearly a century old.

they incorrectly believe that because they lived that there was no actual danger.

Also, incorrectly believed that they were the ones on the bicycle.

For every kid doing this right, there were ten that did it wrong and fell over.

For every ten that did it wrong, there were another ten laughing up their sleeves and then… putting on a helmet and pads because they didn’t want to end up in traction (or because their parents were yelling at them to be safe).

Apollo 11 made it to the moon and back with the computer power of a Dollar Tree hand held calculator

I think it was the rockets doing most of the lifting

Artemis II never landed on the moon. It was just a flyby. This makes it more equivalent to Apollo 10 and the famous exchange

Stafford: “Oh—who did it? … Give me a napkin quick. There’s a turd floating through the air”.

Young: “I didn’t do it. It ain’t one of mine”.

Cernan: “I don’t think it’s one of mine”.

Stafford: “Mine was a little more sticky than that. Throw that away”.

Cernan (later): “Here’s another goddam turd. What’s the matter with you guys?”

He’s just trying to find the shrine that lets him de-age seven years.

Or deep on the hook for the O&G industry.

Israel is basically a military outpost for the US in the middle east.

Sitting politicians have described it as our biggest aircraft carrier.

Missing the deadline undermines your position in the firm and marks you out as unreliable for the better projects and promotions.

I don’t understand why you wouldn’t just continue working your normal hours.

Some of it comes down to real social pressure. People work harder when they’ve literally got the boss at their desk saying “We need to hit Deadline X or Consequences Y will happen”. For people past their breaking point, I tend to see them work less. If you’re already on the job hunt (or if you’ve landed a job or queued for retirement or whatever), enthusiasm for doing your current job plummets. If you think you’re about to get fired, same.

But for folks who genuinely believe they’ve got a future at the firm - at least for another year or three - it often boils down to “Do I want to be stressed forever, or just get over this hump and survive until things die down?” Hitting the deadline and getting the project over the line typically comes with a refractory period of sorts. A slowdown in work hours and a more relaxed pace. Missing the deadline means even more work and even more stress and even more of my boss at my desk (or my boss’s boss or my boss’s boss’s boss) staring at my computer and asking why the thing isn’t done yet.

Fred Durst about to sell me a $2500 commemorative edition America Bible lettered in gold ink, wrapped in rich Corinthian leather, and including a copy of the Declaration of Independence signed by our President.

Eh. When your boss has four people in the office to do six people’s jobs, and the VP just said they’re cutting headcount by two.

It’s not just about how useful the dollar is to Iran, it’s about making it less useful to other countries also.

For Iran, specifically, there’s no incentive to accept reparations payments in a currency they can’t easily collect or exchange. Yuan makes sense, because China is one of their biggest trading partners. Bitcoins make sense because they’re easy to launder and can be transferred independent of the NATO-based financial systems.

If Iranian oil is back on the market there will be a lot of interested buyers.

It’s more Qatari and Kuwaiti oil at issue. Iranians are just rent-seeking off the most expedient shipping lane.

The petrodollar wasn’t going to last forever youre right but there are many parties interested in ending it sooner than later.

The petrodollar is arbitrage between Middle Eastern raw materials and the western banking system. It could move to the PetroEuro without a meaningful change in foreign policies. Or the PetroLoonie or PetroPound for that matter. All of these countries are in agreement that the Persian Gulf states need to play a secondary role in the global economy.

What Iranians are hoping to change isn’t the primary currency of the region, but the balance of power between US/EU colonizers and local people.

The very act of securing the Straight and collecting rent on passage is a huge step in that direction, regardless of what currency they collect their fees in. It’s a material change, not just an accounting shift.

Modern Conservatives: “We have a crisis of masculinity”

Traditional 1950s Americans: “Your parents exist because we did it raw on the subway”

They are intention demolishing the Petrodollar.

I think Climate Change and explosion of alternative energy sources is doing that.

They’re just trying to evade Western financial restrictions. Dollars aren’t useful to a country that’s cut out of the LIBOR and SWIFT banking systems.

China is a rising juggernaut

China was a rising juggernaut twenty years ago.

They’re the lynchpin of the global economy today.