Dreadnought Holiday

SBX-1, a radar plonked onto a converted oil platform, apparently having a Klan hood installed over its radar. It's either that or it's like when you put a towel over the budgerigar's cage to stop it swearing in front of the vicar. Photo originally on FB from a chap called Kaleb Laurent, it says here.

Fears about the US military's lurch to the right intensify after the Missile Defence Agency's Sea-Based X Band radar SBX-1 joins the Klan

Vessels is the obvious catch-all, though that probably excludes a lot of other floating objects like pontoons etc. I think you'll always find edge cases that make you feel a bit weird about using the word ship or boat.

If an oil platform could grow building-sized puffballs, this is what it would look like. I'd draw your attention to how fast this thing is scarpering, too - it's not hanging about here. It's a very un-oil platformy thing to do.

Oh all right, it's actually the inflatable radome, seen here adorning the craft like the world's biggest puffball mushroom

SBX-1, a radar plonked onto a converted oil platform, apparently having a Klan hood installed over its radar. It's either that or it's like when you put a towel over the budgerigar's cage to stop it swearing in front of the vicar. Photo originally on FB from a chap called Kaleb Laurent, it says here.

Fears about the US military's lurch to the right intensify after the Missile Defence Agency's Sea-Based X Band radar SBX-1 joins the Klan

TBH I think the biggest problem is recognising that a snake even needed CPR

That would have been fine.

It was discovering it didn't actually do any lifting that was the issue, in fact.

I do not have the skill set to do this but one thing my parents did ingrain in me is that the purpose of these groups’ door knocking is not actually to convert- the leaders know that doesn’t work. It’s to teach members that they will be ridiculed, ostracised, despised outside the cult

Let's take a moment and discuss US seizure of MT Skipper off the coast of Venezuela.

This ship sounds off several alarms for its past actions including ship-to-ship transfers of sanctioned cargo; sanctioned cargo movements; sailing into contested areas & no clear insurance and flag of registry.

Ten Thousand

Sigh...

xkcd.com/1053/

(This goes double for pangolins. When else do you get to introduce somebody to the Clangers' warrior caste?)

a man wearing a party hat is drinking from a bottle Alt: A fella in a party hat blowing one of those party streamer things that unroll as you blow into them. Whether snakes give a merry toot when you do this to them isn't mentioned in the scientific literature. Yet.

Was told by a vet that you can 'probably' perform CPR on a snake, and all I could think was...

Wasted opportunity if he didn't...

My favourite art St John Ambulance was when one of the kids asked if they still had to do CPR when it was obvious the patient was dead.

"Yes."
"Even if he's decapitated?"
"Well, ok. If you have to get up and walk between the rescue breaths and compressions you're excused CPR this time."

Superb account. Does exactly what it says on the tin.

Long after the kids mastered the art of keeping socks on we're still being told off by family for letting them leave the house with insufficient layers, to the point where my youngest presumably thinks "Wo ist deine Jacke?" is a traditional German greeting.

I have a theory about the popularity of the Anthea Turner calendar, if that helps?

"So I guess we'll tell them you had nobody to go with!"
"Just drive, Dave."
"Sometimes you're just no fun, Tommy."
"You gotta stop calling me that, Dave. I'm a fucking saint."
"Not with a mouth like that you ain't, Tommy."

Does anyone know of a #poem for women who died in the service of their nation in war time?
I cannot seem to find anything.

I mean, news outlets could also stop uncritically recycling press releases as "news" by 2028.

I'm not sure which of the two is least likely to happen.

The above photo edited with the image from the old Thomas the Tank Engine TV series where Sir Topham-Hat goes full Cask-of-Amontillado and bricks Henry up in a tunnel and then he has to stand on a bunch of crates to talk to him. Henry looks forlorn in his dark tomb.

Had to be done

"I don't care if you haven't eaten since the 13th century - I'm not stopping for a cheeky Nandos."

Same. The ceilings do my head in, and the creepy dolls need to be given a decent burial a long way away (and preferably face down so they have a long way to dig), but I could live there.

Au contraire... One of the biggest difficulties with the ram as a weapon of war was working out how to actually stick it into the side of another ship. In this Tryon was amongst the foremost military tacticians of the age.

The Chilean ironclad Huáscar, which whilst in Peruvian service found its own torpedo traitorously returning whence it had came. Lieutenant Fermín Diez Canseco promptly popped overboard and diverted it away from the ship.

There's a huge amount of luck involved, but yes. Turning towards them helps, for instance, as you present a narrower target.

Early torpedoes were so slow and underpowered that they could even be "dodged" - with sufficient bravery - by jumping over the side and pushing them off course...

Quite. It's deeply and oddly reactionary in its assumptions, given its own view of itself.

You get better (and more progressive) satire in Viz or the Beano, frankly.

"So I guess we'll tell them you had nobody to go with!"
"Just drive, Dave."
"Sometimes you're just no fun, Tommy."
"You gotta stop calling me that, Dave. I'm a fucking saint."
"Not with a mouth like that you ain't, Tommy."

Times New Roman was the default Microsoft office font before 2003.

This just yet another "I want everything to be how I thought it was when I was younger" tantrum.

I'm honestly surprised the list of impacts when you check the levels at Viking Recorder on the government website don't include "4m: news anchors arrive with wellies"

(even in that photo most of those pubs are still open, except for the Kings Arms - which given it's a Sam Smiths pub and many of us have views about the owner might not be considered a bad thing...)

I think the answer here is that a) York with 3.5m of flooding looks like something major is going on even though it's basically bugger all and b) it looks like something major is going on whilst a number of nice warm pubs with decent beer remain perfectly unaffected in between live broadcasts.

(Solidarity and all, but sometimes you just need to shore things up and wait for daybreak - and this sounds like one of them. Hope it's not too bad.)