John Morris

Tens of thousands of people once paid good money to watch two full-size steam trains smash straight into each other at full speed. From 1896 until the early 1930s this became one of the most popular live spectacles in the United States. A man named Joe Connolly, known as Head-On Joe, turned it into his full-time career. He staged more than 70 crashes and destroyed 146 locomotives in total. He laid temporary track a mile long, placed one locomotive at each end, had the engineers jump clear at the last second, and added dynamite plus gasoline to create massive fiery explosions for the crowds. The shows finally stopped during the Great Depression. Destroying perfectly usable trains suddenly felt too wasteful.

@DougJBalloon What future is there for parody?

Opinion | The apocalypse is going better than you think. by Bret Stephens

@smooth74m @michaeldweiss To defend the C-130s on the landing strip and counter Iranian forces searching the area.

@michaeldweiss Why do you need 100 personnel for a rescue mission

Details about the rescue op for the U.S. Weapon Systems Officer, via a U.S. military official: "The mountain top area on the left is where the WSO was hiding (he ejected 5ish miles northwest of there). The right area is the makeshift landing strip where they landed 2 C-130s and had 4 MH-6 Little Birds. "One Little Bird flew to that mountain top area and rescued the WSO and brought him back to the landing strip. And of course the two C-130s' nose gears got stuck in the dirt. So after a few hours they had to bring in three AFSOC Dash-8s to fly out the rescued WSO and the 100 or so personnel involved in the op." 1/2

@rparloff Do you think it was an accident that the government didn’t seek a stay? Seems surprising.

Judge Lin's injunction against Trump/Hegseth's supply-chain risk designation (under 10 USC 3252) took effect this morning, when 7-day stay ran out without govt seeking stay from 9th Circuit. DC Cir still hasn't ruled on Hegseth's designation under the other statute: 41 USC 4713.

@Wash_B @NJTRANSIT The tracks belong to Amtrak.

@NJTRANSIT No excuses. What was the raise for? Why is the price increased for embarrassingly poor, incompetent, and inconsistent service

1 of 2: Due to Amtrak signal issues between Penn Station New York & Newark Penn Station, NJ TRANSIT rail service is suspended into and out of Penn Station New York and is subject to up to 30-minute delays system-wide.

@TVietor08 @PeteHegseth If you read the story, it doesn’t say the broker was acting for Hegseth. He may have been looking to profit personally, or for other clients. Also, the story says the broker was not able to make this investment because the ETF was not available to Morgan Stanley at the time.

Truly shocking for the Secretary of Defense to trade fucking stocks and (attempt to) profit off of a war he helped start. Firing this drunk idiot is the bare minimum. @PeteHegseth should be prosecuted.

@ClaytonGuse Lovely! Date? Which paper?

We should bring back this kind of newswriting.

@BlindTasters Aka Trollinger in Germany.

This is so good, an endless symphony. From 80-100-year-old vines of Vernatsch, aka Schiava, which is indigenous to Südtirol, aka Alto Adige.

@ChrisO_wiki Given that the US now exports oil and gas, and its economy is much less energy-intensive than it was in the 1970s, I doubt that will be the shortages we saw then, though the US is not immune to the price increases. The Iranian hostage crisis was really critical to Reagan’s win.

1/ Has Donald Trump accidentally recreated, in an even more severe form, the energy crisis that doomed Jimmy Carter's presidency? A comparison with the 1979 oil crisis shows worrying parallels with the current situation. ⬇️

@wartranslated The Black Sea shore, I assume. Turkey has many coasts.

A US-made Sierra Nevada Corporation AEGIR-W naval drone washed up on Turkey's coast. The 10-meter vessel can reach 25 knots with a 900 km range. Turkish media suggest Ukraine was testing it against Russia.

@gregmocker That’s the good news. Unfortunately, we’re going to get soaked, and then there are freezing temperatures again later in the week. 🥲

Happy March

@evgen1232007 @officejjsmart Could you provide a translation of the legend and axis? It’s impossible to make sense of this if you don’t speak Russian.

Here are the data on cash outflow from banks. In two days, 83 billion rubles were withdrawn, equivalent to 1 billion dollars. Since the beginning of the year, cash outflow from banks has already reached 107 billion rubles.

@WeirdMedieval Second most hideous.

Ignoring the safety aspect these are the most hideous cars in existence and if you drive one you are an incarnation of blight and rot

I've used em-dashes my whole life — they add rhythm and grace to writing. But now they're an AI tell. Can we get a grandfather clause for those of us who were fluent in em-dashes before ChatGPT launched in November 2022?

Should we read anything into the fact that love is wedged in between pedantic and gaslighting, and nearly adjacent to ambivalence? (From Merriam-Webster's website.)

this is awesome timhwang.github.io/because-china/ Because China- Justify anything through the lens of great power competition.

@ViktorBunin Try taking a NYC bus between 8 and 9. They’re packed with young kids and parents. As for the streets, there are lots of kids on the Upper West Side. I don’t know where you’re hanging out.

I notice this in NYC. Almost no kids on the subway. No kids in the streets. It makes for a sad society.

@anothercohen I wonder what the companies’ health insurers will say when it comes time to reset rates.

Truly incredible content is being published in the media

@GanzeGeschichte In the 1840s — long before the Brooklyn Bridge — Roebling built this wire suspension aqueduct over the Delaware River. It carried a canal for 50 years, and has been used as a vehicular ridge since 1898, when the canal was abandoned. nps.gov/upde/learn/his…

Jeder kennt die Brooklyn Bridge in New York, eine der bekanntesten Brücken der Welt, die in zahlreichen Spielfilmen vorkommt. Weniger bekannt ist, dass sie von dem Thüringer Johann August Röbling erbaut wurde.

@EmilyAssembly @ABarnardNYC Small store fronts owned by large investors? I don’t think that’s true. I think you’ll find most of those properties are owned by small local landlords.

The data doesn't support that argument. The majority of these landlords are private equity, hedge funds & big real estate. That's why you see neighborhoods with super high rent AND high vacancy. They can afford to let these storefronts sit empty while they wait for chains.