The Wikipedia page references Günter Wetzel's website. Reading https://www.ballonflucht.de/en/missverstaendnis.html , he's written down more information - apparently they came to a disagreement about the story, and on that page there's more detail, from his point of view: for the first attempt they did everything in Wetzel's house (whose oldest kid was 4), because of concerns the Strelzyks' children (who were 10 and 14) could blurt something out. After some disagreements (Strelzyks told some relatives about the balloon, Wetzel thinks the balloon was too small) Wetzel gave Strelzyks all they've built (he was also worried about getting caught with the stuff, especially since now the relatives have heard about it) and decided to follow the concept of a ultralight airplane.
That's the reason the first attempt was just the Strelzyks...
I knew cul de sac was french for bag end, or end of sack or whatever the translation was. One time reading lord of the rings after learning Tolkien explicitly avoided french loan words, I realized Bilbo living at Bag End is kind of a joke. Its just saying Bilbo lives in the cul de sac.
How can you be so certain with that diaper-filler in chief?
Deploying troops looks like an attempt to dissuade invasion by highlighting that the optics of US troops capturing (hopefully not shooting at) NATO troops would be real bad...
Some friends flew eastwards from New York to Singapore on a direct flight (it's one of the longest flights). I wondered what their experience of sunrises and sunsets were (they departed 10PM), I've noted down the times but haven't plotted it...
Later this year I'm flying from Europe to the West Coast of Canada, and it seems I'll be in daylight for the entirity of the flight (departing 2PM local, landing 4PM local after a 10 hour flight).
I flew from central US to western asia (via moscow) and it was an interesting experience for the reasons you mentioned. I think I left early Saturday morning local time and arrived Sunday evening local time. I saw a sunrise, sunset, sunrise, sunset in 18 hours of travel time.
I had interesting flights in end of june from St. Petersburg to Novosibirsk. It departed at around 23:00, and you saw sunset and still a dawn. As the plane flew mostly at latitude of 60°, the dawn in the north was always there, and 1.5 hours later, the sun rose. The plane arrives after 3h30m of flight at ~7:00 local time, in summer solistice the sun is already high enough.
This is my first guess too. There's some stat that says more people die from falling while they try to frame a selfie compared to dying because of shark attacks... (Ok death by shark is actually quite rare)
I wonder if it's about 1/3 as easy to find an under 35 year old handyman as it was in the year 2000.
Since 2020 the price of maintaining anything in your house has exploded, coupled with dwindling value of fixed incomes, which has got to be getting a lot more old people up on ladders.
I almost mentioned that too, but I thought I was going to expose myself for being bad at maintaining my house.
Going down the same line of thought, how many people are attempting DIY repairs that they never would have before because of youtube and other resources? I know that I have done way more work on my home than my parents or grandparents ever did.
I'm over 65 and I'm fabbing a ladder to permanently install on my high-aspect roof at the moment (out of iron. drilling, cutting, bending, welding, threading rods, oh my!). I'll get to install it myself, too. Every few years I get out a credit card and rent a 40' (overkill!) Z-lift for a week, it's much better than working on ladders for anything major, like repairing / replacing fascia or installing wire cloth over the gutters: America, gotta love it. And there's no OSHA inspector to worry about when you're the property owner as well as equipment operator.
I view it as exercise. If people don't need me to prep their data or fix their internet plumbing, I have other things to do (and it's possible someone will see the work and I get a side gig, it's happened before).
Ironically yesterday I was stapling wire cloth at the top of the stairs on the wooden deck because it gets slippery.
It is hard to find good handy help. They "repaired" a gutter by nailing it to the crown moulding, which is not structural (resulting in the failure of the fascia, but I digress); repaired copper supply lines with plastic; didn't tighten a slip ring on a sewer trap in the crawlspace. We just had a new roof put on, and overall they did a competent job but there is one leak, coming from a problem we explicitly paid them to solve, and getting that fixed is going real slow. The guy responsible for that aspect is obviously not a native english speaker; OTOH we prevailed on them to install some overhangs, and the carpenter worked with us and allowed us to paint the decking / sheathing / soffit which would be exposed before it was installed. During one of my burnouts I worked as an estimator for a high-end wood flooring company; literally over half of our competition was illegal, unlicensed, and sometimes part of an acknowledged criminal enterprise (not totally throwing shades at people who aren't from here, we had five crews and the Italian and the former Russian physicist (beautiful inlay work!) crew leads were class acts). But I digress.
I've done crazy shit my whole life, my dad died scuba diving at 52 (cause of death was inconclusive) but his brother lived into his 90s. A couple of years ago my father-in-law died after a fall; he was taking photographs in a park. Somehow when he fell he broke his neck; could have been a stroke, but he never really stabilized enough to find out, was dead within a week. He was in his 80s.
Yeah, the government's idea is moronic. But making it the victims' responsibility ("don't share your number indiscriminately") is depressing too. How about make it easier to prosecute the unsolicited sending. How about educating people not to be fuckwits..
Yeah prosecution makes lives more difficult, it's rife for abuse (the recipient could fake evidence, the sender could claim he was hacked/his friend took his unlocked phone..)..
I bet you also want people to be able to leave their front door open all day and night and be protected from any theft by the government. It would be victim blaming to tell people to lock their doors right
It's black and white. No room for rational debate.
With your sort of mentality I'm surprised you're comfortable mentioning your sexuality... You know there's a lot of homophobes around, no? And they're just getting more empowered under Trump, Farage, etc...
To give you your own advice, I'd suggest being more quiet about it, you never know if people around you have a hatred of gays.
That's the reason the first attempt was just the Strelzyks...
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