Hawaii

And for something similar in its insanity, there’s also Santa Claus, a product of Mexico that I can only assume was fueled by product from Columbia.

“I wonder if there’s beer on the sun”

The Canada Song lives rent free in my head.

“We put our faith in BLAST HARDCHEESE.”

Final Sacrifice.

Every time I see Elon’s picture in one of these posts, my brain tells me he’s wearing an Ant Man costume.

In the long term, it’s also possible to alter the atmosphere on Venus until it’s approximately the same as Earth. It would be a massive undertaking, but a hell of a lot easier than getting Mars to a comfortably habitable state. And you could potentially get an entire habitable planet out of the deal, which would be nice.

Kurzgesagt had an interesting video on the topic.

Obviously it would take a significant investment of resources that would benefit some future generation, but not our own. So, back to being impossible, at least for now.

Honestly, she wasn’t putting that much thought into it. She was just parroting a myth that’s been around for a long time, and then trying to defend it when challenged by something that didn’t make sense to her by bringing up something else she doesn’t understand just kind of assuming the answer is in there.

If I was actually going back and redoing the conversation, I would have asked her how many revolutions per minute it takes to keep an object in the air when tied to the tip of a rope (demonstrating if necessary) and then follow up by asking how many revolutions per minute the earth has. The myth she’s spouting is enabled by people not understanding that all that speed they are citing at the equator is only part of the equation, and that they have to divide that number by the size of the earth. Reframing the question in terms of revolutions per minute makes it a lot more intuitive, since a single rpm is obviously very, very slow if you want to keep something aloft, and anyone who knows how clocks work can instantly figure out just how much slower the earth’s spin is.

My aunt once mentioned that if the earth wasn’t rotating that we’d all be crushed by gravity, and it’s only the spinning cancelling out that force. I responded by pointing out that gravity is also present at the poles, where you can casually walk faster than the rotation of the earth, and yet no one has been crushed to death there. She responded that it must be something to do with the magnetic fields, and wouldn’t listen to anything I said when I tried to explain the basic concept of angular velocity.

Or even just the meat that isn’t practical to farm. giraffe meat is apparently sweet and was described by many big game hunters as the best tasting meat they’ve had. No one’s starting up giraffe farms around here, but if you can just get a tissue sample and start mass producing it, we can all have giraffe steaks, rhino burgers, and barbequokka™ at our next cookout.

Could be worse. Wheel of Time has “the one power” which is actually two. And then there’s another one…

The problem with messages 1 and 2 is that too many people will not give a shit about other people, and will also assume they can put a mask on correctly. If your goal is to prevent panic buying and hoarding long enough to build an adequate stockpile for medical workers, you probably want to avoid anything that makes those supplies sound superior and valuable.

If I were crafting such a message, I’d say something like this:

"At this time we aren’t recommending the use of disposable masks by the general public. For now, those who will be wearing a mask should wear one that’s made of tight knit, layered cloth, with a fit that fully encloses the nose and mouth. Cloth masks can be cleaned and reused, and will be easier for most people to wear properly, especially when worn for extended periods of time.

These guidelines reflect our current understanding and will be updated as we learn more."

Well, since you say Christmas or not, my favorite show any time is Babylon 5.

But for Christmas stuff, Hogfather is my favorite tradition. Also Die Hard, and the Christmas episode of Justice League.