During the eclipse, the Donald was yelled at to not look directly into the sun, and what does he do?
You’d think, as a billionaire, he could afford the very best protective eyewear, and as the President, surrounded by security and advisors, he’d be informed that a squint is not going to help. What a dumbass.
Could someone please tell him that he can’t fly, and leaping off the top of the Trump Tower would be a very bad idea? Please?
And now you will mayhaps have a president who is not only vile and dumb, but also blind.
I was researching the risk of eye damage earlier, and a couple of sources have said that a couple seconds probably won’t hurt you, five seconds is risky, ten seconds is very risky, and twenty seconds is virtually guaranteed to cause eye damage.
Someone needs to tell him that Barack Obama used to make the sun go down every night by glaring at it. Trump the Chump’d have to try to outdo him. Even Chuck Norris won’t stare at the sun for more than a second or two, because the sun blinks.
Looks like toxic machismo, to me. “Be careful doing x, it can be dangerous? Well I’LL SHOW YOU”
To be clear, it’s perfectly O.K. to look directly at the sun *during* totality. But NOT before or after, and it’s pretty clear that Der Drumpfer was doing his staring before. This picture should be the symbol of his presidency.
We got about 90% cover here in Victoria. Not safe to look with the naked eye so I punched a hole in a piece of cardboard and used it for a projector. Some neighbours had eclipse glasses so I took a gander but I’ve seen partial eclipses that way before, so there were no big revelations from that. I was more interested in the effects on the local environment. Got kind of cool and surprisingly dark, but not twilight dark.
…or not.
Breathe, Mr. Trump. The liberals order you to breathe.
That’d be first degree murder.
Sorry. I’m slow on the uptake today. Must be eclipse hangover. Absolutely–tell Herr Trump that Obama can fly much further and much better. And there will be yuge media coverage if he were to do it. Carry on…
I did that. But I can unfortunately still see Mr Trump.
rietpluim:
No it wouldn’t. You could tell me that I can’t fly and leaping off a tall building is bad fucking idea, and wander off. You would find me happily intact later on. My decisions are my own, just dropping a casual comment, one time? That doesn’t negate my responsibility.
Seriously, how much I despise Trump, I do not appreciate jokes implicating that someone should die.
Rietpluim:
Then you should have fucking said that, not dropped some crap about first degree murder. If Trump dropped dead, I wouldn’t be celebrating, but I would sure as hell be relieved, because that’s just how bad it is.
Looking directly at the Sun damages the retina because the temperature within the photoreceptors increases too much. A temperature of 45 degrees Celsius will kill them.
You can mimic the effect of looking at the Sun directly by taking a small magnifying glass 10 mm across (the same size as the pupil) and focussing the Sun’s rays on your skin (the eye’s lens does the same thing in focussing light) and seeing how long it takes for your skin to get intolerably hot and you’re forced to take the magnifying glass away). It won’t be immediately. And it won’t cause any damage, because of your pain receptors.
The trouble is that the retina doesn’t have pain receptors. You can stare at the Sun for long periods, if you overcome the instinct not to do such a stupid thing.
Well he DID promise to be unconventional.
Come on guys, everyone snuck a quick glance.
And I WILL joyously celebrate the day he dies.
Nope, overcast here in Chiwaulkee. Watched PZ’s link.
I wasn’t hopeful here in Eastern Iowa because we had complete cloud cover. But the cloud layer thinned at just the right time, around 01:10 pm, for a good view with our eclipse glasses. Knowing Trump was going to give a speech this evening dampened my enthusiasm.
Secret Service agents would have warned him not to look at the sun, but they’re not being paid.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/21/politics/secret-service-donald-trump-family/index.html
bachfiend @14: If that’s true, why are bright lights painful?
Here in Southern Oregon it was kinda smokey and kinda overcast, so it wasn’t all that great viewing in the first place, though I hadn’t planned on watching it anyway.
My colleagues in Cupertino gathered on the top of the parking garage and viewed the partial eclipse with appropriate eye protection. It was overcast at the start and you could look at the sun through the tinted window for a quick glance without too obvious problem…so yes, I did that but not for long. Maybe it doesn’t cause pain, but it causes something to make you look away fairly quickly. However, it’s my understanding that repeated quick glances can eventually damage your sight. Folk wisdom said years of repeatedly looking up at the sun to see if it was close to Noon was one reason the old folks went blind.
As for Trump, per the video I saw he seems to have taken several quick glances. He did wear eye protection for the long looks. Melania was with him. It was interesting to watch them interacting…wish I could read their lips. Baron also showed up. He seemed more interested in the crowd below the balcony than looking at the eclipse. Ivanka was also there, but she stayed out of sight for the most part.
I watched from a friend’s house in Silverton, right under the path of totality. It was surprising how chilly it got, and seeing the occultation itself was an awesome experience. I saw an eclipse as a kid, but I never got to see a complete one before.
And then I took 5 hours to drive 50 miles to get home. Ugh.
Wouldn’t it have made more sense for him to fly to a town that was in the totality path to get the best show? Especially since so many of them were Trump majority towns and would love for him to visit? Jeez, if you don’t use Air Force One to fly to see an eclipse, what are you even doing as president?
In sadder news, I watched the whole couple of minutes they were out there, and he ignored Bannon almost completely. Only said something to him right at the end ,and stood in front of him and ignored him the whole rest of the time. Seriously. My kids are legal adults and I still wanted to watch them be excited by the eclipse.
I used a DIY pinhole projector as well. Also used the solar filter glasses and noticed more than the Pinole projected image. The moon blocking the sun (during partiality) it looked like a solid object and not just a disk. Seemed to be lit by Earthshine illuminating the near side of the moon, making the whole image much more 3dimsional than just an opaque disk blocking a disk of light.
Seeing that photo made me think we have had two eclipses. One today and one that started last January 20.
I was outside for peak in my area 85-88% (???) and wasn’t expecting much. Someone had protective glasses. Welder’s mask? Couldn’t see anything until looking at sun. Wicked awesome!
But the effects of the eclipse on leaf shadowing were more spectacular than actually looking at sun/moon thingy. Creepy crescents flowing across the sidewalk! That and the relative lack of ambient light were disorienting. It seemed I was wearing sunglasses when I wasn’t. Surreal.
Glad I was able to experience it. Amazing.
Oh and Trump is a dumbass. Did his foreign policy initiative in tonight’s speech seem like staring into the sun without protection?
I think a contingent of African American Democrats asking him politely not to resign would do the trick.
Drove from Sacramento to Sage Junction, ID. (Well, overnighted in Ogden). Was quite impressive. Moving. We got full twilight and a black disk with a white halo, plus the buildup looking at it through welding glass. Looking right at it was amazing. Wish I’d spent less of the totality trying to get a half-decent picture to share with the people who couldn’t make it/be arsed to come, but eh.
Had a night chat/interaction with a family from Alberta parked next to ours (there were somewhere between 200-500 cars parked at the weigh station and on the shoulders).
Was really impressed by the planning and thoughtfulness the Idaho Department of Transportation put into making arrangements for the event, big things and little.
Then afterwards it all went to fucking hell, culminating in a couple of fuckwads with Port of Entry vests:
-Parking their flashing-lights truck across the way we’d come in
-When asked, sneeringly telling us we needed to exit in a direction that was not only contrary to all road sign markings but, so far as we could see from where we were, couldn’t be exited from without driving through cones, pedestrians, or “Do Not Enter/No Public Access” signs
-Making some threatening comment I didn’t quite catch involving the Idaho State Police when I got at all flustered and pointed out that there didn’t seem to be any exit that direction
-Finally, begrudgingly, pointing out the very roundabout path through what appeared from that angle to be a total lack of a gap between a red-tap-enveloped cone arrangement and a set of parked cars, and
-Oozing contempt the whole time.
So, yeah, unforgettable experience, except for the several minutes I wish I could forget.
Caine, what are you so upset about?
Strike that. I know you’re upset about Trump and his fan base. So am I. The question is: what are you so upset about about my post?
Maybe he’d looked at the Sun before, and not been blinded. I thought it was all eclipse voodoo nonsense. Now I’m a dumbass. How annoying. Anyway if you’d grown up in Wales maybe you’d find looking at the Sun irresistible, having heard so much about it. Fancy spending all that time intelligently designing eyes, only to periodically ruin them with astronomical pranks.
But this is a good thing.
“C’mere, warrant officer. We’re gonna nuke North Korea.”
“Yes, Mr. President.”
“Damn, I can’t read this. What code should I enter?”
“Um … it says “F-U-D-T”, Mr. President.”
“F … U … D … T. And launch. There we go. Up your ass, Kim. Thought I was bluffing, didn’t you? We have launch, right?”
“Yes, sir. The display says launch confirmed.”
“Good, good. Gonna go get some lunch.”
Somehow, this reads like a report on an eagle nestcam.
His supporters think he CAN fly.
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal explains why Trump, his family and the rest of the human race are fucked up, while also explaining Noah’s flood:
http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/noah39s-ark
May be we need alien DNA to avoid Trumpoform inbreeding.
I was contemplating whether this was the dumbest example of ignoring expert advise that Trump has done yet. But there is so much competition. So much competition.
#37-
Shouldn’t that be “howard hershey”? Good to see you. Your pal the Good Dr. Dr. is back making a stab at another 1000+ post thread on rmns and probability.
Unfortunately, there’s a certain kind of shithead who takes great pleasure in smugly announcing that literally any way you could think of to fight back against a scumbag would somehow make you a criminal (usually it’s “assault,” IE, putting something bad-tasting in a sandwich you know a coworker is likely to steal is some kind of “assault”). Because apparently Thou Shalt Just Grab Thine Ankles Forever.
It can’t be true, because no human being could actually be aware that the law was that badly broken and sleep at night, but they keep doing it.
Azkyroth Since that quote of Caine was addressed to me, I hope you do not consider me that kind of shithead, because that was really not my intention.
The German word »beratungsresistent«, that is, “immune to advice”, “having a resistance to advice” was just made for Trump.