My lab zoom session got interrupted by a crack of doom from the sky that briefly cut off my power, so when it returned I checked the weather online, and saw this amazing headline.
That is so 2020.
Stay safe, Louisianians.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
I’m a meteor impact and an alien invasion away from winning 2020 bingo.
Yikes, indeed.
@1 The best thing about Apocalypse Bingo is that, no matter who wins, we all lose. Personally, I threw away my card when I had to fill out the square marked “Joe Biden as Democracy’s Last Hope”.
@3 Well technically I also need botched election in November, but that’s pretty much a given. It’s like the free space in the middle at this point.
“The laugh that floats on a summer night.”
Johnny Mathis ~ Laura
Feb 6, 2009
lenoremewton
“Unsurvivable Trump Presidency” is pretty terrifying too.
James Fehlinger @5: That music (before Johnny Mercer wrote the lyrics, I think) is the theme for one of my favourite noir films.
@4 True. Although there was that asteroid supposedly hitting us on November 2, so you’ll get a space regardless.
Unfortunately the season hasn’t peaked yet. More CV seeds down the road. Laura is horrific. Pretty early to have an “L” and “M” storm.
Matthew happening in October 2016 showed two things— M came way early this year and freakishly scary hurricanes can grow in October. Could this be another greek year? I’m still not over sweating Matthew, Irma, and Dorian though I was fortunate in the aftermath of those three and 2004’s onslaught.
If anyone is interested in up to the minute blogging by weather geeks (while the forum lasts):
https://disqus.com/home/discussion/wund/weather_underground_2993/
Weather Underground got bought out by IBM and the discussion forum above that used to accompany the Category 6 blog got orphaned as Dr. Jeff Masters and Bob Henson migrated here (which is trying to accommodate rapid fire high volume discussion):
https://yaleclimateconnections.org/section/eye-on-the-storm/
Not quite an alien invasion (as far as we know), but there was a sorta big news story recently, that a classified UFO task force might make some of their findings public in the next several months….
Some were also getting themselves excited by the talk of “off-world vehicles not made on this earth” by one of the consultants for the program.
However, I don’t put any stock in that. On the other hand, if I was involved or was even an alien invader myself, that’s just the sort of thing I might say, isn’t it?
Re: Susan Montgomery @ #8…
Actually, that rock is supposed to miss, but not by much. It’s not that big a worry, though. From what I’ve read, it’s about 2 meters across. By comparison, the Chelyabinsk object was about 11 meters across.
That eye makes me cry:
https://weather.cod.edu/satrad/?parms=local-Houston-truecolor-24-1-50-1&checked=latlon-counties-usint-glm_flash&colorbar=undefined
Kinda has me triggered. Seriously. I hope people got the hell outta there. After seeing Mexico Beach aftermath…damn it man. Why?
The first rule of asteroid close encounter stories is that they are never any real threat. There are two kinds of real threat from asteroids. One is it’s so big that there’s nothing we can do about it anyway and we’ll all die. The second is the ones that no one sees coming, but they aren’t a big threat because we see that ones that will kill us well in advance. 99% of stories about asteroids are type 3. The ones we see coming and know will miss use and are generally no threat if they hit anyway.
We’ve already had the gigantic wild fires in California for the year and it is still only August. Plus a heat wave with temperatures well over 100 degrees F. And the giant lightning storm.
I need another Apocalypse, where jesus comes back to slaughter everyone and destroy the earth. These happen about once a year or so.
Saw this on LGM? and too good not to share:
A guy walks into a bar in New Orleans and says:
“A Corona and two Hurricanes, please”
Bartender replies:
“That’ll be 2020”.
We may not have enough advance warning of long-period comets either (or interstellar objects for that matter). That’s not because it would have to be too small to be a serious threat (and also hard to detect), but because it would be in a highly elliptical orbit where we can’t easily see it dropping in from way out there, rather than a fairly close and heavily monitored orbit like the near-Earth asteroids.
So, we might also be screwed if something like that suddenly came out of left field. I guess the odds of that are pretty low in the short term, but it is a possibility.
Raven@#15
Yeah, I live in Monterey and I got up and watched that giant lightning storm. I’ve also been dealing with a fine layer of ash over everything in the house and a much thicker layer of ash on everything on my patio. Of course, we can count ourselves lucky, since there are people in our area who lost everything.
I’m still seething about the arsonist who started the Dolan fire in Big Sur. It destroyed the California Condor Sanctuary, including a chick in a nesting box. Why? Why are humans so cruel to the natural world? I almost wish that there was a Hell, so that the guy can rot in it.
Now I’m tracking Laura, since we have two adult kids, their spouses, and a total of five grandkids who live in the Houston area. 2020 definitely sucks!
If 2020 was a person then I say on December 31st we hunt it down and murder it to death with knives made of fire.
How many more shitty things have to happen this year before the Christian MAGA morons start thinking, “maybe god is angry with us”?
@ 20
Ah, but they’ve been saying that for years, but God is never angry at them and their greed and bigotry. That blame falls on legal abortion, LGBTQ rights, banning mandatory prayer in school, allowing black people to drink from the same water fountain as the white folks, etc.
@21
Then why are those hurricanes headed for the Deep South? You would think god would be way more pissed at those of us in the liberal urban centers.
@Ray Ceeya,
https://www.raptureready.com/rapture-ready-index/
The index is not as high as I thought it would be. For me it would have gone to 5000, what with that Antichrist and his cabal of henchmen in the White House at the moment, but the Evangeliban seem quite cool with it. But their scale for individual categories doesn’t go higher than 5.
Well, I am living in Iceland and there are recently a number of our volcanos rumbling more than usual and seem to build up magma. How about we through a few Eyjafjallajökull-style eruptions into the mix to add to 2020?
Ed Seedhouse:
Frequency of major asteroid impacts: ~1 per 500,000 years.
Frequency of major asteroid media panics: ~2 per year.
[W]hy are those hurricanes headed for the Deep South?
Teh thugs’s covid-and-kook-athon is being held in that general area.
In some ways, this is surprising: Teh magic sky faeries aim is known to be temporally-, spatially-, and reality-challenged, so get the hurricanes to land on about the target site when teh thugs are there is (in comparison to what they usually accomplish) impressive. Even more so, perhaps, as the thugs’s are also severely reality-threatened and so would seem to be allies in kookery & fraud. Perhaps that’s why the magic sky faeries seem to have made an extra effort (with not just one, but two, hurricanes) — they are unkeen on having their (imaginary, of course) realities challenged by other kooks “led” by an uppity bankrupt bone spur hiding in a bunker.