DL Open Thread: Saturday, December 14, 2024

The Only Sour Note:  N-no!!! Not ‘Feliz Navidad’!  My son-in-law’s favorite Christmas tune.  He knows how much I hate it.  Meaning, I’ll be hearing it soon.  I hereby demand that he only sing it with the South Korean lyrics. Ya readin’ this, Ray?

Alien Invasion Imminent?  Or has it already started?:

Federal agencies are facing intense pressure Friday to give the public more details on unexplained drone sightings in the New York City metropolitan area that have been going on for weeks over residential neighborhoods as well as restricted sites and critical infrastructure.

“The bottom line is this: They’re not providing enough information to the public, and the public is concerned,” US Rep. Josh Gottheimer, a New Jersey Democrat and member of the House Intelligence Committee, told CNN’s Kate Bolduan Friday. “Believe me, I’m hearing from my constituents about this all the time, and I think it’s time for them to immediately get out there and brief.”

On Friday, Pennsylvania became the latest state to report unauthorized drone sightings, joining New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.

Representatives of the federal agencies investigating the drones who have briefed local officials behind closed doors said the drones sometimes appear to fly in a coordinated pattern and can sometimes be in flight for up to six hours, according to Montvale, New Jersey, Mayor Mike Ghassali.

President-elect Donald Trump, meanwhile, has called on the Biden administration to either release any information it has about the mysterious sightings or shoot the drones out of the sky.

Hey, if civilians become collateral damage, at least they would likely be inhabitants of states that voted for Harris.  Win-win.  Unless they shoot one down over Staten Island.

The Florida Python Pandemic.  Hey, they were there first!:

An invasive predator that can grow up to 20ft, weigh over 100kg and devour prey six times its size – it is enough to make anyone’s skin crawl. That’s what residents of southern Florida have been struggling with for the past few decades, with the rapid growth of the Burmese python population in the Everglades.

When Hurricane Andrew – a category five storm still considered among America’s most costly – hit Miami in 1992, one of the buildings destroyed was a reptile breeding centre. According to a 2009 New Yorker interview with an official, escapees from the centre included hundreds of juvenile Burmese pythons.

But as dramatic as this is, a study from 2011 also concluded, less cinematically, that the release of a relatively small number of snakes – likely, pets – prior to 1985 played a role. While sightings of individual snakes in the region go back to 1979, it wasn’t until the late 1990s that a reproducing population was established and numbers exploded.

So why did owners release their once-adored companions into the wild? Hatchling pythons are only 22 inches long but can grow to nine feet by the time they are five years old. It’s around this age that pythons reach sexual maturity, with females producing up to 100 eggs annually.

I link to this for two reasons:  (1) I think it’s cool stuff to know; and (2) It gives me yet another excuse to beg you to read Carl Hiassen’s ‘Squeeze Me’, the perfect mash-up of the Trumps and—pythons.

What do you want to talk about?