Random Thoughts

joey con carne wrote:The lava flow can be mesmerizing. Don't get me wrong. I feel terrible for those affected. I saw some overhead photos of a home right in the path of the lava flow and it is some scary stuff. I can't imagine what it feels like to know your home will no longer exist.

And yea, it's definitely slower than movies. I mean, no way!

joey con carne wrote:Thanks for posting that. I learned something today. Imagine some asshole (and I bet this has already happened before), starts walking on the hardened crust and then falls into the lava after it cracks beneath their feet?

Just watched your video again. daaaaaaaaaaamn. I wonder if that car exploded like in movies.

joey con carne wrote:How do you guys pronounce the name "Kirstin"?

I pronounce it KER-stin.

Everyone on TV pronounces it "Kee-ER-stin".

Kirstin Dunst pronounces it the way I do but when people mention her name it is always pronounced "Kee-ER-stin".

joey con carne wrote:Watching My 600lb Life. This show is both depressing and inspiring. It is a reality show which follows people who are 600+ pounds and want to lose weight and have gastric bypass surgery. Each episode is a different person. This dude right now was 777, gained 15lbs and became 792 and now he is down to 652. It's a miracle he can freakin' walk.

He just got approved for surgery and he is stoked.

Now that she's in jail, however, Ades said she will leave the man alone "if he wants me to."

joey con carne wrote:Woman Accused of Sending Man 65,000 Texts After Just One Date Opens Up in Jailhouse Interview

Holy shit.

Now that she's in jail, however, Ades said she will leave the man alone "if he wants me to."

Yea, you dumbass, I'm pretty sure he wants you to leave him alone. She's got some serious mental issues. This isn't just some random infatuation shit. When she gets out of jail he will have to seriously watch his back and arm himself or something. I wouldn't be surprised if she kills him.

joey con carne wrote:How do you guys pronounce the name "Kirstin"?

I pronounce it KER-stin.

Everyone on TV pronounces it "Kee-ER-stin".

Kirstin Dunst pronounces it the way I do but when people mention her name it is always pronounced "Kee-ER-stin".

Tyger wrote:I don’t hear many girls pronounce it KER-stin

Doesn’t matter, the real takeaway whether they pronounce it KER-stin or KEER-stin is that their parents don’t know how to spell Kristen

The clock may be ticking for MoviePass Inc. and owner Helios & Matheson Analytics Inc.

Helios & Matheson said in a filing Tuesday that it had just $15.5 million in cash at the end of April, and the firm has been going through about $21.7 million a month. It also has $27.9 million on deposit with merchant processors.

The revelation sent shares of the technology company down 32 percent -- and sparked fresh concern about whether its MoviePass business can survive.

It’s no secret that MoviePass is unprofitable. The subscription service is famous for its seemingly too-good-to-be-true offer: For $9.95 a month, you can see a new movie in the theater every day.

But Helios & Matheson is hoping to build up MoviePass’s subscriber base enough that it can better capitalize on its customers -- either through partnerships with other brands or by selling the data it collects. The idea is to reach 5 million subscribers, and theoretically have enough scale to turn a profit.

Along the way, MoviePass is taking steps to stem its losses, according to Helios & Matheson Chief Executive Officer Ted Farnsworth. That includes efforts to reduce fraudulent use of its cards, prevent repeat viewing of movies, and stop the sharing of memberships and passwords.

“I’ve always known that it was going to take a lot of money to put into it, to get it to the other side, to get it to 5 million subscribers and break even,” Farnsworth said in an interview.

Asked if the company would survive the month of May, Farnsworth said, “Oh God, yes. May, June, July.”

Farnsworth said the company can raise more money by selling more stock or by borrowing the cash. Its merchant processor also will release the deposits, opening up additional funds, he said.

It became clearer on Tuesday that the endeavor is an uphill fight. Helios & Matheson acknowledged in the filing that the MoviePass business model is “highly uncertain.”

“We are unable to estimate the actual funds we will require,” the company said.

Since MoviePass doesn’t have its own supply of movie tickets, it has to buy them from the theaters. That’s expensive, and there’s no easy way to recoup the costs.

The biggest movie-theater chain in the U.S. provided a glimpse this week at just how tough that proposition is. AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. said on a conference call that MoviePass has been buying hundreds of thousands of tickets from the chain at about $12 apiece on average. And the subscribers are attending nearly three movies each month: They went 2.62 times in March and 2.75 times in April.

That implies a loss of over $20 per customer each month. To be sure, not all members are using AMC theaters -- and in many parts of the country, it’s cheaper to see a movie. The average U.S. ticket price is just over $9.

Even so, AMC Chief Executive Officer Adam Aron thinks MoviePass is unsustainable.

“There’s nothing wrong with subscription programs -- they can be quite positive actually if they’re done rationally and intelligently,” he said on the call. “But they have to be done at a price that is sustainable.”

joey con carne wrote:The AR in AR-15 stands for "assault rifle" and the 15 is how many bullets are fired with each pull of the trigger.

joey con carne wrote:Woman Accused of Sending Man 65,000 Texts After Just One Date Opens Up in Jailhouse Interview

Holy shit.

Now that she's in jail, however, Ades said she will leave the man alone "if he wants me to."

Yea, you dumbass, I'm pretty sure he wants you to leave him alone. She's got some serious mental issues. This isn't just some random infatuation shit. When she gets out of jail he will have to seriously watch his back and arm himself or something. I wouldn't be surprised if she kills him.

Authorities said Ades has been sending as many as 500 messages a day since last year, but her efforts to connect with her former date became more extreme last month.

That’s when she allegedly broke into the man’s home and took a bath in his tub. Police say she also showed up at his work pretending to be his wife.

Ades is due in court May 15 and will be represented by a public defender. She is being held without bond.

Although Ades acknowledged that sending 65,000 text messages seemed like a lot, she told KPHO she thought she’d sent more.

She added: “Love is an excessive thing.”

joey con carne wrote:It's common courtesy. When someone doesn't respond to your first text, you send 64,999 follow-up texts.

SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) — The eruption of a Hawaii volcano in the Pacific "Ring of Fire" has experts warily eyeing volcanic peaks on America's West Coast that are also part of the geologically active region.

The West Coast is home to an 800-mile (1,300-kilometer) chain of 13 volcanoes , from Washington state's Mount Baker to California's Lassen Peak. They include Mount St. Helens, whose spectacular 1980 eruption in the Pacific Northwest killed dozens of people and sent volcanic ash across the country, and massive Mount Rainier, which towers above the Seattle metro area.

"There's lots of anxiety out there," said Liz Westby, geologist at the U.S. Geological Survey Cascades Volcano Observatory in Vancouver, Washington, in the shadow of Mount St. Helens. "They see destruction, and people get nervous."

Kilauea, on Hawaii's Big Island, is threatening to blow its top in coming days or weeks after sputtering lava for a week, forcing about 2,000 people to evacuate, destroying two dozen homes and threatening a geothermal plant. Experts fear the volcano could hurl ash and boulders the size of refrigerators miles into the air.

UltimateMarvel wrote:Crazy what's happening in Hawaii. Didn't know you had volcanoes up there in Washington though. Have an umbrella ready. lol

That robot is creepy as fuck. Why is humanity set on creating Skynet? KILL IT NOW!

joey con carne wrote:A video for for Watch_Dogs popped up on my recommendations in YouTube. I remember there was some controversy where the "gameplay" videos Ubisoft released prior to the game's official release were actually CGI videos and not even true gameplay videos.

This game does not look good at all.

Side note:

This Random thread has over 1,000 posts in it. The previous two were auto-locked before they hit 1,000. Prepare yourselves. This thread is probably going to be locked soon.

Stan Lee has filed a billion-dollar lawsuit against Pow! Entertainment, alleging that unscrupulous business partners took advantage of his declining eyesight in order to swindle him.

Lee founded Pow! in 2001, and sold it last year to Camsing International Holding, a Hong Kong company. According to the suit, Lee has macular degeneration — which causes deteriorating eyesight. The suit alleges that Pow! took advantage of his condition to get him to sign away an exclusive right to use his name to the Chinese company.

The filing follows a similar suit brought last month against Jerardo Olivarez, a former publicist and business manager to Lee. The suit accused Olivarez of draining Lee’s accounts of $1.4 million and using his blood to create a commemorative stamp without Lee’s consent.

The new suit also mentions Olivarez, though he is not named as a defendant. The suit claims that Olivarez and two other men, Shane Duffy and Gill Champion, asked Lee to sign over a non-exclusive right to his name to Pow! Entertainment. However, the document that ultimately was signed granted an exclusive right, against Lee’s wishes, according to the suit. The suit claims that Pow! was also given the right to use Lee’s Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook accounts.

The suit, brought by attorney Adam D.H. Grant of Alpert, Barr & Grant, seeks to rescind the license agreement as well as “damages in excess of one billion dollars.”

joey con carne wrote:Another shooting, this time in Santa Fe, Texas. 10 dead.

• 10 people are dead, 9 of them students, following a shooting at a high school in Santa Fe, Texas
• 10 others, including a police officer, were injured in the shooting, which began early Friday morning.
• The shooter, a 17-year-old male student identified as Dimitrios Pagourtzis, is in custody.
• A second student was detained for questioning, police said.
• Possible explosive devices were also found at the scene, officials said.
•The suspect reportedly had an assault-style rifle, shotgun, and pistol..

joey con carne wrote:These school shooters should be tortured. You know all those "immoral" and "unethical" torture methods Gina Haspel kept getting grilled about? Yea, they should just let her oversee the torture of these pieces of shit. Keep doctors around so they can make sure they don't die and keep reviving them if they pass out.

They should be tortured for the rest of their lives.

Major evacuation routes could be blocked off by lava streams as the first serious casualty was reported during fresh eruptions from Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano.

The unnamed man was hit by a “lava spatter” as he sat on the balcony of his property in the town of Pahoa on Saturday.

Authorities have warned that the chunks of molten rock can weigh as much as a refrigerator and that even small pieces can kill.

“A homeowner who was sitting on a third-floor balcony got hit with lava spatter,” said Janet Snyder, a spokesperson for the Office of the Mayor, County of Hawaii. “It hit him on the shin and shattered everything there down on his leg.”

Magma destroyed four homes on Saturday as molten rock from two fissures merged into a single steam, threatening to hit the nearby Highway 137 on Sunday, Hawaii's civil defence agency said.

Authorities are trying to clear around a mile of hardened lava from a road blocked by an eruption in 2014, in order to open up alternative escape route for coastal residents.

The Hawaii National Guard has warned mandatory evacuations would take place if more roads become blocked.

Several people were trapped when lava crossed a road on Friday, with some of the group needing to be airlifted to safety.

Edwin Montoya, who lives with his daughter on her farm near the site where lava crossed the road and cut off access, said the fissure opened and grew quickly. “It was just a little crack in the ground, with a little lava coming out,” he said. “Now it's a big crater that opened up where the small little crack in the ground was.”

Kilauea, on Hawaii’s Big Island, began erupting in early May, causing damage to dozens of properties.

However, geologists now fear the situation is set to get worse for the island’s residents, with fresh magma predicted to emerge 25 miles away from the volcano’s summit in the lower Puna district.

“Summit magma has arrived,” US Geological Survey scientist Wendy Stovall said. “There is much more stuff coming out of the ground and it’s going to produce flows that will move much further away.”

Fountains of bright orange lava were seen blasting at least 20 feet into the air on Saturday, creating rivers of molten rock.

Experts are unsure as to when the volcano will calm down and more eruptions at the summit are possible. “We have no way of knowing whether this is really the beginning or towards the end of this eruption,” said Tom Shea, a volcanologist at the University of Hawaii. “We're kind of in this world of uncertainty.”

Li revealed in 2013 that he was suffering from hyperthyroidism as well as a heart condition. Quoting his doctor, Li said at the time that he could “either continue making [action] films or spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair.” Earlier serious injuries to his legs and spine sustained on film sets over the years had also limited his movements, and he admitted he can no longer stand for a long period of time without hunching.

A devout Buddhist, Li was spotted at a temple in Tibet in a recent photo and was allegedly addressed as “grandpa” by a group of school children due to his elderly appearance. He has credited his religious belief with helping him cope with his illness.