I have worked hard to remind some of the Trump-voting Massholes I have the pleasure of interacting with on a regular basis of this. I think I've made inroads with at least one of them. I also make sure to bring this up:

"The political folks believed that because it was going to be relegated to Democratic states, that they could blame those governors, and that would be an effective political strategy."

Trump committed negligent homicide in blue states for political gain.

Most recent social security trustees report says the trust fund will run out in 2035. What happens in 2035? Benefits are still funded at 83% in perpetuity. By the way, last year it was going to run out in 2033, and the year before that it was going to run out in 2031. And also by the way, the trust fund was specifically set up because they knew the baby boomers were going to stress the system, so it's supposed to get depleted as the boomers use it.

Everything is working mostly as intended, and yet there's all this anxiety around Social Security. Why? Because Republicans want you to think Social Security is fucked all on its own so that you don't question it when they ratfuck it. That and they want to constantly frame the conversation as such so that the conversation doesn't turn to "how do we make social security more robust and generous?" or some other radical socialist nonsense.

To be fair, both bikes and fences are made of pipes. What else is made of pipes?

Pipe bombs.

The barnacles must be a more recent phenomenon, I was there a couple years ago. There were still fish skeletons lying around, but mostly this:

https://youtu.be/55btGpGsuDo?si=1ZNqf4ySZcfoHOFK

snort

It seems like the airstrikes damaging the crossing is a more recent development that I wasn't aware of. Your CBC article and the CNN article posted above are only an hour old. Your Times of Israel article says this:

The Rafah crossing was open for periods Tuesday morning, but Egypt only allowed through Palestinians who’d already gotten authorization to leave the Strip.

On the Rafah crossing’s Facebook page, Gazans lamented the decision to not open the crossing for anyone wishing to leave, with one user writing: “Interior Ministry, this is not the time to put someone in danger who survived a bombing and miraculously reached the crossing. We cannot return to death.”

Some say we won't be rid of the threat of World War III until after the next world war.

The public didn't have the document until now, but you can bet Republican leaders & committee chairs at the very least were well aware of it, and the information that this was not only US Gov't policy, but internationally backed by our allies has been widely reported since the beginning. I have to assume McCarthy knows and doesn't care.

Godspeed, PipedLinkBot. We wish you a speedy recovery.

Highway engineer here. It's asphalt (or bitumen), which is a product of crude oil refining. It's all the stuff that stays at the bottom when you heat crude up to over 1000°F. Because it's so sticky & viscous, it has to be heated up to around 300°F in order to be used. Asphalt is the "binder" in a pavement mixture that includes silt, sand, and rocks in various quantities and sizes, and these days the asphalt binder is usually modified in some way to improve its performance in the climate or application it's going to be used in.

A chipseal is made by spreading a continuous layer of small rocks on a prepared surface and spraying the hot asphalt over it after, which binds the rocks together. It's similar to Macadam pavement which was developed in the early 1800s and continued to be used well into the 1900s, often as a base layer for a more modern hot-mix asphalt pavement. Tar used to be used in paving a lot, but tar is made from coal and environmental regulations don't allow it anywhere that I know of. There's also a more state of the art technique that involves a looser layer of slightly larger stones, sprayed with a modified asphalt emulsion (modified in this case meaning with rubber or polymer for elasticity, and emulsion meaning it's mixed with water to make it easier to work with), called a stress-absorbing membrane interlayer, used for reducing reflective cracking from an existing pavement surface into a new overlay surface. Modified asphalts & emulsions are often used for chipseals these days, too.

Lecture over.

Now I know y'all be lovin' this shit right here.