Brontoforumus

Think about how much fuel it takes to completely boil off a gallon of water. Now ballpark a human body as containing about 20-25 gallons of water. That's a lot, and also why I think those "mobile crematorium" stories about the Russians were probably bullshit.

Also, yeah, the desert is mostly hardpan you'd need a mattock to get through. Meanwhile, abandoned mine shafts are fucking abundant. The fact that anyone ever finds bodies in Nevada at all is kind of surprising to me.

And even a crematorium will throw the charred bones into a blender to dust them

Thad wrote:

Angry Beaver wrote:Could you clarify for a Floridian lifer who's never seen a desert?

The ground is really, really hard. If you want to dig in it, you need to soften it up. Usually by intermittently soaking it over a course of days or weeks.

The reason I would have expected would be that "the surrounding sand keeps sliding back down into the hole you're trying to dig."
You know, the exact opposite of the reason that's actually true.

Upthorn wrote:

Thad wrote:

Angry Beaver wrote:Could you clarify for a Floridian lifer who's never seen a desert?

The ground is really, really hard. If you want to dig in it, you need to soften it up. Usually by intermittently soaking it over a course of days or weeks.

The reason I would have expected would be that "the surrounding sand keeps sliding back down into the hole you're trying to dig."
You know, the exact opposite of the reason that's actually true.

That would be true in a different sort of desert.

Most of the desert in the US is apparently "Paved Desert", like Thad's describing, where any surface sand has been carried away by wind and you're left with mostly baked, tightly-packed gravel.

Saharan-type sand dune deserts are just called "Erg" desert.

I'm not sure on this, but I think deserts with very occasional rainfall are more likely to end up "paved", while ones with next to no rainfall are more likely to generate dunes. But wind patterns are a huge factor too and I have no idea what the weighting is.

Mongrel wrote:IIRC, just using gasoline to keep a fire going, the fire needs something like 24-48 hours to burn corpses to ash. Big pyres with lots of wood take less time though because they reach hotter temperatures. Crematorium temps are like, four figures (1500 degrees or so).

So a pizza oven, got it.

Upthorn wrote:

Thad wrote:

Angry Beaver wrote:Could you clarify for a Floridian lifer who's never seen a desert?

The ground is really, really hard. If you want to dig in it, you need to soften it up. Usually by intermittently soaking it over a course of days or weeks.

The reason I would have expected would be that "the surrounding sand keeps sliding back down into the hole you're trying to dig."
You know, the exact opposite of the reason that's actually true.

I can't speak much to sandy deserts, but I would expect that if you were to bury anything in loose sand you'd probably want to bury it pretty deep.

Man, I just remembered there's a scene in a Blueberry* story where they bury a guy in a hurry in the desert by covering him in rocks, and now I'm impressed at that attention to detail.

*(famous French western illustrated by Moebius)

Looking at the grocery flyer today. You can say "pride" you fucking cowards.

No they can't, if they do say pride they will lose the very important bigot money!

Thad wrote:"But why didn't they just fly into Mordor on the eagles?"

Do you go to a war movie about soldiers who have to sneak behind enemy lines on a secret mission and then ask why they didn't just scramble the fighter jets? No? Well then what exactly is it about the presence of wizards and elves that's making you stupid?

I posted this verbatim on a BoingBoing thread and someone reported it and a mod deleted it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

"This meeting could have been an email," irritated man says who does not read his emails and when he does instantly forgets them and has to be emailed on the same topic five times

"This road is so bad, they should repair it" says local woman

"Why are they repairing this road? It wasn't that bad. Now I'm gonna be late" says same local woman

hint: the local woman is my mom

When using a self-checkout to buy housewares or electronics you must occasionally stop and decide whether to cover your new purchase with an insurance policy in case something terrible happens to it. It's a pain.

Earlier this week I had to decline insurance on a pack of disposable razors.

People who care about "historical accuracy" in period pieces never seem to give a shit about that little strip of grass down the middle of the dirt roads. I grew up with ox carts and shit, grass down the middle is a thing of cars.

They also don't seem to care about potatoes where they have no business being but black people are right out. Apparently the absence of constant rape destroys suspension of disbelief but there's unfenced livestock running around town and no fucking latrines but this is a whole other kettle of bullshit.

I'm in a discord server with some friends and three of the newer members like to tag people when they reply. Fine, right?

Except its not a huge or busy discord. So they'll reply to something that comes right before their post.
That's like me quoting the person directly above me in a forum but I'm also sending a notification to their phone every time I do so.

I've turned off notifications for the server but it's still driving me nuts. It's so incredibly unnecessary and annoying.

It's happened twice since posting this.

Did you know that you can ignore individual users on discord?

If you do so, they can't use reactions on your posts or use the reply function to you, basically alerting them to the fact you did so. This caused a big problem when this came to light and we all learned of this together.

Lottel wrote:If you do so, they can't use reactions on your posts or use the reply function to you, basically alerting them to the fact you did so. This caused a big problem when this came to light and we all learned of this together.

*laugh track*

Oh. Sorry.

Oh no no. I'm glad you brought it up because that was also my first instinct. I just wanted to give a little PSA for this little hidden feature that they never make any mention of.