Um. Wut?
Who Knew the Colosseum Was So Old? Tourist Apologizes for Defacement.
For some reason this article won’t preview. It’s a NYT gift link to an article about a guy who used his keys to etch his and his girlfriend’s initials into a wall on the Roman Colosseum (fortunately not one of the original ones). Some people should not be allowed out in public.
You’d think that you could at least outmaneuver it, in a parking lot. Especially if the driver is inexperienced: I’m told that driving one of those things is harder than you’d think.
There’s just so much weird in that story…
To be honest, he wasn’t wrong when he said he didn’t think it was that old. The NYT article said, “The brick that was defaced was actually part of a wall built during a mid-19th century restoration of the monument, which was inaugurated in the first century A.D.”
Which I referred to in my post. Doesn’t make it any less clueless.
I had the same thought (don’t run directly away from any vehicle chasing you, run at right angles and then try to get behind it). The problem is cardio conditioning - how many times can you dodge before getting exhausted vs. the fuel supply of the vehicle.
The forklift is an interesting case - hard to drive but probably has zero-turn radius steering, so the operator (if he knows what he’s doing) can match your agility (particularly if you are a 73 year old woman).
If I had been woken up in my car at 12:40 am, I’m not doing any juking or dodging, I’ll guarantee that.
I wouldn’t try to get behind it; I’d try to get some obstacles (like other cars) between it and me.
I wonder if the wacko had prior professional experience with forklifts.
If the driver is inexperienced, maybe. Forklifts are very maneuverable - they have to be. I also doubt an inexperienced driver would be able to drive a forklift out of the Lowe’s parking lot.
I wonder if there were many, or any other cars in the parking lot at that hour. We have a Lowe’s nearby, and during the day the parking lot isn’t very full. At night it’s basically empty
They’re really not that hard to drive; at least, not the big liquid propane gas-driven ones used for lumber and concrete and other weighty loads. The forklifts used inside the store would be a challege, as they turn from the rear wheels and thus steer “backwards” (with a handle, rather than a wheel); but if you can drive a car, you can drive an LPG forklift. Even the controls for the forks aren’t really hard to figure out. - SMV, former Home Depot forklift driver.
I did not know that. I only have experience with the warehouse forklifts, which they would never let me near.
We had a propane Datsun at work that was just lovely. Whenever it was being worked on, we would get a loaner that almost invariably lacked the same stability on turns. A forklift may be agile, but not all of them can turn as well as a psycho might need.
It was either post this here or resurrect the “Stupid Democratic Idea of the Day” thread, last used in May 2014.
Eric Adams claims he’s kept a photo of a fallen police officer in his wallet for decades. The photo in question was printed recently and aged using coffee stains.
No way he didn’t know it was that old. But I think prison time is pretty harsh. That etching 200 years from now will be just another part of history. To me it’s not the same as, say, defacing a painting.
The biggest troublemaker in my elementary class died of a drug overdose in high school.
The article in question includes this bit:
“The Times’s efforts to attack the mayor here would be laughable if it were not so utterly offensive,” Levy said in a statement to the paper, characterizing the report as a “campaign to paint the mayor as a liar.”
When they paint him as a liar, they need to make sure that they include coffee stains to make it appear to be a really old painting.
But how dare the New York Times report on his lies when he is lying!
The sentence does seem inappropriate. Shouldn’t he be eaten by lions or something?
Crucify him.
The biggest troublemaker in my elementary class just called for the public crucifixion of a vandal.
The biggest troublemaker from my childhood circle of friends is a completely broke alcoholic who lives in a trailer, drinks all day every day, and subsists on his Social Security payments.
I suspect how these troublemakers turn out depends a great deal on how adults respond to them. You can to a certain extent take spirited kids and channel their energy in a positive way. Not all kids, not in every case, but if an adult, especially a parent, frames their child as always causing trouble, they may think well that’s all I’m good for.
The aforementioned adult cousin, I know she’s doing her best in a hard situation but she had a nasty habit of always comparing her spirited older child to the other two. It came to feel like she had nothing positive to say about that child at all, and the child was three years old and heard every word. The child in question is in fact pretty cool and sweet, she just clearly has ADHD and impulse control issues. I think they are moving in the right direction now. Which is good because wild child #4 will arrive any day now.