That last picture, the ass looks like a wrinkled fabric piece.
Not only am I certain that this is a human in a bear costume, I'm pretty sure I know who it is.
Sun Tzu always said deception was the key.
That poor guy must be so hot. His fursona doesn't look very breathable.
The BBC actually interviewed a bear expert from Chester Zoo who said, yes, it's a bear, they're meant to look like that, the baggy skin allows them to turn round and whack a tiger on the nose if it starts biting the bear on the backside.
Or maybe she was just a random woman pretending to be a bear expert.
Even the menswear guy is commenting on it in his own, uh, fashion https://twitter.com/dieworkwear/status/1686134561682644993?s=46&t=nbIfRG4OrIZbaPkDOwkgxQ
8: Idiom, sir?
This is some actual BBC footage of a real sun bear https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vN-oDd92Dg
but I think the only reason this video looks at all credibly like a man in a suit is that there's no scale comparison. The bear is in the foreground and the people are a long way further off - because there's no ground in between you get a forced-perspective shot that makes the bear look man-sized.
There's no way that anyone seeing a sun bear in person could mistake it for a man in a suit. Sun bears are tiny. On their hind legs they are four feet tall.
So, like, a half-man, at most.
Anyway, 10 looks like a completely different animal than in the op.
Obviously, I spent quite a bit of time thinking about bears because I keep trying to plan hiking trips that I never have time to take when my hip is in good enough shape to take them. So, as part of this process I'm considering getting a bear cannister.
A dumb man pretending to be smart man pretending to be a bear.
There's, like, a zipper and a hole to look out of in that front shot?
16: That effect looks to be a combination of their neck coloring patterns and being in shadow.
So, as part of this process I'm considering getting a bear cannister.
A cunning solution, with just two minor flaws:
1. How are you going to persuade the bear to enter the cannister?
2. Having done so successfully, what will you do if you then encounter a second bear?
I think 16 is right. If you see hoof prints, think horses, not zebras. There's way more short people than bears.
18: You live on a sad, bearless island and don't understand these things.
I just want to say that I really hate this use of "refute". Rejects, disputes, counters, sure, all fine. Refute would involve, like, vivisection. There's no refutation happening here.
I just want to say that I really hate this use of "refute". Rejects, disputes, counters, sure, all fine. Refute would involve, like, vivisection. There's no refutation happening here.
I hereby refute any claims that that was my fault.
Where is "refute" in the post, or the Straits Times link?
Isn't "refute" essentially "prove in the negative"? E.g. it's one of those rare verbs which is not only considered incorrect if the action is unsuccessful, but also its evaluation of success is entirely subjective, unlike, say, "hit".
You live on a sad, bearless island
The only response to this is *hard stare*
25 made me lol.
Hard agree with 23, I find it infuriating, especially in newspaper headlines.
You can also rent a goat to carry it.
That's a problem, but not a wildlife management problem.
in 19, the hooves are the zipper and hole? or the fact that it basically looks like a bear?
If you want to disprove someone's claim that a bear is a person in a bear costume, try kicking it while saying "I refute it thus". If you immediately regret it, it's a bear.
31: I don't know. We should probably ban analogies.
32: This sounds like a really small bear.
I've decided I think the video is spliced and/or CGI.
But also Heebie's drawing has the entire person in the bear's torso; my point is that the sitting posture doesn't work if the head, arms, & legs are where I put them in the standing one.
You know what other word has basically changed it's meaning now in an enraging way: reticent
OK, so the moral here has to be that the bear looks a bit funny when it stands up like that because _people_ look a bit funny when they stand up like that, which is a lot of the time. Biomechanics object lesson.
We took a family rafting trip this weekend and saw a bear. Just a little one. The guide said its mother and sibling had recently been killed.
He's growing up and will seek vengeance.
Virgin bear sitting vs chad man in bear suit standing.
"Definitely a really animal" is the new "non-human biological pilots".
No "human" could survive in that suit, you say?
I mean has anyone seen the $20k dog suit?
We should probably ban analogies.
It's not an analogy, it's figurative language in a simile suit.
changed it's meaning now in an enraging way: reticent
I'm reluctant to say whether I've seen this.
32 is excellent.
changed it's meaning now in an enraging way: reticent
I'm reluctant to say whether I've seen this.
32 is excellent.
14: Get an Ursack if that will suffice. Bear cans are a pain to fit in a pack.
Refudiate is the better word choice.
49: But those are harder to sit on.
That is true! They do make good seats. I just had a hell of time getting the big yellow canister into a 65L pack with all the rest of the gear, and I much prefer the Ursack, at least until I get et by a bear. I porter for me and both kids so space and weight are kind of a big priority.
I probably will just get an Ursack. The thing I need to stop doing is hanging my food. I'm really bad at it.
I hadn't heard of Ursacks before. Are they approved for the same places as the bear canisters?
No. But I'm not near anywhere where bear canisters are required. I just can't throw a line over a tree branch.
I mean, sometimes I can but then I can't get it back.
||
Trump now seeking to break his own record as the first former President ever to be indicted by becoming the first former President ever to be indicted twice in the same week. Will Georgia come through for him? Three days to go for his place in history....
|>
Only one comment on the indictment so far?
How about a thread for tomorrow?
This is generally a pretty slow time of day on Unfogged.
And it does make sense to have a dedicated thread.
58: [sing-song] Okaa-aaay... but Nick, mc, I have bad news about the promptness of your submissions.
Does that mean my 2,500 words on Paul Tsongas's legacy will run first?
62: obligatory Hubert Humphrey link: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/06/14/what-todays-progressives-can-learn-from-1948-299749
ll
Was a bit weirded out by a woman in the row in front of me on the plane (PIT->DCA) reading a David Icke book. The oddly splashy cover first attracted my attention. Light public reading material for sure.
|>
54: most places, yes, unless they specify bear canisters. (Adirondacks, yes.). They're fine for the Winds and Uintas which is most of my use case.
I thought most of the big California parks required canisters, but I never go west of the Denver airport.
I bet when California puts a guy in a bear costume, you can't tell because they have people to make the ass look like skin and actors who can move like a real bear.
I don't know, have you seen their flag?
I thought most of the big California parks required canisters
It does seem that way for the parks nearest to me. I remember seeing NPS-installed metal boxes along some of the more popular trails some decades ago, so it might be possible to plan around using those.
When I did a multi-week trip a couple of decades ago, we managed to avoid hanging food ourselves most of the time because the national park sections of the hike had either built-in bear boxes or poles with hooks on them where you could hang your food. We did the counter-balance hanging strategy a few nights and that worked. Then we got lazy on our last night and found ourselves chased out of our campsite by bears. We went back and cleaned up the mess the next day.
||
I've just finished reading "The War Lords and the Gallipoli Disaster" and let me tell you, for a book that spends most of its time snorkelling through the minutes of the British Cabinet Food Price Committee, it is extremely readable. If you like Adam Tooze sort of books about economics, this is for you. It is also, in places, extremely funny.
Non-Brits may not be aware, but we have a surprising amount of insight into the decision-making process in the first year or so of the Great War, because the Prime Minister described literally everything that was going on in a steady stream of incredibly indiscreet letters to his 27-year-old mistress.
When he was discussing something incredibly secret - for example, 'we're thinking of invading Gallipoli next month' or 'we're engaged in a covert
diplomatic campaign to bring Greece into the war by promising them bits of the Ottoman empire' - he would take the following security precaution: he would write the words 'this is secret, but' in the letter. It is absolutely dumbfounding. There is literally one known occasion in the entire war where the Prime Minister discussed something in cabinet that he thought was too secret to immediately braindump in writing to his twentysomething side piece.
The campground where we camped this past weekend had bear-resistant metal boxes at each campsite. Alaskans don't fuck around about bears.
How can both Moby and Cala have the Ursack? Do you take turns? And is it even wise to employ such an old sack when dealing with bears?
71: and of course in WW2 the head of the armed forces took time every day to write up everything secret that had happened in the diary he was keeping so his wife could read it after it was all over, which is a bit less insecure but still hardly in accordance with the handling instructions for material marked Top Secret/Most Secret including signals intelligence.
(he also mentioned the occasions when he managed to sneak away to go bird-watching)
71: She was a Commander in the OBE, so she must have been very qualified to keep secrets.
73: I guess that's why lots of park managers don't like it? They say it's because of insufficient testing of the Ursack.
Anyway, I have to go to rural Ohio.
Because those inbred scum can't shoot straight.
It's nice that Portage County is where there's a divide between the watersheds thing.
Probably more tiring when you factor in the fumes and the people honking at you and the fines and so on.
The Ohio Turnpike has service plazas at about half the distance apart as the PA Turnpike. I think that's a legacy of when Ohio had mostly 3.2 beer.
The corn looks fine, but they have weak looking beans.
Oh, how are the mighty fallen.
But no posting and paddling, you hear?
Posting while paddling? That's a paddlin'.
I'm seeing a lot of "No on 1" signs. Assuming Oberlin is typical of rural Ohio, this seems like a good indication.
Having never set foot in Ohio (apart from CLE, but airports don't count), I'm sure you're correct.
Everywhere I go the No signs outnumber the Yes by a lot. The polling also shows Issue 1 is going down bad. My wife and I did our part this morning, and the long line for early voting on a Wednesday morning in an August special election is genuinely surprising.
Looks like one poll found Issue 1 with 42% yes / 41% no, another with 26% yes / 57% no. Even if the former is more accurate, I think it's sunk as voters tend toward skepticism of ballot measures unless they feel decently convinced, and undecideds break no.
101: I hadn't seen that Ohio Northern poll - that makes me anxious! It was ridiculous for me to have any confidence that Ohio voters would vote in a way that makes sense to me - they voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020, and all indications are they will vote for him again in 2024.
Here's something about the two polls that makes sense to me:
The Suffolk/USA Today poll mirrored the ballot language of Issue 1, while the Ohio Northern poll focused solely on increasing the threshold from a simple majority to 60%. There is good reason to believe that respondents are more likely to oppose a measure if they are confused or unsure about it.
And if so, S/UT is more predictive since voters will be looking most of all at the ballot language when they vote, less at someone's summary.
I'm at the 74th best restaurant in the country and there was a guy in a baseball cap. Because Ohio.
I guess everyone knows the list down at least to 80.
I see the highest-ranking nearby restaurant is the Refectory, which I've eaten at, but not this century. It remains one of my crowning achievements that I didn't go "why is this all fucked up?" when they put down a fish knife.
Re: the ursack, just stumbled across this: https://sectionhiker.com/ursack-bear-bag-adoption-rate-survey-results/
AIMHMHB my dad is thru-hiking the AT now. (I think he just rented bear canisters for the sections in which they're required, though he might have brought them with and then mailed them to my sister afterward.) I recently picked him up in VA for a two week break so he could repair his cracked upper dentures, get new glasses from Costco, get new trekking poles, deal with some paperwork, and watch the group stage of the Women's World Cup with me. He's now taken the train, two buses, and a shuttle north to Millinocken (ME), where he'll hike the 100 Mile Woods, Baxter State Park and Mt Katahdin, and then shuttle back to Millinocken to hike the rest of the trail south-bound. If all goes according to plan he'll finish in VA toward the end of October/beginning of November.
Good luck to him.
I have Section Hiker bookmarked. Very useful.
Dead thread but...
82:It's nice that Portage County is where there's a divide between the watersheds thing.
My budding interest in geography was further piqued when I figured out that my house literally straddled that divide. Only my dad believed me but I was fucking right. Over in Summit County; however the portage that Portage is named for is in Summit County which was carved out of neighboring counties when they built the Ohio Canal and routed it over that portage. Akron is also named for it being the high point on the canal.
Summit County was yesterday. I'm in Knox now.
I didn't even know there was a canal.
I didn't know sun bears had such rumply bottoms! But, a guy in droopy fur pants would also be cute, so it's not that important to me which one this turns out to be.
"Akron is also named for it being the high point on the canal."
Ah, of course!
"It remains one of my crowning achievements that I didn't go "why is this all fucked up?" when they put down a fish knife."
s/b "why is this knife different from all other knives?"
I didn't know many Jewish people then.
Impossible. I'm reliably informed that 45% of all Americans are Jewish.
The difference between reliability and validity is important.
120: You're forgetting about segregation. Jews are 80-90% of the population in the decadent enclaves on the coasts, but only 1-2% in the Heartland.
Speaking of religion, having just seen an Amish outlaw, I think maybe the deep state has a point about reflecting material on a buggy.
||
By the way, are people watched Strange New Worlds -- I just watched the latest, a musical episode: talk about going where no one has gone before. Week in and week out, this series delivers.
|>
124 Yes, I like it a lot. It feels like old Trek while doing something new too.
I see your childhood home and raise you my elementary school, which straddles a continental divide.
126: Some consider mine to be a continental divide (St. Lawrence/Mississippi so Atlantic/Gulf of Mexico) but it is certainly secondary to the Atlantic/Pacific one in the US.
I'm stumped on finding your school's precise location (not finding detailed maps of the divides in Africa), but I'm assuming Indian/Atlantic divide.
