nudge

Oh well, I'll take it as a reminder to start with my Advent Calendar...

Heard Wham's "Last Christmas" on the radio today for the first time this year ...

Yep they're huge, supposed to be the heaviest eagle worldwide, I think, and their wingspan is over 2 meters on average It's a shame that... We still have quite a few species of eagles here in Cambo, with the white-bellied sea Eagle being the most impressive one. I'm actually going on a wildlife watching tour during the Christmas days off in a local national park, the wildlife and marine life diversity there is unbelievable (around 200 bird species alone), but this is going to go downwards now as they succumbed to a huge Chinese investment and allowed them to build monstrous hotel/casino resorts in the area, so I want to take the last chance to see it untouched. I'm particularly keen on spotting great hornbills, herons, pelicans and cranes, mouse-deer, sun bears, dugongs and freshwater dolphins. Hope I'll manage to take a few decent pics and avoid pythons and king cobras while I'm on it, haha.

Yeah, and Bottas apparently tried it in Abu Dhabi, he reportedly needed 9.59 seconds to get out...

Carbon-titanium. I don't know the exact numbers of the loads they are designed to withstand; there were a number of tests they ran in three risk categories: car to car, car to environment, and external objects. Apparently it can withstand the impact of a 20kg wheel assembly flying at 225km/h, bear a static load 15 times the mass of an F1 car, and prevent helmet contact with a wall or a barrier in many cases of tested accidents. It will be interesting to see the actual results of crash tests.

They did simulations on Bianchi's crash with different variations of cockpit protection (including halo), and the verdict was that the impact was so strong none would have saved his life, not even a completely closed cockpit.

I thought this was bad... and then I saw this: Jesus

Or...or...just sign Kvyat!

YES YES YES!

I don't even get the safety reasoning behind it, I think the only fatality that the halo would have prevented in recent years is Henry Surtees' death, but seriously, that was just so incredibly bad luck, you can't ever prevent it completely in motorsports. Even then, strengthening wheel tethers sounds like a much better solution than putting on a halo which brings its own security issues, as Rando and Tsubs mentioned already. It doesn't protect (or only up to 17%, according to FIA itself) from smaller flying debris either, so the incidents like Massa still could have happened, or could have been made even worse by deflecting the debris. Weird solution, all in all.

Pandas are hilarious My spirit animal

Wow, that's amazing. Makes you wonder how such arrangements happen in nature. Anyway, saw this a few days ago and thought of you, @The Rebel CRS: Just listen to the call of that Steller's Sea Eagle Some cool footage from the wild:

That thing is so horrible, it makes the car look like a flip-flop. Might as well move on to closed cockpits now, that would at least look better aesthetically.

Yeah, but they also introduced that new stupid logo, so...

To be fair, I don't get it why F1 hasn't introduced official live streaming service with subscription so far. WEC has a very decent one for a very reasonable price, either for the whole season or per single race, replays included as well. Their app sucks though.

The stream is legal. My use of VPN is legal. Anything in between is a grey area and quite honestly I couldn't care less either way

VPN.

This one is the best

They are apparently not interested anymore... ORF coverage is perfect for me, legal online stream as well, so I don't care either way.

RTL don't have broadcast rights for F1 2018 yet either.

Finally.

I thought testing only starts tomorrow?

Last race without a halo, at least for the time being I wonder how 2018 cars will look like.

Glad you like it! I bingewatched the whole thing (7 episodes) in one sitting, absolutely great. One of the best things I've seen recently - it has a lot to do with my love for westerns for sure, but the quality of the show is unquestionable either way. And yes, Jeff Daniels is great! His character in Godless must be one of the greatest villains on modern television; not just your standard bad guy, many sided and unpredictable. Jack O'Connell does a great job too, he reminds me of those antihero protagonists of spaghetti westerns. In fact, the whole show recalls the westerns of the 70s, not only visually but also by taking all the "standard" character types and the tropes of the genre and twisting them a bit. Also, surprisingly strong supporting characters!

I just find it annoying, back in the day they called bright children smart, now they call them autistic lol. Just like active kids were called active, now they are automatically ADHD. Not dismissing the fact that there are kids who are autistic or have ADHD by any means, but it has just gotten ridiculously out of hand.