Wednesday Overnight Open Thread - March 26, 2025 [TRex]

Good evening Horde. The time has come for mid-week shenanigans of the overnight variety.

This is the Wednesday night ONT.

A special welcome to those who have given up commenting on Ace of Spades for Lent and have assumed temporary lurker status. The rest of you know what that means. More commenting to take up the slack. Comment of the week honors are at stake.

Discussion of beer pong and other drinking games unexpectedly arose in Club ONT last Saturday night. I was surprised to see that nobody mentioned nailing.

As might be expected, the Germans have applied rigorous science, engineering and craftmanship to their drinking games. Nailing is also known as Stump, Nagelbalken, or Nagelspiele. It is also known as Hammerschlagen, but apparently that is a brand name with particular specification of game materials.

Participants compete against each other to drive nails into a wooden stump. Each pounds a nail into the stump just enough to get it started. The nails should be at least two inches long. Each takes a turn and attempts to hit the nail.

A group of four to six contestants is ideal for maximum hilarity. The winner is the first to drive their nail fully into the wood. Typically, others continue until all have pounded their nail flush with the wood.

You might ask "What's the big deal? Swinging a hammer isn't that hard, even after a few drinks!" Purists increase the level of difficulty by using the claw end of the hammer rather than the head. That can be quite a task, especially after a beverage or two.

Seasoned players scoff at a traditional hammer and use a special hammer made by welding a piece of round pipe onto the end of a straight piece of pipe. A solid hit requires hitting the edge of the round pipe. Difficult. It is called a "Rohrhammer" which translates to "pipe hammer." They are sold online.

The game is popular with Germans while camping in the forest. At the end of the night or weekend, the stump (now filled with nails), is typically heaved into the campfire.

Different variations dictate when drinking is done. Miss your own nail? Drink. Pound your neighbor's nail into the wood? They drink.

Some games also require flipping the hammer before taking a swing. The flipping ensures that the contestant does not spend forever establishing a perfect grip (and you miss a turn if you don't catch your own hammer flip). Other variations use a wood beam on sawhorses or a table rather than a stump.

Example from American contestants (note the Red Solo Cup in attendance):

I would like to believe that there are members among the Horde who are wise in the ways of such things. Are there? How did the game work when you played?

Science news:

"Naive" science fan faces jail for plutonium import

A "science nerd" who wanted to collect all the elements of the periodic table could face jail time after ordering radioactive material over the internet.

But Emmanuel Lidden, 24, will have to wait to learn his sentence after breaching nuclear non-proliferation laws by shipping samples of plutonium to his parents' suburban Sydney unit.

Far from any intent to build something nefarious like a nuclear weapon with the material, Lidden's lawyer John Sutton described his client as an "innocent collector" and "science nerd" who had been left flipping burgers after being sacked from his job following the incident.

Lidden ordered the items from a US-based science website and they were delivered to his parents' home.

The seizure of the items in the hazmat incident was described as a "circus" by Mr Sutton.

Sounds like P'Nut the squirrel in another form. Having said that, I'm proud to know that the United States has places that sell plutonium online.

Maybe something is in the water down under? I feel dumber for having read this and now you can feel dumber too: Working towards an Australian First Nations periodic table

Meanwhile, How Japan took the lead in the race to discover element 119.

Once created, element 119 will contain 119 protons - the most of any element discovered. It will sit on a new, eighth row of the periodic table, and it could be the first element to be named since 2016.

Russia, China, Germany, and the US are also developing powerful experimental setups to search for elements 119 and 120. But because of a mix of geopolitics, strategy, and luck, Japan has unexpectedly taken the lead in this race to discover a new element.

I'm not sure whether to be horrified or impressed:

(hat tip: Piper)

Some assembly required:

When you can't decide whether this should go in the book thread or the gub thread, it goes in the ONT:

Spring planting via General Mills:

Seems timely:

Wholesome from Calvin and Hobbes:

Less wholesome from Norm Macdonald:

Because we can:

This does not appear to be a drinking game:

(hat tip: blaster and marjon)

Dear Wednesday ONT readers, I give you...the Guinness Record for the world's greatest height to shoot and arrow and then catch it. I don't want to demean this chap's initiative, effort and obvious skill. But this seems destined more for the Darwin award.

Lynyrd Skynyrd in two flavors for our big double barrelled ONT finish:

Written correspondence can be sent to moronhobbies at protonmail dot com. Are you lurking? Come out and play. Wear the special safety gloves when handling the ONT and check your indicator badge for signs of extended exposure.

posted by Open Blogger at 10:00 PM

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