Tuesday Overnight Open Thread - September 29, 2026

Howdy Hordelings! The Tuesday ONT has arrived. On time, as always. Open thread, as always. Ready to be whelmed?

I support this kind of torture!

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I agree with this in principle - but if Newsom thinks it's a good idea, I'm immediately skeptical

Newsom signs ‘ghost ticket’ ban but says its carve-outs need more work

California is taking action against the sale of “ghost tickets.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom on Sunday signed Assembly Bill 1349, bipartisan legislation that targets the live-event ticket resale market. “Ghost tickets,” also known as speculative tickets, are concert and sports tickets that resellers list before they actually have them. The new law bars sellers from advertising, listing or selling tickets they don’t possess or have the legal right to receive, unless the event’s presenter or venue allows it. It’s intended to address persistent complaints from consumers about the practice.

“Buying a ticket shouldn’t come with hidden risks or unfair practices,” Newsom said on X.

The law prohibits using software to get around ticket limits, queue and presale restrictions. It restricts websites and ads designed to make resellers look like authorized ticket sources. Sellers in violation could face misdemeanor charges and penalties.

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“While there may be good reasons for exempting certain sellers from the bill’s provisions, such a carve-out deserves further discussion,” Newsom wrote.

Newsom didn’t say which sellers he meant. His concerns allude to amendments made in the final days of the legislative session. Critics say those changes in effect exempt StubHub, one of the biggest ticket resale platforms, from the new rules.

Ask the question "what the worst way this can be abused?" The logical answer likely means money in the hands of Newsom and other nefarious politicians.

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I read this multiple times and I'm still not fully understanding it!

A 24-foot tunnel borer chewed 2.7 miles under Lake Mead against water pressure of up to 218 psi, with a car tire carrying 33, to plant a drinking straw near the lake bottom, and the lake just hit its lowest level since Hoover Dam first filled it

Lake Mead hit another record low this month, which barely counts as news anymore. The lake has spent most of 2026 sliding past the marks set during the 2022 water crisis, and by September 22 it was down to 1,038.14 feet above sea level, the lowest it’s been since Hoover Dam first filled it in the 1930s.

So here’s the question I keep coming back to: Las Vegas pulls 90 percent of its water from that shrinking lake, so why does a metro area of more than two million people still have water coming out of every tap, fountain and misting system in town? A big part of the answer is a machine that finished its job over a decade ago, working under more water pressure than any tunnel boring machine had handled before, at least according to the company that built it.

Back in 2008, the Southern Nevada Water Authority started building a third drinking water intake for Lake Mead. The two existing straws sit at 1,050 and 1,000 feet above sea level, and the lake kept dropping toward both, so the new one had to pull from near the bottom. Getting a pipe down there meant boring a tunnel underneath the lake itself, through ground soaked with the lake’s own water.

The job went to Vegas Tunnel Constructors, a joint venture of S.A. Healy out of Chicago and Salini Impregilo out of Milan, and to a machine Herrenknecht built specifically for it: the S-502, a tunnel borer the water authority describes as 24 feet in diameter. It went into the ground in late 2011 through a 590-foot launch shaft at the lakeshore, roughly the height of a 50-story building, straight down. From the bottom of that hole it chewed 2.7 miles through rock toward one precise spot on the lake bed, and on December 10, 2014, it broke through.

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At the far end, the bore had to dock with an intake structure resting on the bottom of the lake. Crews blasted a shaft out of the lake bed with shaped charges, lowered a concrete-and-steel intake of more than 1,300 short tons (1,200 metric tons) into it, and anchored the whole thing with more than 1,000 truckloads of concrete, per the water authority.

Then the machine had to hit that target after 2.7 miles underground, which is arguably the harder trick. Breaking through into a lakebed with the water still sitting on top is its own special category of nervous; a much smaller machine pulled a similar stunt under a California reservoir this year, and that one only had 347 feet to cover.

Water started moving through Intake No. 3 to the valley’s treatment plants in September 2015. The whole design goal was elevation: the new straw keeps drawing with the lake below 1,000 feet, a line the older intakes were never built to survive.

Long article, which I find fascinating. Maybe too nerdy for you??

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On the subject of bodies of water -- ever wonder which US river is the oldest?

The Oldest River In The United States

The oldest river in the United States has, hands down, the most ironic name in all of American geography: the New River. Far from new, it is thought to be one of the oldest rivers on the entire planet, older than the dinosaurs, and older even than the ancient mountains it slices straight through. It is a river that was already flowing before almost everything around it existed. Here is the strange and wonderful story of America's most misleadingly named waterway.

The New River is widely considered the oldest river in North America, and it is frequently called the second-oldest river in the entire world, trailing only the Nile. It rises high in the Blue Ridge Mountains of northwestern North Carolina, near Blowing Rock, then runs north through Virginia and into West Virginia, covering roughly 320 miles before merging with other waters to become the Kanawha. For a river saddled with such a forgettable, generic name, it has a genuinely staggering pedigree.

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Speaking of old

Rod Stewart retiring from touring after more than 6 decades

Rod Stewart has announced he will be retiring from touring after more than six decades.

The legendary singer-songwriter, 81, announced The Final Encore Tour Monday morning, just weeks after canceling portions of his U.S. "One Last Time" farewell tour following a coronary stent procedure.

“Ladies and gentlemen, after much deliberation and sadness, I have to announce next year will be my last tour ever, ever, ever. I’m not retiring, but this will be the last rock and roll tour,” Stewart said in a social media post.

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Stewart rose to prominence in the late 1960s with the Jeff Beck Group and the Faces.

His solo breakthrough came with the 1971 album “Every Picture Tells a Story,” featuring “Maggie May.”

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He has been inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame twice: as a solo artist in 1994 and as a member of the Faces in 2012.

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Apologies to Ace if he already covered this on a Cafe thread

Bear goes into Aspen farmers market, eats pastries and bread

DJ Doof - This Date In Music History Edition

Born on this date in 1963 - American musician, singer, songwriter, Les Claypool best known as the founder, lead singer, bassist, and primary songwriter of Primus.

You wanted this one, didn't you?

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On this date in 1976 - Rush released their first live album All The World's A Stage

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On this date in 1979 - The Police had their first UK No.1 single with 'Message In A Bottle' the group's third Top 20 hit. The song was released as the first single from Reggatta de Blanc

Tonight's ONT brought to you by non-cryptic car codes

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posted by Doof at 09:48 PM

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