Wednesday Night ONT - November 4, 2026 [TRex]

Good evening Horde! The time has come for mid-week shenanigans of the overnight variety. The bar is open and fully stocked. Step up and place your order.

Welcome to the Wednesday night ONT which means another edition of random overnight fun and games. Pull up a chair and join the fun. Good will offerings of amusing puns are encouraged. Pants are optional. Be nice to your fellow commenters and AoS contributors.

If you're a troll, go away.

This is a Tucker, Candace, Megyn, and Bill Kristol free zone. Please.

[Top photo: Newark Airport, Terminal A - flag in reverse side flag configuration (right shoulder, stars leading). The other side wasn't photo accessible at the time.]

ONT Election Coverage

How did the Idaho advisory vote for a state gun turn out? The Wednesday ONT has you covered. Clearly the Winchester supporters are strong. Congratulations to the winner!

ONT Event Coverage

Are you wise in the ways of the Pittsburgh Parallel Parking Championship?

For six years, the Parallel Parking Championship in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania has (for some of us) been motorsport's crown jewel, a thrilling contest pitting man and machine against time and a 20 foot parking space. The event was first organized by a young couple named Dan and Jenna, just to settle a long-standing family debate about who was the best parallel parker. It has since grown into a raucous street party, a participatory art form, a gift to motorists, and a communal act of joy.

The rules and scoring are simple:

Each driver begins from their preferred position and the timer starts when the referee sees the reverse lights of the car. The driver parks, then shouts "Done" out the window, stopping the clock. Hitting the curb or either adjacent car results in disqualification. Your final score is your time, multiplied by your distance to the curb. Ignore the units for now, and think about the implications. If one can get twice as close by taking twice as much time, that's a decent tradeoff. There's a small bonus for bigger vehicles, but it seemed insufficient; most good scores came from smaller cars.

I don't see a 2027 date yet, but looks like the last several annual events have taken place in mid September.

ONT Department of Archeology

"Noah's Ark remains" found burned and buried 30 feet below final resting place

Researchers claim they've potentially discovered wood from Noah's Ark in Eastern Turkey, potentially cracking a caper that has eluded believers for thousands of years.

The so-called discovery was reportedly made in the Durupınar Formation, a roughly 538-foot-long geological structure near Mount Ararat.

Discovered in 1959, site has fascinated Ark hunters for decades due to its ship shape and proximity to the events in the Bible.

Andrew Jones, project head and founder of Noah's Ark Scans, told the Daily Mail that they've discovered both charred and uncharred wood nearly 30 feet underground, which could potentially be "the charred remains of Noah's Ark."

The "so-called discovery"? Odd wording. Also good to know that the Ark's remains are beneath its final resting place. Would be a little strange if it was otherwise. Anyway...

However, Jones notes that the wood could entail the remains of a campfire a shepherd had started while sheltering inside the Ark hundreds of years ago.

Although they're unsure if it was purposefully set alight or ignited via lightning strike or volcanic eruption.

Doesn't really narrow it down, does it?

Mandatory Metallica

Do you know the Metallica pancakes story?

During a 1986 tour while Metallica and Anthrax were eating breakfast together, Anthrax drummer Charlie Benante asked Cliff Burton what vocal phrase James Hetfield shouts right before Kirk Hammett's guitar solo.

Burton casually joked that Hetfield was shouting "Pancakes!" (though the actual live/recorded lyric is typically "Fix me!"). For the rest of the tour, Burton would wink and mouth or say "Pancakes!" to Benante whenever that part of the song came on live.

Benante told Hetfield the story in 2010 who leaned into it, famously shouting "Pancakes!" (and evolving it into "Pancakes! Go!") during live performances of "Master of Puppets." Burton died in a 1986 tour bus accident. What started as a breakfast joke turned into an homage to Burton.

Good example here at the 5:34 mark:

Niche YouTube Channel of the Week

Tonight's feature is a YouTube channel from Joseph Ricketts. A recurring theme of this feature is my endless fascination that a relatively niche interest - if done well - can find and sustain an audience. Tonight's channel is a great example. It is a YouTube channel dedicated to snorkeling in any available body of water and showing what is there. That's it. No graphics, contests, challenges, or overwrought drama.

The channel's description is accurate: "I'll snorkel pretty much anywhere." Springs, rivers, ocean kelp forests, creeks, caves, and ponds. Perhaps the most odd venue so far is a night expedition into a retaining pond adjacent to a Home Depot. He's based in Florida but has videos from elsewhere too.

I'm not aware of anyone that is spending their time filming and commenting on retention pond ecosystems, let alone doing so without veering into clickbait. Joseph appears to love snorkeling and seeing the creatures of the water.

His videos are not complicated. They show him snorkeling, filming and include his commentary on what he sees. That's it. Want to see what a spring looks like up close? Want to see what it looks like where two rivers converge?

If you're curious to know about the world below the water line, check out his channel. He's been doing this since 2001 and has over 155k subscribers. Most videos attract several hundred thousand views (the Home Depot video now has over half a million views).

For a sample video, here's one with the goal of finding and filming giant tadpoles in a Florida spring:

News you can use - generator testing:

Interesting that a common comment is a request to include the Harbor Freight product in such a test. Apparently, the HF product is popular.

Pittsburgh Scanner

The Pittsburgh police scanner is an internet treasure. Thank you people of Pittsburgh and thank you Pittsburgh scanner!

Warren Zevon covering Prince on Letterman for the big ONT finish:

Correspondence can be sent to moronhobbies at protonmail dot com where it will be sorted and processed and filed. Are you lurking ????

posted by Open Blogger at 10:00 PM

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