That reminds me my cultural shock in Thailand last summer (even though I have been in Thailand several times before).

Since it was so hot there, I thought it would be a good idea to park the car under a big tree, giving it a shade.

Next day when I came back, it was totally covered with bird droppings. I mean, totally, even bigger piles of bird poo here and there, and you couldn't literally see through the windshield. I wonder what kind of birds did that, some big eagles or what? It was not only the white kind of bird droppings but also green and brown stuff. Or what do I know, maybe some dog or villager had climbed on top of the car to poo on it as well? I washed the worst droppings away with water and so that I could see through the windshield, and drove it straight to a car washer.

Anyway, somehow I wasn't really expecting that, even though I recall reading of similar things happening in some parts of the world, even in the southern Europe. But even there it seemed to be a rare occurrence, e.g. a big flock of migratory birds stopping for the night above your car, bad luck on your part.

Somehow the birds in Finland seem to be more polite and if they shit on my car, it is just a small white spot here and there, nothing more. Better to wash it out though as it may still damage the paint. Maybe the birds in Thailand have so much to eat that they also poo 10x more, all that fiber when they eat a whole mango from a tree. Here the birds are happy if they find some tiny seeds from a pine cone.

Then again some things are worse in Finland too. Like the fcking tiny fir needles that all the time drop from spruces. They are so tiny that they go through all the smallest cracks that are there to stop leaves etc. entering your car, my car's tube which is supposed to direct water from the windshield to ground so that it doesn't end up in the engine room (electric car, mind you), was full of them and a car mechanic had to clean it up.

Another thing is resin from spruces and pines. I was wondering why my white car was getting pink spots all over, someone pointed it out it is the resin from the nearby trees that was causing the discoloration. It should be washed away ASAP, the same as with bird droppings, in order not to damage the paint.


EDIT: Actually we do have a bird poo problem in Finland too, as Canada Geese seem to have found Finland more and more during the last 15 years or so. Maybe it is the climate change or something, dunno.

However, at least the geese leave our cars alone and don't go shit on them. They just poo all over all the possible lawns in cities during the short summer so that you couldn't even think of going sit there for a picnic or anything, poo all over. And they are quite aggressive too, basically demanding food from you, or else. At least seagulls don't try to threaten your life, they just steal something from your hand if they dare.

Damn Canadian geese mafia, coming to our country and being violent and all and shitting all over.

Around here in California, that would sound like crows. I never saw them much when I lived near the coast, but I see them all the time where I currently live, hanging out in groups (called murders), and crows are not little things so their poops are not little either. When I say groups, I really do mean that there will be seven or more of them all in one tree as if that tree is the local hangout spot for crows. If there's a lot of droppings on the ground under a tree, I always find somewhere else to park even if there's no crows around at the moment.

I don't know which birds to blame, but at least during daytime I kept hearing lots of "tsirp tsirp" sounds from that tree (and also elsewhere nearby) which to me sounded like small birds, like some kind of sparrows or such. I didn't see them in that tree (a dense tree) but I saw some sparrow like small birds quite often in the neighborhood. I don't recall if I saw or heard any crow or magpie kind of bigger birds there, ever.

But boy the amount of poo on that car, after one evening and night. Either the sparrows pooed ten times their size, or there was a bear family living in the tree.

Good idea to check the ground for bird dropping before parking, unfortunately in my case the ground under the tree was dry mud with grass where you couldn't easily spot bird droppings or other anomalies. But a good idea otherwise.

EDIT: And now it occurred to me... there were some free roaming chickens in the area (it was rural Thailand, a village). Could a bigger group of them decided to spend a night sitting (and shitting) on my car?!? For some reason I didn't consider this possibility, I presumed chickens are such cowards (=chickens) that they wouldn't spend their nights out in the open, on top of a car. The car was parked beside a road under a tree, not really on anyone's house or property, but sometimes you saw a few chickens roaming also there with their little chicks (which definitely couldn't have climbed on the of the car).

I guess that is also a possibility, but somehow I suspect it was the birds I heard (but didn't see) in the tree. Plus i didn't have this poo problem if I parked my car elsewhere, away from that big tree.

I don't know about chickens because while there is an area around here that really does have a chicken festival in celebration of it's free-roaming wild chickens, I don't go over that way all that much. When it comes to birds, I mostly see the following:
Yellow-billed Magpie
California Scrub Jay
American Crow
European Starling <-- Mostly hangs out in the trees at Costco.
Anna's Hummingbird
little songbirds that I can't be bothered to identify
fricken Mourning Doves <--- I hate these assholes.
Wild Turkeys <-- These jerks like to go for walks even though they can actually fly.

Occasionally, I see hawks but not too often, and sometimes I hear an owl or woodpecker but not too often. For me, crows are the ones that like to hang out in groups in trees and will make big poops.

Maybe you have discovered (but not seen) the first ever flying chickens ?. Well, apparently pigs can fly, so why not chickens after all ?.

That's why you shouldn't park under the designated shitting trees.

Well, chickens can fly in short bursts (I've seen it myself), and according to google fly even over a 6 feet fence. Especially rural thai chickens which are quite a bit leaner and meaner (with less meat) than big American and European chickens raised in henhouses..

So I guess they could "jump" on the hood of the car... but I doubt they did. Plus, I didn't see a big flock of such chickens, usually it was maybe one or couple chickens with their chicks. Shitting my car like that needed much more firepower.

Anyone else know what it's like to hold back what's on your mind so much that it starts to hurt? Until you don't feel like a person anymore but like a smiling statue? I have those days sometimes where I want to drop my mental filter and be me. Why is it so hard to do such a simple thing? I don't know.

I was taking some photos today at the coast when I spotted a pretty impressive yacht. I got curious and checked which yacht it is... It's the 'Rocinante' - which belongs Gabe Newell... Yes, GABE NEWELL!

Guess I'll swim over and have a little chat with him (if he even is on board). Maybe he'll agree to release Half-Life 3 as a GOG exclusive ;)

Photo of the yacht: https://www.gog.com/upload/forum/2024/10/7f8c5873397e101ca2414c87356eafc47348ba1f.jpg

Everyone within meters of the the magma would be dead from asphyxiation. (The air is hot, therefore supersaturated, and filled with aerosol particles of whatever was in the rocks before they were immolated: tephra.)

Famously, Pliny the Elder died making his eyewitness report on Vesuvius ([AD79), probably from the shock wave. Or the pyroclastic debris smothered him; our wet lungs react to tephra by creating a layer of cement in the mucous membranes. Or the intense heat would burn the lungs like tissue paper. He was 20 miles away from the eruption.

Off-topic
Pop-tarts are also a colloquial reference to the ephemeral nature of (young) celebrities, like the latest Disney teen who benefits from the slick content creation of the corporation to glean some minor notoriety and money before they disappear forever to be replaced by the next one. (This is an example of the Variability of information, one of the Seven Vs of Big Data.)

*edit: linkie syntactic issues

Does a song become iconic because of a good guitar riff, or does the guitar riff become iconic because of a good song? Specifically, I was thinking of Smoke on the Water.

Imo good guitar riff makes the song good and iconic.

Nowadays most music production is based around on short melodies created specifically to be stuck on your head for weeks that are no longer than 5 seconds. Most top songs right now became famous first on Tik Tok through short videos with chorus parts being sang.

"Good music" is technically subjective, I'd say, because it can also be based on taste, but there are good technical songs that are harder to play.
Anyway, my two cents is that most good music will have at least one memorable melody in it, with some good and memorable harmony too.

Ex. Vivaldi Four Seasons is known for centuries because of that specific part, even though is a long composition, if you play that specific part, everybody will know it or had at least heard it once before somewhere.
Another Ex. Song "City of Stars", from the movie LaLaLand. Everyone who have watched that movie will instantly recognize its melody and its harmonies anywhere, same with "Dancing in the Rain", another classic.

What if the song is good because the riff is egregious and that makes the song classic?