727 Comments

"A fever of rays"

Expand full comment

like

Expand full comment

Species of this genus are often collectively referred to as "devil rays", "flying mobula", or simply "flying rays", due to their propensity for breaching, sometimes in a spectacular manner. These rays gather in groups and leap out of the surface into the air up to around two metres before splashing back into the water. Wikipedia

I love mobulas! We snorkeled with them for literal hours off the coast of Isla Espiritu Santos in the Sea of Cortez. We stay the end of their mating season so there were only a few (maybe a dozen), and they seemed to enjoy following us around. (Also have swum with their giant cousins the Mantas in Hawaii.)

Expand full comment

“We stay the end of their mating season”

Perverts!

Expand full comment

😉

Expand full comment

Belly flopping to attract a mate sounds like something I should try.

Whatever works.

Expand full comment

I feel confident that the Wanderer will turn up and tell us about a story he wrote about a Furry any moment now— or at least, hopeful.

Expand full comment

Well, if the size of the belly helps, I’ll be swimmin’ in wimmen

Expand full comment

Hmmmmm... I agree with Eppe on this one. What works in the ocean very rarely works on land, in general.

Expand full comment

I sea.

Expand full comment

Asking for a second opinion first would be my unsolicited advice.

Expand full comment

Appreciated.

Expand full comment

I've always wondered if fish jumping from the water is equivalent to humans diving into it.

/deepthoughts

Expand full comment

Back in my college days, deep into a THC enhanced late Saturday night chat group, there would have been strongly stated "Opinions" with a capital "O".

Expand full comment

With lots of Oreos with a capital O.

Expand full comment

Damn! Upon reflection, my Saturday night evening meals back in my college days were almost always top-notch.

Expand full comment

The fact that the neighborhood bakery only baked a garlic-infused French-style loaf on Staurdays may have had something to do with it.

Expand full comment

Well, that's a relief. It sure didn't look like a hot dish.

Expand full comment

Ray of Sunshine, reminds me of Madge and her William Orbit produced wonderful tune from quite a while ago!

For all practical purposes, it's a Strange Cargo number.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3ov9USxVxY

Expand full comment

Not a huge Madge fan but William Orbit is top notch. Lots of really great instrumentals.

Expand full comment

14 years ago!!! Oof.

Expand full comment

You're not getting older, it's just the calendar that's getting older.

Expand full comment

That's the most excited Tampa Bay fans have been in a while.

Expand full comment

I have often wondered if they are being paid back for dropping the "devil" from the team name. I mean, when I bother to care at all about sportsball.

Expand full comment

Those leaping catches at the wall would be all the more magnificent if they let an actual ray play the game. Of course, you'd need to provide a pool, but with big-name stars come big-time concessions by management to keep them happy.

Expand full comment

John Oliver’s episode about stadiums: some of them do have pools. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcwJt4bcnXs

Expand full comment

My sister-in-law and I tried to follow a huge ray we came across. It had to be 10 feet across. It was too fast for us and we lost it. This happened off the coast of some obscure little island in the Caribbean.

Expand full comment

Isla Mujeres?

Expand full comment

I don't think so. We used to go sailing in the BVI and stop at all the little ones like Norman and Peter and Jost van Dyke.

Expand full comment
Comment removed
Sep 19
Comment removed
Expand full comment

I went there with a French Canadian lady I met in Montreal during an airshow, probably 40 years ago. Great water and an interesting twist on Mexico! Hablo un poco Espanol, tambien.

Expand full comment

Those rays... Once they get the details of s̶w̶i̶m̶m̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶ flying through 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘢𝘪𝘳...

All bets will be off. Hell, what if they start teaching the other fish...

"Heat up 𝘮𝘺 ocean, will you?" says the flying kraken...

Expand full comment

As the barrels of his zeppelin's gun start spinning.

Expand full comment

So cool

The coolest of cool tab gifs

Expand full comment

I love watching rays swim. The B'more aquarium has a huge tank full of rays and sharks, and I could sit there and watch them all day!

Expand full comment

I should visit Charm City again. I was there about 10 years ago..... had a nice time.

Expand full comment

What can you say about a city that has adopted the rat as its unofficial mascot. It has a love/hate relationship with The Wire, though.

Expand full comment

At one point the Monterey Bay Aquarium had a plexiglass column filled with anchovies that swam around like that. This also calls to mind the old Steinhart Aquarium "fish roundabout" in San Francisco, where one mounted a spiraling ramp to get to a large circular, carpeted room with thousands of fish swimming around you in a circle within floor-to-ceiling glass walls. Magical. A former employee there told me that after hours, the roundabout was well-known as the best place for employee sexytimes.

Expand full comment

I loved the fish roundabout!!!!

Expand full comment

It was reallly my favorite place in San Francisco. I was SO bummed that they got rid of it when they overhauled the Academy of Sciences.

Expand full comment

We never go anymore.

Expand full comment

Neither do we. It's heinously expensive, and the best part of it is the view of it from above from up in the tower at the DeYoung Museum.

Expand full comment

YES!

Expand full comment

I remember the anchovies!!

Expand full comment

;>D

Expand full comment

They're having so much fun!

Expand full comment

That is a really cool one! That must be an awesome thing to see up close.

Expand full comment

That is really, really cool! I had no idea rays did that. We couldn't find where that video was taken, though -- do you know?

And does it look like they're saying the females do a flip? That's incredible!

Expand full comment

What do you think will become of Project 2025 after Democrats win?

Expand full comment

I was a feral child once. Now I am a feral oldguy in a cabin.

Expand full comment

At least you're not a childless cat-lady in a cabin. They're the worst.

I'm even worser. I'm a childless, man-less, cat-lady who is very happy about it.

Expand full comment

So has Trump sold off all of his DJT shares, or could he not find enough buyers yet?

Expand full comment

It's at $14.70 at close today.

Doing awesome!

Expand full comment

Too bad it’s bounced back from the $14.29 it was at earlier. With luck, $14.29 will shortly be a high it doesn’t reach again.

Expand full comment

Does it have to dip below $12 to stop sales, or is it too late for that already? Just once I want him to lose publicly.

Expand full comment

I thought it was too late if it made it to today, but I don’t know.

Expand full comment

He should get on with decimating the stonks, then. Do it now before the election, so the people know what he thinks of them!

Expand full comment

Donald Chump's coming to Springfield!

It's like Christmas during campaign season!

Expand full comment

Of course, the likelihood of this having when a pollster calls isn't that high, but I bet:

The reverse is very unlikely. I bet there aren't many husbands out there that "silently" root for Trump and would lie about that to a pollster.

https://x.com/AesPolitics1/status/1836759189869228401

I definitely could see that happening with people.

Harris might have more support than we think.

Quoting Ivan the K™

"I told the pollster I was voting for Trump because my husband was in the room."

Expand full comment

Why would anyone on the right publicly announce they weren't voting for Chump? No one will know who you vote for, but if you tell them ahead of time, they'll treat you like a Haitian immigrant.

Expand full comment

Just followed you, lol.

I'm a dog.

Expand full comment

I love Montana, it's Big Sky country FFS, and that video IS interesting, because those boys understand the assignment for their state, but not for the US of A. It's weird and makes no sense, but I'll take it. Tester in Montana is KEY. We don't need Montana for the WH.

Expand full comment

I think it's easier to switch party allegiance when it's not the top of the ticket because you can see who's voting for what and the Congress critters can't bullshit and bluster their way out.

Plus, umm, not to look shame (as I do just that) but those men do not look like they'd be physically able to vote for a woman for anything

Expand full comment

In his 1853 book "Grundsätze der Realpolitik angewendet auf die staatlichen Zustände Deutschlands" German writer and politician Ludwig von Rochau states that the great achievement of the Enlightenment had been to show that might is not necessarily right. However the mistake liberals made was to assume that the law of the strong had suddenly evaporated simply because it had been shown to be unjust. Rochau wrote that "to bring down the walls of Jericho, the Realpolitiker knows the simple pickaxe is more useful than the mightiest trumpet".

Expand full comment

Oh look, Fani Willis facing Merchant again in court today.

There is an "open records" request, and Willis wants to get rid of that.

But I admit, not going to scroll through the whole thing to figure what is going on exactly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0uoHeqCS1I

Expand full comment

"Conservative commentator Kevin D. Williamson this week had the best take in a Dispatch article subtitled “A pretty long story about a thing that didn’t happen”: “You can send little J.D. to Yale to make him polished, you can send him to Silicon Valley to make him rich, and you can send him to the Senate to make him powerful, but you cannot stop him from being what it is he apparently wants to be: Cleetus the Gap-Toothed Twitter Troll.”"

[Jackie Calmes column; LA Times, today]

Expand full comment

You can take the boy out of Butler County, but you can never take Butler County out of the boy. Once they've seen the Dayton Mall or even the Cincinnati Zoo, they're incorrigible...

Expand full comment

In the ridiculous and pathetic timeline that we've somehow come to inhabit, instead of femmes fatales, we get thirsty, repulsive dipshits like Laura Loomer.

Things were different in ye olden days: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/09/23/kingmaker-sonia-purnell-book-review

Expand full comment

Not gonna lie, I'm really worried about the supreme Court pulling Bush V Gore 2, electoral boogaloo.

Expand full comment

Hope the Dems don't roll (or was it bend?) over this time around.

Expand full comment

I don't have the info in front of me, but I seem to recall the Harris campaign saying they have a huge legal team on standby for the election

Expand full comment

Nice reaction. I hope it's true.

https://x.com/notcapnamerica/status/1836742507780055304

Jill Stein is pulling one percent of support away from Donald Trump in Pennsylvania

Expand full comment

Jill Stein voters are the dumbest, smuggest, most willfully ignorant folks in the land. Trump supporters also share those traits but Stein voters are really delusional.

Expand full comment

Somebody rich should send her a big pile of money.

Expand full comment

Someone other than Putin?

Expand full comment

Seems like an excellent use of Putin's cash, tbh.

Expand full comment

Hrmrmrmrmrmr.

https://x.com/torriangray/status/1836771763050672465

Extremely normal people.

Expand full comment

Apologies if this has been posted already.

West Coast and Upper Midwest Teamsters tell national union to get fucked, endorse Kamala Harris.

https://crooksandliars.com/2024/09/west-coast-teamsters-break-national-union

Expand full comment

All pf which pint to the supposed poll being cooked bs.

Expand full comment

Penguins in flight are majestic. Where did they get those beautiful capes?

Expand full comment