So i started dating this guy who's "really into birds." Thought that meant he had a bird feeder or whatever. Showed up to his place for the first time. This man has SEVEN parrots. Seven. They all talk. They all have opinions. One of them heckled me during dinner. Called me "the new one" in a British accent for some reason. My boyfriend thinks it's charming. I'm being bullied by a bird named Gerald. Tried to have a serious conversation with my boyfriend last night and Gerald kept interrupting with "IRRELEVANT" in that same British accent. The other birds think Gerald is hilarious. They're learning from him. I'm outnumbered. My boyfriend proposed last week. Gerald said "she'll say no." I said yes out of spite. Gerald has been sulking for three days.
Your 6-hour flight from LA to New York is about to become a 3-hour flight. And it's legal because engineers figured out how to bend sound.
Since 1973 it's been a federal crime for any passenger plane to fly faster than the speed of sound over American soil. That's why your cross-country flight takes the same 6 hours it took your parents in the 80s. Planes got safer and more efficient. They never got faster. The law made faster illegal.
The original reason was real. In the 60s the government flew supersonic jets over Oklahoma City 8 times a day for 6 months to test public reaction. The booms cracked plaster, broke windows, and generated nearly 10,000 complaints. So the FAA banned the speed itself.
Here's what changed. The speed of sound isn't constant. It shifts with air temperature, which shifts with altitude. Fly high enough and fast enough in the right conditions and the shockwave physically bends, curving back up into the sky before it reaches the ground. The boom still happens. It just never lands.
NASA measured what people underneath actually hear: a faint rumble about as loud as normal street noise. No crack. No broken windows.
So the FAA's new rule flips the logic. Instead of banning the speed, it caps the sound allowed to hit the ground. Stay quiet and you can fly as fast as the plane will go. Boom already proved the tech works in a real test flight last year.
The last time you could fly supersonic, a Concorde ticket cost about $12,000 round trip and only crossed the ocean. The next version flies over land, over your house, and you'll never hear it coming.
I'm sorry. But I know this is going to ruffle a lot of feathers but I just have to. With World Cup back in the US for the first time since 1994, I've been trying to watch it but I just can't.
It's the flopping... I mean I understand the tactic, I understand it's to draw penalties but it drives me crazy. I mean it's like a fly landed on them and they are writhing in pain on the ground, the trainers run out and start "working" on the player and then suddenly he's fine and back up and running again. And we are all watching the replay going "really?"
You see I am a Hockey fan. In fact my house is a hockey house. The sport where if you aren't dead, you're on the ice with fresh stitches, missing teeth etc. in fact, in hockey if you "act" a fool when a physical penalty is assessed YOU get an additional penalty for "embellishment" - it's glorious.
I'm sure this is one of those things where the sport has evolved small increments at a time regarding penalties but I just can't take the flipping serious. It makes me watch the sport thinking these are the softest people on the planet..... well there's basketball but that's a different tweet on a different day.
Look, to each their own, but I just can't. It's just pathetic and as I write this no less than 4 penalties were assessed and the "trainers" are currently tending to a player who a butterfly flew too close to.
So since I dished it, means I have to also take it.... can't wait to hear how "dumb" hockey is.