David Rohowits

Retired San Diego Police captain and #author. Avid #birder and #MLB fan.

[David Rohowits @CaptRoho]

Try to greet each day like this little one greets the train coming down the tracks

[Kevin W. @Brink_Thinker]

Little Madeline sees a train for the first time! So precious! 😊

https://t.co/NSHwt0UfXH

[David Rohowits @CaptRoho]

@Fusion_GSD @DaveValent6052 They are, and the ravens will go psycho and chase other roadkill eaters away.

[David Rohowits @CaptRoho]

This is amazing. I really enjoy watching Turkey Vultures.

[Give A Shit About Nature @giveashitnature]

A turkey vulture can smell a dead animal from over a mile away, literally.

Their sense of smell is so refined that natural gas companies have used them to find pipeline leaks.

In the late 1950s, ornithologist Kenneth Stager was investigating whether turkey vultures find carrion by sight or smell, a question that had been debated since Audubon ran flawed experiments on it in the 1820s.

Stager visited engineers at California's Union Oil Company, hoping to use ethyl mercaptan (the chemical added to natural gas to make leaks detectable) as an experimental scent source. The engineers told him, "Of course turkey vultures can smell. We've known that for years."

The Union Oil engineers had been pumping high concentrations of ethyl mercaptan through pipelines and watching the sky. Ethyl mercaptan is also released by decomposing flesh, so to a vulture, a gas leak smells exactly like a dead mouse under a log.

The engineers would patrol a 42-mile section of pipeline after the dose, and wherever vultures were circling or sitting on the ground, there was a leak.

Stager confirmed it scientifically with controlled field experiments using compressed-air ethyl mercaptan emitters. His 1964 paper, "The Role of Olfaction in Food Location by the Turkey Vulture," became the definitive proof that vultures find their food by smell.

[David Rohowits @CaptRoho]

@OneTimeinSoCal A lot more critters for them to eat.

[David Rohowits @CaptRoho]

@DaveValent6052 Competition for food is fierce, especially since many species are carrion enthusiasts.

[Miles Commodore @miles_commodore]

We don’t need to pass the save act. Just moments ago California announced that they have finished counting the votes from the 1970 election. We can now say with a certainty, Round Reagan has defeated Jessie Unruh to become the Governor of California. See, we don’t need it.

[David Rohowits @CaptRoho]

@MCCCANM The simplest answer is that I back into parking spaces because I can. Some people are horrible at it and shouldn't try. I have fond memories of my grandfather, career Navy, who always backed into spaces, way before it became commonplace.

[𝓐𝓵𝓵𝓮𝓷 𝓡𝓪𝔂 @2CynicAl65]

I rarely watch TV.
I stick to older movies.
My music tastes include very few real modern "stars."
...
This means if I ran into a "famous person" right now, I wouldn't know them from a street bum.
Chances are, they would mean absolutely nothing to me. 😏

[David Rohowits @CaptRoho]

@mudrmdb Why, yes. Creative writing at its finest.

[David Rohowits @CaptRoho]

@DillowTalk2 If RBF had a picture next to the definition, Kaitlin's would be perfect.

[Sal LaBarbera ⬛️🟦⬛️ @Sal_LaBarbera]

Bianco became sheriff around 2019. Folks love him. They all think he's a law and order guy. He didn't do crap as a deputy. He has a command staff that insulates him from the goings on in his department. They have the absolute worst Crime Clarence rate. The jail has paid out more money in lawsuits.
Find me some under sheriff's , who supported him. 2024 put the nail in the coffin. That's when my dealing with him and his Dept and seeing the corruption upfront. Lies and deceit from them all. Haven't seen that in my 34 years of law-enforcement.
I warned everyone and never supported him from the beginning. I'll say it again and I'll say it to his face. He's a piece of shit.

[El Viejo @Vaquero_Viejo]

Good morning.
Have a great day today. Stay safe, and hydrate. 93 here today, and fire season is upon us.

[Supersonic Redhead🛫 @Supersonic_Red]

A quick note on Generation Jones because I keep seeing the same two comments.

First, I did not invent Generation Jones.
I know I’ve covered this many times, but I’m saying it once more… with feeling!

The term was coined by social commentator Jonathan Pontell decades ago. It describes those of us born in the latter part of the Baby Boom, generally from the mid 1950s through the mid 1960s. The idea wasn’t that we were better or worse than anyone else. The idea was that our experiences were different.

And that’s where some people get upset.

“Why are you dividing people even more?”

I’m not. I’m trying to understand people. It is my nature to seek to understand.

Human beings naturally recognize patterns. In fact, pattern recognition is one of the hallmarks of intelligence. We categorize things constantly. We categorize music, literature, politics, sports, professions, regions, cultures, and historical eras. Not because we hate each other, but because understanding differences helps us understand ourselves.

The Baby Boomers were originally lumped into a single generation spanning roughly 20 years. That’s a huge group of people.

Someone born in 1946 had a very different experience from someone born in 1964.

The older Boomers remember Eisenhower, the early years of the Cold War, and, as young adults, the height of the counterculture movement.

I was born in late 1962. JFK was buried on my first birthday. I wasn’t a hippie. I wasn’t at Woodstock. By the time I was entering adulthood, America was dealing with stagflation, gas lines, sky high mortgage rates, and a very different economy.

Those experiences shape people.

That’s why the Generation Jones conversations have been so much fun.

For the first time, thousands of people are saying, “Wait a minute. That’s exactly how I remember it.”

We’re remembering rotary phones, typewriters, station wagons, lawn darts, latchkey afternoons, riding our bikes until dark, and growing up in the strange space between the analog and digital worlds.

Nobody is required to identify with Generation Jones.

Nobody is being excluded.

But the response has been remarkable because so many people finally feel seen.

And honestly, that’s what I’ve enjoyed most.

Not the labels.

The stories.

The memories.

The realization that millions of us had similar experiences and somehow found each other on the internet fifty years later.

It’s been one of the most unexpectedly joyful things I’ve ever posted about, and I don’t plan to stop anytime soon.

[David Rohowits @CaptRoho]

It's not that they can't be resolved, it's a choice by the state.

[Nate Silver @NateSilver538]

The fact that California elections often can't be resolved for weeks is kind of insane and not common in other electoral systems around the world.

[David Rohowits @CaptRoho]

Jarvis, in his own unique way, nails the dysfunction that is California's voting process.

[Jarvis @jarvis_best]

I try not to contradict Nate very often but there’s a perfectly valid reason why it takes so long to count votes in California. Here is a typical timeline:

Election Day: everyone votes

Week 1: mail in ballots, absentee ballots, military ballots, overseas ballots, ballots accidentally issued to people’s pets, and ballots harvested from Skid Row start trickling in.

Week 2: As the ballots pile up, Officials consider appointing a Committee to Count Ballots.

Week 3: Committee to Count Ballots is appointed and commences discussion on electing a chairman.

Week 4: deadline for ballots from illegal immigrants.

Week 5: Committee decides that “chairman” is an outdated term and will be replaced by a term to be decided later once the Committee to Count Ballots Diversity Consultants finishes their report.

Week 6: fraudulent ballots from the Chinese Communist Party arrive.

Week 7: The Committee elects as Chairzerxon a nonbinary disabled child to count the ballots.

Week 8: it is discovered that the Chairzerxon does not actually know how to count.

Week 9: the ballots are thrown away and the Committee announces election results that are entirely made up.

[Jeffrey @TechLawExpert]

1. This is why Prop 13 was passed decades ago in CA to limit govt from reassessing a home and jacking up taxes based on the new assessment. Dems have been trying to reverse Prop 13 for as long as it has existed

2. Property tax itself should be unlawful - taxing an owned asset that you already paid for every year ‘just because’. A retired couple that spent their working lives paying off their house can lose it by not paying the state its annual tax for the privilege of owning what is already paid for and is theirs.

That’s my view on property taxes.

[David Rohowits @CaptRoho]

@Vaquero_Viejo He looks very comfy. ☺️

[David Rohowits @CaptRoho]

I believe it resonated deeply with the youth at the time, who were against the Vietnam War and the prevailing culture at large. Don't forget the word created at the time: Antidisestabishmentarianism. Also, the slogan, "Never trust anyone over 30." This commercial seems to target that group, and it was kinda hippy-adjacent. Peace, Love, and all that good stuff.

[Cynical Publius @CynicalPublius]

I came across a YouTube video full of old commercials.

It just dawned on me that the "I'd like to teach the world to sing" Coca-Cola commercial was one of the earliest times popular culture tried to convince us that all cultures are equal in value and worthy of respect.

Despite the fact that we know that many cultures enslave women routinely, endorse honor killings, have culturally acceptable pedophilia and generally spit on human rights.

It was all just one big propaganda campaign.

The question is: why?

https://t.co/M2R914u9Lc