Anyone else think this was the “taking a selfie using a silly object” meme at first?

I’m cynically viewing this as not a positive. I assume this is so they can make pages 2, 3 and so on as spammy as page 1.

Not at first, obviously. You don’t boil that frog on high heat.
You throw out a second page with a cute little text ad off to the side, then 1 or 2 at the top, then a mid-page ad. Maybe some suggested content.

Instead of having to scroll through a page’s worth of ads to get to semi-relevant results with a gem hidden in them, it’ll be a pages worth of ads for your semi-relevant results per page, and maybe what you were looking for 4 or 5 pages in.

Google used to be good. They ‘know’ what people are looking for. So they’ll probably hire someone familiar with gambling to figure out a minimum dispersion of relevant results on the pages, to keep people using the service and scrolling past ads. … I used to remember this. Variable-ratio reward schedule?

Oh.

_Shit.

I just realized that I contradicted myself. I said that I use this with folks I don’t like, and then that when I use it, if someone responds well, that I know they’re my kinda people.

I don’t exclusively use it with folks I don’t like! I also throw it out playfully. It’s validating when folks respond in-kind.

It me!

Which is also probably why I give this answer. Because it irks me to some degree that we just throwaway important questions like another human’s well-being.
If someone responds without being tripped up, I sorta know they’re my kind of person.

I often respond with: “Well, I’m still kicking and screaming.” I don’t know why. I think it got used a lot when I was growing up - someone getting dragged kicking and screaming.
Folks get tripped up by that.

For me, it means that despite the fight being hopeless, I’m still trying.

I always respond thoughtfully to people I don’t like. Then I ask how they are and watch them squirm.

In the U.S. (if you’re in the U.S.), one option is to get allergy shots. And likely other places, but I can’t speak to that.

They do an allergy panel to determine what you’re allergic to and approximately how badly you’re allergic to each thing , then give you injections (usually weekly) of very low, but increasing amounts of the allergens until they feel your reactivity has ceased or decreased to an acceptable level.

I’ve had them. They’re sort of miserable, but they are effective.
They’re miserable because you have to go to the allergist every week, and sit there after the shot until they feel comfortable that you’re not going to have an anaphylactic reaction. But you do have a reaction, and it varies. My average reaction was to spend the next day and a half feeling a bit like I had a cold - sniffles, headache, body aches, and lethargy.
It did, however, ease my allergies significantly.

I want to downvote you because like, I love dogs (and cats, too). But like, not being able to love on or get loved on by dogs and cats is way, way worse than any downvote. That’s just a tragic allergy.

That’s the reason I killed IPv6 on my network.

It grows so slowly that disturbing it undoes decades of growth, and since it takes hundreds of years to convert rock to soil, messing with the moss is well, first, just upsetting the natural beauty, but also robs future generations of the land for just a few moments of “huh, neat.” Our tour guide was pretty reverent when he talked about the role that moss plays.

Also they’ll fine you and maybe bar you from returning.

I’ve been there on tour once, and I just looked at an online map to make sure I didn’t misremember. I also follow a guy on YouTube that talks about geology and has been focused on Iceland lately, so I think that makes me a complete expert.

Joking aside, the road to Grindavik is sort of out of the way, but it is the connector road between the south coast and the airport, so it’s like a 45 minute diversion to get to the airport from the south coast (and vice versa). And like an hour+ diversion if you’re going from the south coast to the Blue Lagoon/the geothermal power/hot water plant that provides power and heat to the airport and (I think) most of Reykjavik.
Unfortunately the power plant/Blue Lagoon is very close to the fissure, and it’s possible a future larger lava flow could damage them. (It is expected more fissures/flows will occur, but the location and size are unknown.) I’m sure both the civil engineering and tourism folks are working on spinning up alternative sites.

Grindavik, for what it’s worth, keeps bouncing between being evacuated and residents griping so much they get let back in. The Icelandic government has an offer on the table to purchase people’s homes in the town, so they move out. I think the plan is probably to abandon the town, since it’s possible this eruptive period could last hundreds of years. (Or not! We have no idea, really, just past data and informed guesses.)

I follow a guy on YT (An American geology professor) who is pretty into this situation. One of his viewers is a superfan and lived in Grindavik, giving him on the ground updates.

This eruption is expected to be part of a periodic cycle of increased activity that could last hundreds of years.

In a recent-ish video, he said the Icelandic government was offering to buy the home of anyone who wanted to sell in Grindavik, and that his superfan’s house had been purchased by the government.
I think the long term plan is probably to abandon the town.

This won’t be the most narrative experience of the event, but basically, the town was mostly destroyed, however they were able to use firefighting boats to selectively cool the lava, resulting in not just saving their harbor (the main economic driver for their island), but also improving it, by making it more protected from the ocean.

Wikipedia - 1973 Eruption on Heimaey Island

In Iceland it’s pretty cold a lot of the year - not insanely, but colder than a lot of plants prefer. So the rock to soil conversion happens via moss.

While on tour there last year, our guide pointed out the ages of certain lava fields, and he noted that the existing lava fields around Grindavik were between 700 and 1300 years old. My photos from the area show that they’re about 60-70% rock, with moss covering the rest. I suspect if you scraped away the moss, you’ll find slightly crumbly rock underneath (But don’t do that - do not mess with the moss in iceland). I’m not sure how long it takes for the lava to be converted into soil, but I would guess it’s more on the scale of multiple thousands of years.

This page (up until the waterfall) has some good photos of a few lava fields and gives dates for the eruptions that created them. Meandering Wild - Lava and Moss
(The photos are at the bottom of each blurb, not the top - so Eldhraun is the one with the rounded rocks and moss at 350 years old, and not the black rocks, and Dimmuborgir, at 2300 years old, is the one with the treetops shown below the craggy rocks.)

Another banger from our tour guide was that (according to him) the locals say if you get lost in an Icelandic forest, just stand up. Which is… sorta true. They only tree of real quantity there is birch, and the tallest birch I saw was about 16ish feet (5ish meters). They do not grow heavily, so they’re a bit comedic and stringy. Decades old stands of them sort of look like 1-2 year old stands planted in warmer climates - without any ground cover, of course, because while grass will grow, the usual complement of weeds, vines, and what-not does not.

Wait. Are the Trump folks sharing those memes because they’re so stupid they’re funny?

I guess I’ve always found Trump so offputting and taken white nationalist christian fascism so seriously that I never considered those to be shitposts.

I’m a fan of the rock that slightly blurs into a talon, but I also can’t sleep on the hammer that looks like it has a particularly knobbly pair of pliers shoved up its bottom.

I think those are kangaroo hands and feet.

My wife is so offended by Lobster font that I’ve heard her exclaim “Fucking LOBSTER?!?” from half a kitschy restaurant away.
I text her photos when I see it in the wild. I’m about to send her this meme. And then I’m going to send her a screenshot of this comment, and she’s going to be both very annoyed and want to kiss me.

I had no idea. That’s pretty rad, to be honest.