Among other things, this weekend I went to a big convention in London called the MCM expo. It’s not every day that you walk into a pub and see a 7ft Gundam dancing to Gangnam Style. Crazy cosplayers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIwvztfqzKU
Massive transformer explosion in Manhattan. I hope you’re safe Hubi (and everybody else that might be there).
Holy shit, that’s crazy… looks like Vegeta is preparing to go super saiyan.
Holy shit. I hope everyone gets through this okay.
Yeah the city was fucking NUTS yesterday.
Still without internet. We lost that at around 730 yesterday. posting via 4G. lost internet for about an hour last night, too. campus wide. pretty surreal. police were driving by with megaphone telling us to stay in the dorms
The last great storm we had over here caused significant damage to the house: 2 roof tiles that shifted half an inch to the left and a flowerpot that fell over.
Three cheers for Belgium!
Jesus, how horrifying.
Worst storm I ever remember was way back in ‘98. Big ol’ ice storm that hit hard in Ontario and Quebec. A friend of mine died after running back into a burning building to get some pet.
My power was out for a couple weeks.
Wait, is the burning building story connected the ice storm? Those two seem kinda contradictory.
Ice storms blow transformers and weigh down power lines, resulting in power outages and fires.
The power was out, they were using candles to light the house. They didn’t have a generator, or gas lamps I guess.
I work technical support over the phone and we were getting a lot of calls from the east coast about trees snapping lines and stuff. I was talking to someone trying to fix a problem unrelated to the storm and a tree fell through his house while I was talking to him. I’m glad I don’t have any large trees near my house. Don’t see why people insist on having them. We actually got bitched at by the neighborhood thing for taking out the large tree in front of out house and planting smaller ones. I don’t think I have any hanging power/other lines around my house either.
I love old trees in neighborhoods. But they can be a danger during weather. During an ice storm a few years ago, a large oak became top heavy from ice and fell over. It’s root system ruptured a gas line. People were evacuated in a 4 block area. The gas workers triggered an explosion that flamed a rather large apartment complex (took up half the block) which was burned almost to the ground and had to be torn down and rebuilt.
Speaking of trees, I was once like a meter away from being crushed by a branch twice my size during a storm.
Storms around here are generally rather mild and uncommon, and they definitely aren’t as harsh as the ones that hit the states, but they can cause quite some problems, at least along the west coast. I have oh so many memories of being without power in our house out on the country after trees falling on the power lines.
The tree outside our house has grown up with me. When my parents bought this place about 25 years ago, it was a mere shrub, maybe 4ft. high. Now it’s taller than the house, maybe 40ft. 
Over here we have a saying that we generally use whenever we see someone planting trees in their garden: “Boompje groot, ventje dood” (“tree big, man dead”).
The trees around my house are in excess of 100 feet in height. I have no idea how I’d go about removing them.
You know those things are worth a fortune, right? I mean, I wouldn’t advise harvesting them or anything, but they’re quite valuable. The guys I know in forestry and agronomy all buy cheap acreage in small plots. The guy that lives next door bought 35 cheap acres a few years ago, planted some hardwood species on it and now he has half a million in hardwoods on it, and gets a tax abatement for doing it - he pays $1/acre/year in property tax. Oops, sorry - it’s 35 acres, not 12.
Also. Star Wars Episode 7, 8 and 9 coming under Disney (which just acquired LucasFilm)