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[Greiger]

I am glad that my half asleep late night(morning?) sitting on the toilet thoughts have inspired the thread to continue well into the afternoon.  I'm so proud of bay12. 

[pisskop]

Toilets inspire the highest forms of art, philosophy, and science.

[Yoink]

For all you degenerate Chuck Tingle fans, the man himself is apparently doing an AMA on Reddit. I mean, it might be over by now, but if you're lucky he might still be going.

[King Zultan]

Santa fuels the reindeer up with the elderly elves before leaving the north pole, and just makes occasional stops to pick up naughty kids.  Now of course if he just had the deer eat the kid on the rooftop the kid would likely expire before their soul was captured, and make all kinds of horrible noise aside.  So he just steals them from their bed still sleeping, and uses the same magic he uses to fit himself down chimneys or through mail slots, to just magic a kid down whatever reindeer's throat needs the most juice.  Kid does not wake up until they are already in the deer's gut, and no-one is the wiser in the building.

I mean really it's the only way presents appearing under the tree every Christmas makes any sense at all.

P.S. Oh and that 'reindeer food' your parents may have had you spread around your yard?  Your parents know you were naughty that year, so they bought some low quality bits of kid from some other family.  Your parents are hoping the reindeer will just eat all that instead and be too full to eat you once santa snatched you, leaving no choice but to put you back.  That's why they are so happy to see all the reindeer poop in the front yard when usually they are angry when the neighbor dog even does a little piddle.  It means it worked.

This is the Christmas story I'm gonna tell my kids.

Toilets inspire the highest forms of art, philosophy, and science.

Toilets, the throne of the artist!

[wierd]

-snip before the quote pyramids break-
Put him in a parabolically reflective cone of shame. Problem solved. No light paths can reach the driver, and it increases the efficiency of the light source as well.

While that might work in theory (although you'd probably want a neck brace as well, given how long those reins are), recall that this is a community of sweatshop workers so entrenched in their North Korea-esque program of manual labor and community displays of patriotism that they ran their aspiring dentist out of town on a rail, and their idea of quality control is apparently to just sweep their sapient production errors under the rug until someone smuggles them to the Island of Misfit Toys without Santa's knowledge and pretend like they didn't somehow make a doll with depression.

What are the odds that, if there was an elf with an interest in optics sufficient to design such a reflector, he or she was not immediately burned at the stake for being a witch?

What makes you think they didn't?  I propose that this has already transpired-- There is a decided lack of an extinction level event size crater from Santa impacting the ground while traveling a significant fraction of the speed of light on his toy run, while carrying enough mass to double as a kinetic impactor-- so either Rudolph's nose does not in fact glow (contrary to the popular song), or the reflector was installed, and the elf responsible was appropriately reported to the authorities and euthanized.

QED.

[Trekkin]

-snip before the quote pyramids break-
Put him in a parabolically reflective cone of shame. Problem solved. No light paths can reach the driver, and it increases the efficiency of the light source as well.

While that might work in theory (although you'd probably want a neck brace as well, given how long those reins are), recall that this is a community of sweatshop workers so entrenched in their North Korea-esque program of manual labor and community displays of patriotism that they ran their aspiring dentist out of town on a rail, and their idea of quality control is apparently to just sweep their sapient production errors under the rug until someone smuggles them to the Island of Misfit Toys without Santa's knowledge and pretend like they didn't somehow make a doll with depression.

What are the odds that, if there was an elf with an interest in optics sufficient to design such a reflector, he or she was not immediately burned at the stake for being a witch?

What makes you think they didn't?  I propose that this has already transpired-- There is a decided lack of an extinction level event size crater from Santa impacting the ground while traveling a significant fraction of the speed of light on his toy run, while carrying enough mass to double as a kinetic impactor-- so either Rudolph's nose does not in fact glow (contrary to the popular song), or the reflector was installed, and the elf responsible was appropriately reported to the authorities and euthanized.

QED.

Not to get nitpicky, but this is a false dichotomy. There are other possibilities than the two you've outlined here, one of which I mentioned in my original post: we both agree that Santa's velocity would necessarily exceed Earth's escape velocity, so it's entirely possible that Santa simply left the atmosphere, at which point the odds of him hitting anything are minimal. That is also consistent with the lack of a crater. You can also treat Santa as a meteor and use any of a number of online calculators to posit impact parameters even at relativistic speeds that, if they occurred over water, would produce significant waves but not a crater of exceptional size.

Or, if you like your Christmas apologetics cut with fringe Christian apologetics, perhaps he impacted at Chicxulub while delivering presents to the antediluvian children and their non-avian dinosaur friends, thereby opening the fountains of the deep and beginning the general deluge.

This is of course complete nonsense, but it does let us tell children that Santa is dead and he took the dinosaurs and unicorns with him, so it's not utterly without value.

[wierd]

LOLOL.

[Arx]

If we accept at face value that children all receive their presents simultaneously at midnight, you could probably construct an argument that since Santa already violates causality he may at some future point be going to impact at Chicxulub and cause the mass extinction.

But that would be getting into the territory of discussing absurdities--

[pisskop]

For all you degenerate Chuck Tingle fans, the man himself is apparently doing an AMA on Reddit. I mean, it might be over by now, but if you're lucky he might still be going.

Pounded in the butt by reddit sensibilities.

[scriver]

I mean, not all children get their presents at the same time. Not only do you have to take timezones into account, and that half of the world gets their present in SUMMER rather than winter, but the Midnight time isn't even particularly common outside of the anglosphere -- here in Sweden he delivers presents on Christmas Eve and in Catholic (and Orthodox, I think?) places he isn't even supposed to give presents until Epiphany (two weeks after Christmas). So let's keep our absurdities grounded in the realities of our world's customs, please

[Dunamisdeos]

No Gods or Kings, only Santa.

[Iduno]

I mean, not all children get their presents at the same time. Not only do you have to take timezones into account, and that half of the world gets their present in SUMMER rather than winter, but the Midnight time isn't even particularly common outside of the anglosphere -- here in Sweden he delivers presents on Christmas Eve and in Catholic (and Orthodox, I think?) places he isn't even supposed to give presents until Epiphany (two weeks after Christmas). So let's keep our absurdities grounded in the realities of our world's customs, please

That is true, but I think they also all claim that the toys are all delivered in the same night.

And as long as we're talking about Santa. https://comicsalliance.com/santa-claus-vs-martians/

[scriver]

No Gods or Kings, only Santa.

But what if Santa is The Elf, which clearly means he is he is THE head elf guy, but Santa is also Grandfather Frost, and Grandfather Frost is also Old Man Winter/Jack Frost, and Old Man Winter is also King Bore...

...Then Santa is clearly a king.

[Naturegirl1999]

No Gods or Kings, only Santa.

But what if Santa is The Elf, which clearly means he is he is THE head elf guy, but Santa is also Grandfather Frost, and Grandfather Frost is also Old Man Winter/Jack Frost, and Old Man Winter is also King Bore...

...Then Santa is clearly a king.

FTFY

[TD1]

Wasn't sure where to post this, but settled on here.

I've been talking over the past day (over Bumble) to a girl who I accidentally swiped right on. She seems nice, but I am conflicted. It was an accidental swipe right because she is very obviously Catholic, something which is anathema to my parents and, to a much lesser extent, makes me feel uneasy.

You're perhaps thinking I'm hopelessly sectarian, or if I'm not then my parents certainly are. Firstly, in defence of my parents, they lived through a period where many of their friends were killed by Catholics. Not to mention family. They also see current social, religious and legislative attempts to erode Protestant/British values by Catholic politicians as tantamount to a pogrom. On my part, I also don't like overarching political themes within Catholicism, but I am capable of separating the individual from the mob. What makes me uneasy is the inevitable cultural divide and also that she possibly doesn't know that I am not also a Catholic. Not to mention, of course, that my family's ability to interact with a match is important, though not essential, to me.

As an extra, I want marriage and children. Unless I'm mistaken, the Catholic Church does not condone either unless done under the auspices of said Church - not something I could condone, for various reasons.

My point being that I'm conflicted and undoubtedly overthinking everything. A recipe which spells disaster.

Edit: Darn, she just told me she spent all day in the library. O lente, lente currite, noctis equi!