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Comment by Auracle | Hacker News Reader

A lot of work and money has gone in to preventing zebra mussels from spreading to new lakes in Minnesota. Think free sites for people to have their boats cleaned when they’re going from lake to lake, PR campaigns, etc.

My parent’s small pond, which has never seen a boat or any other real human activity, got them before the big lake it’s connected to did. Clearly there was some other way they could spread, presumably by bird.

Anyways, one by one every lake in the area no has zebra mussels. Even if they would only spread via human, it was clearly only a matter of time. As much as they suck (they’re sharp and attach themselves to basically anything in the lake) I’m not sure the expense has been worth simply delaying the inevitable.

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> I’m not sure the expense has been worth simply delaying the inevitable.

Now that I'm jaded I ask myself how many government and private sector jobs were "created" (in sarcasm quotes because broken windows fallacy) washing all those boats for free over the years and whether they even expected to prevent the spread or if the spread is the justification for expansion.

Those are actually great jobs for the government to be creating. Having a workforce of people dedicated to maintaining the environment is invaluable. These people are so poorly paid and driven by passion for their work the government is getting a great deal on all the hard work they do.

Probably a swallow. They could carry them.

African or European?

Wonder how many will get that…

Yeah, famously obscure and underground comedy troupe Monty Python's Flying Circus, you've probably never heard of them, especially in hacker circles.

;-)

I'm constantly surprised at how many cultural conventions are mysteries to modern generations.

One of the more amusing episodes for me, was when my daughter discovered this great group: The Beatles.

There used to be an ad for a radio station back in the 80s where a girl says, “Mom, did you know Paul McCartney used to be in a band before Wings?”

I think I remember that.

> I'm constantly surprised at how many cultural conventions are mysteries to modern generations.

Some of my law students are only dimly aware of Jerry Seinfeld. And when I play a bit of the organ solo from Procul Harum's 1967 Whiter Shade of Pale (to illustrate a copyright-royalties point), I'm lucky if one person recognizes it.

It’s often surprising what we discover younger people have no idea about. I had a twenty-something co-worker in 2018 who was a self-professed aficionado of submarine movies who had never seen Yellow Submarine (I can’t remember now if he’d heard of it at least or if even that was beyond his ken). My profile picture on my gmail account is a picture of Harpo Marx because I occasionally use Harpo as a nickname thanks to my first name having become undesirable a decade ago and I had a recruiter that I was working with ask me who the picture was, apparently having never seen a Marx brothers movie or even heard of them.

Sic transit gloria mundi.

I still remember (years ago now) my coworker telling me her family stayed in a motel on a trip and her children asking her how the phone worked. They had never seen a dial phone before and when asked, tried putting their finders in and out the holes to see if that would dial.

There was a somewhat lame Kevin Kline/Tom Selleck movie, called In and Out (1997), where one of the characters is this vacuous model (Shalom Harlow), who tries using a dial phone in that manner.

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