Judge Carlos Moore is awesome

 

Painted residential roadways

Distilled from an article on Axios

Street art such as colorful crosswalks and painted intersections can both liven up communities and make streets more welcoming. But, is it a potential distraction for drivers? New research suggests no. Painted roadways can make intersections safer by focusing motorists on the road, which causes them to be ready to slow down and be on the lookout for pedestrians and cyclists.

Pedestrian deaths are up 45% in the US in the past decade. Safety advocates say street design is a big factor. Roads prioritize automobiles over other users. To make communities more walkable, many cities have painted colorful crosswalks and murals over drab stretches of asphalt and concrete.

You will find however, that governments tend not to be a fan of art on the street. But government has no data to back up its position. Bloomberg Philanthropies commissioned the first known study of street art to see what effect, if any, the pavement paintings have on traffic safety. Compared historical crash data and real-time video footage of human behaviour before and after art was installed at 22 sites showed a 50% drop in crashes involving pedestrians or cyclists and a 37% drop in crashes leading to injuries. Overall, intersections with asphalt art saw a 17% reduction in total accidents, a 27% increase in the rate of drivers yielding to pedestrians with the right of way, and a 25% drop in potentially dangerous conflicts between drivers and pedestrians.

Traffic engineering is a social science. You're changing driver expectations. Things that constrain their field of vision and physically constrain the roadway cause drivers to focus, and recognize that they're entering an area where they might encounter pedestrians.

Small things 24 Jun

• Dear computer users: Computer don't get 'slow' as they age. They're not living beings. The seem to run slower because newer software and operating system files need more processing power, which the older hardware cannot provide.
• Today's yoga pose is downward spiral.
• When people on Facebook complain that fact checkers keep popping up...
  
  
  
• Isn't it weird that we have one hand that knows how to do everything and one hand that just sits there like "I don't know how to hold a pencil very well."
• If you're arguing loudly on your phone in public, at least have the decency to put it on speaker. We need to hear both sides of the argument so we know which side to cheer for.
• Maybe Bigfoot is just a wookie that got lost...
• I will use a measuring cup to measure water and when I'm done, that cup will skip the dishwasher cycle and go right back into the cupboard. Yeah, I'm a rebel that way.
• When life gives you lemons, just return them. You kept the receipt, right?
• The biggest lie we tell ourselves is "I don't need to write this down because I will remember it."
• If we took the warning labels off of everything, would there be a rapid decline in human population?
• I drank a lot last night, but I was fine this morning because it was water.
• Here's how I like my eggs: scrambled, seasoned with sugar, oil, chocolate and a little flour for texture, then baked. So brownies basically.
• Imagine what someone who has never heard of Mountain Dew would think it was if they were just told the name and asked to guess what it was. Probably ANYTHING except soda.
• It's OK for monks to use email. As long as there are no attachments.
• What happens if you take antibiotics and probiotics at the same time?

How to never be invited to another potluck again

 

A 3 dressed up as a 9

A $30 steak dinner nowadays, especially at one of those chains, is a horrible, gristle-ridden cut of meat. That's because they're passing stuff off as 'sirloin' when it is likely a lesser cut that has been mechanically tenderized. What this means is that the steak has been tenderized by puncturing it with a multitude of miniature blades or needles to break down the connective tissue.

The problem with this is that if the original cut, such as flank or skirt, didn't have much gristle, it will appear to have the same quality as top sirloin. This makes it possible to charge more for the same steak. But all the tenderizing in the world won't help if there are ribbons of gristle running through the whole piece.

Now if steak actually cost $30 for a 6 oz serving, or even $20, the price would be justifiable. But the better top sirloin cuts you would get at the butcher go for around $10 a serving, so picking a lesser cut and selling it for $30 is insulting.

Yes, I know that if one went to a real steakhouse, you'd be paying $40-$50 for a superior steak cut, but that does come with superior service, superior grilling skills in the kitchen and a whole host of perks to go with the meal. Never mind that the meat itself is top notch.

So come on chain restaurants. If you're going to charge me $30 for 6 ounces of steak, at least have the decency to use a real top cut of beef where the gristle has been removed or was never there to begin with. If you insist on preparing a tough steak, it better be at a deep discount.

If you put as much effort into the food quality as you do in the hostess selection or the decor, you might have happier customers.

Oh and another thing. The little show the floor manager puts on when you complain about your food, where they come to your table and crouch down and get all soft voiced and friendly? It's demeaning, it's embarrassing, and you're probably not getting the amount of feedback you should get because of it. Don't grovel. Don't force the customer to make on-the-spot choices to redeem your bad service. Just take the food off the bill and give them a voucher for food at the next visit.

Our latest ordeal had the floor manager offering a replacement steak. We passed. I seriously doubt the next one would be much better. Then we were offered a steak to go. Why would we do that? So that we could get home and be surprised with yet another sub-standard cut of meat? Come on.

Living in a van

 

Things I learned lately 24 Jun

• The Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company sells online drugs at 15% over cost. For example, a 30 day supply of Imatinib, used to treat leukemia, sells on Cuban's site for $17.10 versus $2,502.60 at other pharmacies.
• The phrases "on Broadway" and "off Broadway" don't refer to the geographic location of a performance, but the capacity of the theater in which it is performed. On Broadway venues can seat 500+ viewers, whereas off Broadway venues seat 100-499 viewers (the rarely used "off-off Broadway" refers to venues with less than 100 seats).
• By default, when you normally copy with Ctrl+C and Paste with Ctrl+V in Windows, the clipboard captures not only the text you've selected but also the formatting. That includes font style, text colour, attributes such as bold and italic, and even bullets. There’s an easy way to avoid it. The next time you want to paste only the text without any formatting or style information, press Ctrl+Shift+V on your keyboard in Windows 10 or 11. This won't work in Word, where you would use the Paste icon with the 'A' (keep text only) to accomplish the same thing.
  
  
  
• Here’s the harsh truth about putting a wet phone in rice—it does absolutely nothing. Rice does not have magical moisture-wicking powers. You might as well just put the phone in a completely empty bowl.
• There's a new Munsters movie coming out in the fall written and directed by Rob Zombie. Take my money.
• In the Canadian military, the basic rule of men's hair length was "If it fits under your beret, it can be as long as it wants". Which meant the sides and back had to be short, but the top could be ridiculously long. It made for interesting hair styles, especially in the New wave era of the 1980s.
• Scooby Doo is a show that teaches kids that the villains in our lives are usually not strangers, but rather people we know and trust.
• Many libraries in New York City were outfitted with secret apartments for the maintenance staff and their families to live in. There are 13 library apartments still remaining in NYC. Most have already been renovated and assimilated into regular library use; some house computer rooms, some are used for storage, and some are used to hold programs and events. The remaining apartments are all empty, and will probably be re-purposed in the near future, as funds allow.

It all makes sense now

 

Things I would like to see offered in restaurants

Perogies. Fine if they were frozen, but for goodness' sake fry them in butter with caramelized onions at the very least. And stock up on the sour cream because we'll be needing more than an ounce of the stuff per serving.

Cabbage rolls. I don't know, maybe try and give a German or Polish or Ukrainian deli a run for their money. Just don't skimp on the cabbage or the sauce.

Pasta-cheese-tuna bake. Call it what you want. A casserole. Make up your own words even, I don't care. Would you rather use shells than elbow macaroni? I'm down with that. Just make sure it has a cheese suited to being baked without separating and getting oily (in other words, not cheddar). Farmer's cheese. Havarti cheese. You decide. It better come topped with croutons and what some would consider too much paprika.

Nachos loaded with meat. I'm sorry, but considering what y'all charge for a nacho platter, there should be way more than enough meat to form a small burger patty. Load that stuff on there! Almost every chip should have meat on it. Can't afford steak? No problem, decent quality ground beef works. Just because you hide the toppings with a layer of cheese doesn't mean we can't see how skimpy you are with the meat. Give us the meat!

Spanish rice. Adults and kids alike will love this, trust me. Never heard of it? The base is sautéed ground beef (or shredded beef if you want to get fancy); crushed tomatoes; tomato paste; diced green pepper; diced onion. Then you add brown sugar and mustard to give it a sweet tang and take the edge off. People like to spice it up, but I prefer it to be on the sweet side. That stuff can simmer all day, then when it's time to serve, you add the rice. Kids acting all fussy? Tell them it's 'Dora' rice. They'll want seconds.

Goulash. Slow cooked all day with copious amounts of sweet Hungarian paprika. Serve it over noodles or whatever. Fresh baked bread and butter on the side. Just do it.

Beef bourguignon. Is it hard to make? You bet. Will you need to charge a lot for it? Undoubtedly. Will they order it? Damned right they will, because you can't find it anywhere and most people don't have the patience or the skill to make it themselves. Look, you got professionally trained to cook stuff, so show us. And don't you dare leave out the wine or the pearl onions.

Chicken cordon bleu. Come on chef. Show us why you're better with chicken than Swiss Chalet. It's the easiest 5 star entrée ever.

Coq au vin. Is chicken cordon bleu too labour intensive? Fine. Wine. Chicken. Put them together. Enough said.

Fondue. The customer will agree to make their own meal? They will if they can dip stuff in hot melted booze-infused cheese. Then let them dip stuff in booze-infused melted chocolate for the ultimate DIY meal.

Scalloped or au gratin potatoes. Because frankly, we're getting tired of fries or mashed. Prime rib? That should come with the fancy potatoes (see picture). Ditto for Chateaubriand. Or salmon.

I wanted a pony

 

Small things 18 Jun

• Baby gates are the real life version of areas being locked in a video game due to your character's experience level.
• Imagine how awkward it would be if your pet went on your phone and found all the pictures you have of them doing weird stuff.
• The clubhouse or club sandwich is meant to have sliced turkey, or chicken if that's all you've got. Keep ham away from that sandwich, it already has bacon. Just stop with the ham please. 
• The reason you have hair on your head is to remind you that you cannot control everything no matter how hard you try.
• Cat therapist: "Have you tried pushing stuff off of a table?"
• How to not be a ghost when you die: Don't wear any white dressing gowns or pyjamas when you're dying.
• Funny how we say "a bug hit my windshield". Yet we're the ones going 100km/h. I'm guessing the bug's family describes it differently.
  
  
  
• Remember when the only way you could make a call from "anywhere that wasn't a house or office" was to find a payphone and hope you had a dime or a quarter?
• I don't need to own a dog. All my neighbours have one and they take care of them for me.
• Tell your cat I said 'pspspspspsps'.
• If I was to eat the middle out of Oreo cookies, it would be so that I could refill the middle with peanut butter just to see if it was good.
• Iron Man is technically a FEmale.

Parumpumpumpum

 

Social networks explained using ice cream

Twitter: My thoughts on ice cream

Facebook: I like ice cream; who else likes it?

Instagram: Look at my ice cream

YouTube: Watch me make ice cream

Pinterest: Look at all the kinds of ice cream

TikTok: I had fun with ice cream

Snapchat: I had too much fun with ice cream

LinkedIn: I make great ice cream

There are some things I just cannot not do

 

Things I learned lately 18 Jun

• Bitcoin reached a high of almost $69,000 in 2021, but recently is only worth just under USD$20,000.
• Vkusno-i Tochka. Look that up on Google to see the logo. A stylized burger and two fries. That's what will be replacing McDonalds in Russia now that the global brand has completely pulled out of Russia.
  
  
  
• If you love sriracha sauce you might want to get an extra bottle because Huy Fong Foods has suspended production due to a crop failure of spring chili. Please - no hoarding!
• Jean-Baptiste Kempf, the current President of the VideoLAN non-profit organization that makes the multimedia player VLC, refused a lot of money to make it an ad-supported or paid software. He prefers to keep it free and abhors others online who try to bundle VLC with other crapware. VideoLAN has so little money, they can't even afford to sue anyone who misuses their software. 
• There is a 32 km stretch of highway in South Korea between Daejon and Sejong, where the highway center divider is completely covered in solar panels. Underneath those panels is a bicycle path, so that cyclists can ride the path in the shade. Cyclists use subterranean tunnels to enter and exit the path, which boosts safety tremendously since they can get on and off the bikeway without interfacing regular traffic. They're shielded from traffic by barriers. The panels produce more than enough electricity to power the lighting of the highway and the electric vehicle charging stations. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuYsYLqjUtU
• In December of 2016, the Barbados Postal Service issued a limited edition series of 27 stamps celebrating some of its citizens who lived to the ripe old age of 100. The collection was the largest stamp issue the country ever released.
• In his inauguration address, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy of Ukraine urged ministers and government officials to resign if they aren't willing to work for change. He urged Cabinet leaders and others not to put his portrait on their office walls. "I really do not want my pictures in your offices, for the President is not an icon, an idol or a portrait. Hang your kids' photos instead, and look at them each time you are making a decision."
• Nails.INC of London is offering limited edition nail polish that mimics the look of melted Velveeta cheese sauce spilled on your nails. It even smells like cheese once it's dried. The polish is available as a two-pack for $15, one bottle that's Velveeta yellow, the other in red for the base colour. The first run of this limited-edition polish sold out in 9 days.
• Telephone booths are icons. And now in New York City, they're gone. The NYC government began removing payphones in 2014 and replacing them with kiosks that offer Wi-Fi and mobile device charging. There are now 2,000 such kiosks across the city. That conversion project is almost over. The final payphone kiosk at the corner of 7th Avenue and 50th St in midtown Manhattan has been removed. It will be on display at the Museum of the City of New York as part of an exhibit on life before the computer age.

Good fat, meet bad fat

 

Small things 10 Jun

• Idea: Hey Americans with assault weapons - donate them to the Ukrainian cause.
• Really annoying: when you're using an app or web site that asks for your birth year and you have to scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll to get to yours. I'm a senior dammit. Show some respect.
• When someone in a rental car pulls into a gas station not knowing that their filler port is on the other side. I guess they don't know about the little arrow on the gas gauge thingy.
  
  
  
• Yes I have my ducks in a row. I even sized and dressed them too. Memories of the military parade square.....
• When I go shopping for plants at the garden centre, I head straight for the 'thrives on neglect' section.
• Egg salad is just a different kind of chicken salad.
• If you follow the link to a "15 signs you're a narcissist" quiz, you pretty much found the biggest sign without taking the quiz.
• Cake. The other white meat.

Shiny nickel!

 

What kind of person goes on a shooting spree?

Experts in the US have been studying the similarities between people who became mass shooters and even spoke to people who were going to commit mass murder but changed their minds. They found a core of common traits between them.

"Early childhood trauma seems to be the foundation, whether violence in the home, sexual assault, parental suicides, extreme bullying. Then you see the build toward hopelessness, despair, isolation, self-loathing, oftentimes rejection from peers. [Then comes] a really identifiable crisis point where they're acting differently. Sometimes they have previous suicide attempts.

What's different from traditional suicide is that the self-hate turns against a group. They start asking themselves, “Whose fault is this?” Is it a racial group or women or a religious group, or is it my classmates? The hate turns outward. There's also this quest for fame and notoriety.

I don’t think most people realize that these are suicides, in addition to homicides. Mass shooters design these to be their final acts. When you realize this, it completely flips the idea that someone with a gun on the scene is going to deter this. If anything, that's an incentive for these individuals. They are going in to be killed. We have to recognize them as the troubled human being earlier if we want to intervene before they become the 'monster'."

Imperial walker

 

Things I learned lately 10 Jun

• Apple intends to work with automobile brands to expand what Apple CarPlay does in a vehicle. This means it may be possible not only for the CarPlay app to use more of a car's screens, but also incorporate more vehicle data into the app, including fuel, speed and temperature controls. Car makers may not go along with this expansion, as they quietly fear becoming slaves to the whims of software companies.
• 85% of all Aussies live within 50 km of the coast.
• The population of just England, not including Wales, Scotland or Ireland, has more than double the population than all of Australia. Also the city of Tokyo has more than the land down under.
  
  
  
• Martin Luther King Jr was a fan of Star Trek, loving that it showed a future with people of all colours working together in harmony. He urged Nichelle Nichols, who plays Uhura, to stay on the show even though she was considering a move to Broadway, because she was a good role model.
• It was legal to sell your child in Mississippi until 2009. That is to say that there was no law against it until 2009, after a woman tried to sell her granddaughter for $2000 and a car.
• Black Panthers are not a species. They are jaguars and leopards who have "Melanism", the opposite of albinism, which causes them to have black skin.
• In 2009 Burger King ran the "Whopper sacrifice" campaign, which gave a free Whopper to anyone who deleted 10 friends on Facebook. Facebook suspended the program because Burger King was alerting people letting them know they'd been dropped as a friend in exchange for a burger.
• Paul McCartney is the only artist to reach the top of the UK charts as a solo artist, duo, trio, quartet, quintet and musical ensemble.
• It's the Canadian poem 'In Flanders fields' that created the association between poppies and military veterans.
• Decal seen on car: "Tell your dog I said hi"
• Roughly 40% of the corn grown in the US is processed into ethanol fuel.

Why tho?

 

Oklahoma "I don't think so"

Colorado: I get to be neighbours with Texas!

Oklahoma: Yeah, I don't think so....

Kansas: WTF Oklahoma?

Colorado: Yeah, WTF?

Show 'em facts!

 

Small things 3 Jun

• Wondering if I could mount a giant sail on my car.....
  
  
  
• I was walking along the sidewalk in my neighbourhood and a couple are walking their dog toward me. I see the dog look all excited and I bend down and go "Hey there!" It runs up to me and then right past me because it's chasing a damned rabbit.
• Nobody cares if you play Wordle.
• There is an Abbey / convent in the town I grew up in. Still. Abbaye Sainte Marie des Deux Montagnes.
• “Majority rule only works if you're also considering individual rights. Because you can't have five wolves and one sheep voting on what to have for supper.”~ Larry Flynt
• Minimum wage only exists because if they could pay less per hour, they would.
• You're never too old to say, "Horses!" when you drive past some horses.
• When someone passes you and you catch up with them at the next traffic light.
• PSA: 'hors d'oeuvres' is pronounced 'ordervs', not 'horse divorce'.

Snack smack

 

Loss my taste of sweet

I managed to catch Covid in January 2022. It was very likely the delta variant. The symptoms were fairly mild and didn't last beyond a week, except for one bizarre and alarming thing. My sense of taste changed.

More specifically, I lost my sense of sweet taste. Completely. Anything I ate or drank that should taste sweet instead tasted bitter. It was gross. Pop? Bitter. Candy? Bitter. It affected a lot of the things I ate and I had read that this phenomenon might last a few weeks, but could last for months.

As I post this, it has been more than 4 months since I lost the sense of sweet and it is finally, slowly coming back. Chocolate was one of the first things to start to taste normal again. Pop still has the most bitterness left in it but it is subsiding.

On the plus side, I did cut back on sweet foods because, well, why bother eating it when you aren't tasting that thing you enjoy?

Songs turning 40 in 2022

 

Things I learned lately 4 Jun

• The country originally named Turkey has rebranded itself as Turkiye, pronounced tur-key-yay. They did this to eliminate the association with the bird, but also because the term is used in colloquial language to denote failure. I will still have fun mimicking Turkish people saying "Turkish" in their accent. 'toor-keesh'.
  
  
  
• Wendy's is now offering packets of COLD ketchup. You have to ask for them I think. Some folks prefer cold ketchup.
• The CDC believes that as many as 1 in 5 adults may have a new health condition related to their previous Covid-19 illness (long Covid), that includes neurological and mental health conditions, cardiovascular conditions, kidney failure, respiratory conditions, musculoskeletal conditions and blood clots. Vaccination status was not considered in these numbers. Many health experts believe that this figure may be inaccurate.
• There are 4 modern nations called Guinea. Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Equatorial Guinea and Papua New Guinea. 
• The reason certain food and the animals they come from don't sound similar is because of the influence of Norman French in England. Pig, cow and chicken were the names the farmers, who were Anglo-Saxons. But the meat from those animals, pork, beef and poultry, took their names from Norman French, because the people who ate this food were the royalty, who spoke French.
• People who believe conspiracy theories have been shown that they will pretty much believe any wacky theory presented to them. The problem in the study that made this determination is that they had a difficult time coming up with theories that were wackier than the things the conspiracy theory believers already embraced.
• China only has one official time zone, which is weird for a country of its size.
• Apparently, when you tip via the Starbucks app, the employees at the store don't get any of that money. So if you use the app to buy your coffee, make sure to tip the employee directly.
• Pink Floyd's album Meddle, even with all of its atmospheric sounds, used no synthesizers whatsoever.