FYI the posted load limit on a bridge is not the weight that, if exceeded once, would cause the bridge to immediately collapse. Rather, it’s the weight that, if exceeded regularly, would cause the bridge to require repairs and maintenance much sooner than otherwise. This is why school buses (and emergency vehicles like fire trucks) are legally allowed to ignore the posted weight limits on bridges. I’m a school bus driver and this is actually one of the questions that comes up on the school bus certification exam (there’s also a bridge in my district with a 5 ton weight limit that a number of our buses regularly cross despite weighing about 10 tons empty).

Even if the authorities wanted to post an absolute, it’s-going-to-collapse weight limit for a bridge, it wouldn’t really be possible, as this would have more to do with per-axle weight, ground pressure and vehicle speed, not to mention length of the vehicle compared to the length of the bridge. Nor would authorities want to post any such number without a large safety factor.

Butler was (will be?) right!

I spent years working on a program that allows anyone to make music without any musical training. It was weird how often people’s response was “why would anybody want to make their own music?”

I’m a school bus driver and one of my fifth graders this year asked me if I wanted her to draw something for me. I told her I wanted a picture of a killer whale with a rainbow mohawk wearing a camouflage vest and she produced it for me. I never thought of putting it on a denim jacket but I think maybe I will.

The girl told me she had to get her mom to help her with the killer whale part. I do wonder what mom thought of the request.

Japanese cars are superior to American cars

I had a high school friend who went on to become an engineer at General Motors. One of his first projects for them was tearing down an Infiniti and a Lexus when those cars first came on the market. He said that at the time, GM cars typically had between 300 and 400 production defects of varying severity. When they took apart the Infiniti, they found 2 production defects; when they took apart the Lexus, they found 0.

More like the start of his second term - and it was Alzheimer’s.

Random tea story: I travelled in India a few … shit, decades ago. On one of my train trips there was this one guy selling tea from a big urn. Usually these guys jump on at a station, sell cups of tea or coffee to whoever wants it, then they jump off at the next station; they can’t sell tea or coffee in more than one car because the passageways between cars are usually kept locked.

This one guy walked up and down the aisle selling a few cups, then he went to the door (the car doors that people use to get on or off the train are usually kept open or they’re not even there) and while holding his urn in one hand grabbed the vertical handrail on the outside of the door with his other hand, swung himself out into space (this while the train was moving at full speed), grabbed the handrail of the next car and swung himself in. He did this just so he could sell a few more cups of tea before we reached the next station.

People tend not to believe me when I tell this story, but there are a bunch of Youtube videos from India showing people doing even crazier shit than this on trains. For me, it just tends to make me not sweat the tea rings underneath my cup.

Edit: found the one I was thinking of.

Jesus is anti-authoritarian first and foremost

I mean, he did exhort his followers to sell their shirts and buy swords!

Storage solutions are also the next logical step when you think about cocaine. I’ve seen Blow and Scarface.

I (M) had a friend (also M) who I shared a storage space with one summer while we went abroad during graduate school and neither of us was gay. While we were waiting in the storage facility’s office, my friend noticed some copies of Self-Storage Monthly magazine lying around, a trade magazine aimed at people who owned or managed self-storage facilities. The articles were mostly about how to keep bands from having rehearsals in their units (nothing about preventing people from living in the units, which we thought was a bit of an oversight given how many people I’ve known who have done that).

My buddy stole three copies and when he got home he peeled off the original mailing labels and replaced them with labels addressed to him from other magazines that he subscribed to, and left them out on his coffee table. It was always amusing watching people pick them up, thumb through them, and then say “Peter, why the fuck do you subscribe to Self-Storage Monthly?”

you will be limited by the gasses in the atmosphere

Lol if you’re going to abandon the round earth theory, you might as well dump the concept of an atmosphere, too.

Make America Great Depression Again

Neither did they take orders from Moscow.

Yeah, they took orders from Saudi Arabia. They still do, they’ve just added additional petro-state puppet masters.

I like to think my comment qualifies as clarification. I’m not trying to be snarky either.

OK, maybe a little snarky.

Any nation on Earth, if they had nuclear weapons, could put them in shipping containers and mail them to any target they wanted.

Stephen King is Scots-Irish and he used the pen name Richard Bachman despite not being German.

“Stolen valor” can be used in a humorous way beyond its original meaning as someone pretending to be a veteran. For example, there’s a funny Youtube video about a tradesperson encountering a hipster wearing Carhartt workwear and using the phrase “stolen valor” to describe him.

Perhaps he’s lazily hiding some of his assets in plain and obvious ways to throw the courts off the scent of stuff he’s shielding more effectively and discretely.

Uh, sir? This is a Wendy’s.

You show me a boat filled with dildos made from potatoes, and I’ll show you a dictatorship.