Tariffs. I worked for a truck equipment company in 2017 when Trump implemented 10% on Chinese steel and 25% on aluminum. My customers just about unanimously voted for Trump. It was pretty amazing to explain I was selling them the same exact equipment made from the same exact Chinese metal, but it now cost more for them to buy. China didn’t give a fuck, China sold the same amount of metal it did as before and it certainly didn’t pay the tariff - that is a US-side payment. That’s how tariffs work.

And no, ignoring the part where American production would be too expensive, we don’t even have the processing capacity here to fire up the mills. It’s not coming back.

Most of this thread is overlooking familiarity, consistency. Aside from regional/international differences, the mcdouble you order at home is gonna be exactly as the same as the mcdouble ordered 400 miles away. Your usual will be there. Many people aren’t gonna take a chance on Jeff’s Cafe on the road. Jeff’s Cafe doesn’t spend a billion dollars on ads to tell you they still have the same thing you ate a decade ago. People don’t want to spend as much time and effort as it takes to read Jeff’s menu, decide what sounds good, and then see if it matches their expectation.

710 pages into this mandate and they decide they don’t have room to talk about SS?

I’m just sharing actual information to someone who sounds uninformed. But go ahead and don’t give a fuck, because I don’t have any extras to donate to you anymore

I can’t beleive the number of New Yorkers (NYC residents and expats) that trust Trump. He has wreaked havoc across the city and metro area with terrible buildings, stiffed contractors, and constant financial mockery. His post-TV show perception has done an insane job of making even the most affected people forget what a sack of shit he his. They really think 1. He runs businesses well due to his continued financial growth and that 2. Running the country like his businesses will somehow benefit them, the national equivalent of those laid off from his private endeavors.

So anyway, that’s how I know they just racist assholes.

Despite the larger size and bright colors, they’re a bit more discreet than cigarettes. Most places that ban cigarettes equally ban vapes, so they’re often concealed more. That probably has a spillover effect to areas they’re allowed. They’re only activated when sucked, so, unlike a cigarette that’s burning whether you suck it or not, most people take a puff or 3 of vape and then go a few minutes without it. It’s not as obvious as a person deliberately smoking one whole cigarette.

But maybe they’re not around you. I think the other comments covered the locations well enough, sarcasm included. But if you suddenly smell something sweet like fruit or cereal, casually take a look for someone vaping

Timber frames are sheathed in treated plywood and then wrapped in siding. Rain doesn’t reach the wood of a barely-maintained house, exterior humidity won’t do damage in any hurry, and wood is rarely making ground contact. These houses last at least a hundred years given that this style is approaching 100 years. It’s usually storm damage through the roof that causes the rotted wood you’re imagining, not normal wear and tear.

I’m bummed that when I had a Thinner bathroom scale, I could weigh myself before and after using the bathroom to see how much I expelled. It was consistent and really useful knowing its precision during keto months (lost up to 3lbs a week). Now I have a Taylor scale that will report the same weight over and over if it’s relatively awake and you change less than 5lbs. So, no thanks to scales that lie.

Eventually, the battery drops lower than the device needs. So no, none of which is fixed by a voltage regulator.

It won’t work. They assume they’ll somehow slide into a higher, benefited bracket if the Republicans succeed. Something about trickling down the wealth but thinking they’re the only ones that’ll be fit, floating them to the top.

So, if you’d like a little education on why the comment you replied isn’t nearly as dramatic as you’ve made it out to be, pull up a chair. Both lead and mercury are pretty damn safe to handle as metals in your hand. Getting inside your body is where it becomes a problem, where it’s able to form different, body-soluble compounds and become toxic. Your skin is constantly pushing itself out, so lead residue on your hands isn’t going to have a route inside unless you have cuts or lick your fingers. And even then, the lifetime accumulation is really insignificant with this method for non-occupational handling.

Vapors are the immediate cause of concern for OP. Ingestion (eating lead paint, eating food that has ingested/leeched in lead) is where it becomes dangerous faster. If OP is diligently washing their hands but huffing all the fumes, the cleaning is entirely in vain. So yes, that’s why it’s important to make the above distinction in regards to Scenario A being nothing compared to B, C, or D: treating for A is worthless if the other 3 aren’t considered.

They did. In the 90s, the FRA figured out plastic bearing pads caused a wobble in one exact type of intermodal car that triggered derailment.

This is an excellent science fair project. This is not some hidden solution to derailment. The article is devoid of details other than the student observed great variance in truck spring condition and did extensive hypothetical testing to show it can contribute to derailment.

A contributing factor to both frequency and severity of derailment, sure, but a rare initial cause. “Springs” are not outside the considerations of the FRA. If you ever have trouble sleeping, read an FRA derailment report of some non-catastrophic event. Back in the 90s, they went so far as to identify dampening pads - thin plastic plates in the trucks - as the cause of derailment for new heavier intermodal cars. 1" thick plastic that deformed 1/8" under the 250,000lb+ load hit a harmonic frequency that led the trucks to hunt (wobble left and right but never finding a steady center) until the wheels hopped the tracks when entering a curve.

There is a massive test facility in Pueblo, Colorado that has the smartest engineers on the continent working and testing there. There’s straights, curves, a super loop, road crossings, bridges, and even a concrete wall for crashing. They pull rail cars wired more than your road car all to find something, anything in the data. So can resonant frequency be a big contributor to derailment? Yeah, of course. A push becomes a shove 3 cars later and hits some limit. But there’s absolutely no way to predict or control it because every car, ever load, and every piece of track is going to have some unique critical frequency.

And, for the record, the vast majority of those “1300 derailment per day” are low speed (which the article mentions) inside yards when assembling the full train (which the article does not mention). And, while the individual root cause of other derailments is varied, a majority of them are triggered by hard braking. It takes a few minutes for the brake signal to reach the end of the train - it’s a system operated by air pressure that’s used for both signaling and applying brakes. This means when the locomotive slams the brakes, the back of the train is still trying to shove it ahead at full speed long after the locomotive passes the engineer’s original line of sight. This force can be so great it makes the rail roll out form underneath the train. Add in coupler cushions and the train can shorten itself by a few hundred feet under this pressure, shoving couplers to the sides, taking out all the cushion slack, and adding slack towards the front as the middle and rear cars apply the brakes, creating a slinky longer than a mile weighing 140 tons per link. And yes, they’ve certainly “figured out” that empty cars in front of loaded cars is a huge contributing factor to these forces, there’s nothing easy about staying competitive. This platform shows it’s well aware of how much ground rail is losing to truck transportation. By rate and by severity, trucks vastly outweigh trains in terms of damage. The problem is rail failure is much more catastrophic and gets more news. 1 fiery derailment is news. 100 fiery trucks are a statistic. Same as planes. Way safer per passenger mile, way more deadly in failure.

And why do brakes perform so poorly? Because the benefits that come from “interchange” of rail cars between trains, lines, and companies, also comes with a massive interchangeability headache for any changes. I’m not defending the rail industry as if they’re innocent bystanders, but we should all be able to understand the difficulty in trying to convert 1.4 million freight cars to a new system for the first time in, literally, 100 years. Many of these cars reach 50 years of service before being scrapped. Someone owns the rail, someone owns the locomotive, someone owns the freight car base, someone might own the freight car body, and someone owns the cargo. These are often entirely different entities for each. You can’t really do a soft rollout, it’s all or nothing. So here, we sit, with centurion technology. Ironically, the only type that has the same loco and cars every day is the least progressive load - coal trains. It’s runs from the coal processor to the coal plant and back, nothing else. Every other freight train can be diced and hashed multiple times a day.

It’s not all doom and gloom. The East Palestine derailment put “wayside detectors” into the general public’s lexicon. They were talking about relatively simple infrared sensors placed next to the tracks to look for hot bearings. That’s old tech. There are currently massive sheds being implemented filled with cameras that record terabytes of info for each train passing through. It can identify missing bolts, cracked springs, and other failures on the spot. Control is notified and if it’s urgent, the car can be routed to a repair shop or the train can be stopped. There’s even a type with a trolley that rolls along with each truck to image the entire circumference of the wheels, looking for chips and cracks. A stall in the rolling tech doesn’t mean a stall in the industry. Make no mistake, derailment are expensive and companies and trying damn hard to sell solutions to the rail lines.

Passenger trains have their own headaches. Practically each line has its own design engineers reinventing the wheel. While some lines may buy existing designs (notable, the Amtrak Acela that runs from DC to Boston is a French TGV), they have their own design flares (such as doubling the number of trucks for the Acela). These trains do run as consistent units, so they tend to have intercar communication systems and hydraulic brakes, minimizing the overall braking time. That’s why their derailments usually come from speeding or collisions rather than “random” accidents.

Conrail has left the chat.

Farmland? Or near-residential plots?

I knew I’d miss it this year. Honestly, just didn’t decorate so no candy. It got me thinking though. Maybe something like an automatic pet feeder can curtail the greedy little shits. Obviously, the feeder would have to be out of reach.

I do the same, minus the fire pit and friends but add in a costume. I’ve been a drunk pirate lately. I used to jump scares, but I find this routine more fun because, apparently, everyone is on edge and creep scares are jsit as easy

A deer will shatter your nose fairing and snap handlebars at speed. The next object to catch the deer is your head and torso. No, the burly batwing fairings on a full dresser cruiser are not any stronger than the nose cone on a sport bike when it comes to a 200lb meat bag approaching at 70mph.

So many myths perpetuated by people who bucked classes and PRACTICE in favor of their uncle’s advice.

Exactly this. If you commute by car, this is likely the first time in 9+ hours that you’re not expected to perform for someone. Navigate traffic, do your job, navigate traffic. Some people can decompress and turn off in public transportation, but not everyone - and anyone driving from the station is probably navigating a shitty traffic pattern at the hub, adding to the stress of a short drive.

Me, I did it for all that plus feeling listless and like there’s no value in actually going inside. I’m gonna go to my chair and sit on my phone. So why do the walk? Why pass my parents and give some undetailed recount of my day at work? Why deal with a dog happy to see me again today and have to put mental resources into reciprocating when I don’t feel like it? Why see if my girlfriend wants to get dinner (and pick where) when I know it’s going to be 20 minutes of “I don’t know”? There can be so much stress with going into your home that for a few more minutes, everyone will assume you’re still driving but you can just clam up by yourself.

The portion of the global population that experiences fall colors is somewhat high, but I never really thought about how little of the world’s land sees it. Northeast north america, half of Europe, and part of China. Warmer places don’t make trees go into winter mode and colder places don’t support deciduous trees as well. It can’t be too dry for them, either, which precludes much of the southern hemisphere. So it happens across the globe mostly in the same couple of months