lapetitejort

I added a MIK rear rack with pannier rails. I bought a seat post collar with screw holes in order to attach it, only to realize the bike doesn't have a seat post collar! And the collar was 1/4 inch too wide for the seat post. I wedged some green tire protection strips in there and it works great. I biked home two full panniers and a watermelon in a basket from a farmer's market. Bad idea in retrospect as the whole bike wobbled from being back-heavy. And the kickstand cannot handle even the slightest amount of weight. I might invest in front pannier rails. So I guess I'm going in the touring bike direction!

In an alternate universe the cannonball runners, with their cars silent, unassuming, but blazingly fast won over the car modding scene

My ongoing midlife crisis vehicle swerves in a different direction: I bought a 1988 Nishiki 1207 at a yard sale for $40. Mostly stock save for a new seat. With the wheels out of true, the stickers plastered over with garbage, the brakes loose, the front tire visibly cracking, the rear cassette visibly rusted, and the rack mounts stripped, the bike needs some work. I am motivated to finally really learn bike maintenance after putting it off for 30 years

The amount things you can map in OSM is impressive. However I ran into two things that have no formal tags: time capsules (historic=time_capsule), and camera obscuras (camera_type=obscura). You can add the values, but they are not official. Time capsule is in the work [0].

[0] https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposal:Time_capsule

I had been using mapcomplete to add images of artwork, which in turn used panoramax. However I saw someone else use Wikimedia Commons, and to me that makes more sense. Wikimedia ties into more systems, so if you wanted to create a Wikipedia page about an artist, there will be readily available images to use.

On the flip side, panoramax can be used as an open source StreetView. Different sites for different purposes I suppose

I got into OSM and StreetComplete to flesh out intersections, stop signs, and sidewalks in my area. I always felt like I was doing something wrong though. I created crosswalks, then OSM would prompt me to connect the crosswalk to the road via a crossing. In StreetComplete, it felt like I was filling in duplicate data. I had to add whether the crossing had crossing lights not only at the middle crossing, but on the sides as well. This probably doesn't make any sense.

Basically, I am never confident I am editing OSM correctly. Am I supposed to manually draw out sidewalks, or tag the road as having a sidewalk? After adding sidewalks in my area, StreetComplete is now asking me if roads have sidewalks, which I clearly see on the map. Reminds me of editing the various Wiki pages. There's several ways of documenting something, only one way is correct, and it's undocumented.

edit: after playing with StreetComplete more, I noticed you can mark sidewalks as displayed separately. This is tagged as "sidewalk:both=separate" on the road. Whether this is the right way to do things I do not know

There's been some recent developments with removing batteries glued to the device: use floss or some other thin string and saw through the glue. The string won't pierce the battery and can fit in tight spots.

I love looking at historical photos of Southern California if only to re-enforce this exact phenomenon. At one point the largest vineyard in the world existed in Southern California [0]. Just a small patch of green and some abandoned buildings remain [1].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guasti%2C_California

[1] https://www.google.com/maps/place/Guasti,+Ontario,+CA+91761/

The Original TV Hat works with portable media players, smartphones, Microsoft Zune, Apple iPhone, iPod touch and iPod nano.

See? It's possible to support older tech

The differences in engineers for space versus the ocean are fascinating. You'd think space stations and submarines would be interchangeable because they both deal with pressure differentials, right? Wrong. They'd fail in fascinatingly different ways within minutes or hours in the opposite environment

In California, property tax can only go up 2% every year based on the original purchase price (prop 13). For my neighbor who bought their house in the 60s, this must be peanuts.

Even if they are required, who will hold them accountable? The FCC?

Every time a city thinks flooding problems are fixed, nature invents a bigger storm

My dream is to one day own a Curta. I want to find an algorithm to approximate pi, one crank at a time. I had a chance to hold one at a vintage computer festival once. Smaller than I expected. Truly pocketable.

I just had a thought. Why hasn't a Curta simulator come out for the Playdate? I guess I am cursed with creating it

To be more effective, all drink prices should be reduced by 10 cents, then a 10 cent surcharge added for every disposable cup. The price remains the same for all customers, but the extra line item reveals the external costs.

With what we are learning about how gut flora, can a brain be considered conscious while detached from the digestive system?

The point is that we may not have plastic forever. Oil is a finite resource. An easy, cheap replacement hasn't been found yet. Either we abide by reducing and reusing (where we should be focused), or we should actually recycle.

Cross examination is one of the vanishingly few times you can see billionaires and executives act like human beings instead of sentient PR scripts.

I uploaded a PDF to archive.org that auto-OCRs with plenty of mistakes. I have found no way of updating the entire stack of documents produced. I wonder if Project Gutenberg is similar

Cory Doctorow recently published a history book on the topic [0]. Sorry you were left out. I am merely qubits floating in the void. Just finished reading Shakespeare's First Folio translated into Catalan for the tenth time. Wondering what to do next

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rapture_of_the_Nerds

I am surprised that a lawsuit started in 2021 about maintaining emission standards survived up to this point. The DOGE search terms must have misspelled "emission"

If you are wary of all the smart features in your next car purchase, consider buying a bicycle. We do not have to entertain the creeping invasion of our privacy

While all of this in happening, Metrolink, the rail service that connects LA, Orange, San Diego, Riverside, and San Bernardino counties, is having their own budget crisis manifesting in "temporary" reductions in service. More info: https://calelectricrail.org/metrolink-is-facing-service-cuts...

A member, officer, or employee of the __Senate__ shall not receive any compensation, nor shall he permit any compensation to accrue to his beneficial interest from any source, the receipt or accrual of which would occur by virtue of influence improperly exerted from his position as a member, officer, or employee.

Emphasis mine. This does not cover the judicial or executive branch

Would Martha Stewart be sentenced to prison for lying to federal investigators regarding her "prediction" of the release timing of her next cookbook?

We must eradicate mint plants. Over time the dilution of mint particles in the air will become so small that all diseases will go extinct

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscillococcinum

There is no compelling scientific evidence that Oscillococcinum has any effect beyond placebo.

Does not sound promising

Can you give an example of a well-known homeopathic and/or folk remedy that has been adopted into regular medicine, maybe in the last 20-50 years?

Some other historical street view websites:

https://yesterdays.maprva.org/#11.5/37.5438/-77.4392 (specific to Richmond, Virginia, however deployments for other areas are in work)

https://pastvu.com/

Before focusing on rats, who are too light to set off mines and live long pampered lives, I would focus on the 73 million pigs and 87 million cows in factory farms [0].

[0] https://www.sentienceinstitute.org/us-factory-farming-estima...