Minor things that bother you

[kkt]

To me a signature doesn't really verify identity. I think we've all seen a printed or stamped signature on something. It verifies intent. "I agree to the above", "It was by my authority that the above was done", etc. After all, when the President signs a bill, everyone knows that the person signing it is the actual President, but the signature is still important because applying it to the bill makes it law.

Typing a name into a box doesn't carry that level of deliberateness and intent to me.

But still.  The fact that a legal standard is proven by some pattern of oil and carbon dropped into a pattern on tree scraps just still screams antiquated. 

Antiquated is the medieval system of tax receipts in England.  They wrote the receipt for taxes paid along two halves of flat stick, on the left and right, then split the board down the middle.  One half for the taxpayer, the other half for records.  By matching up the wood grain between the halves it could be verified that they were the copies of the same talley stick.  A similar system was used for private debts also.  The Exchequer's halves of the talley stick were stored in the basement of the Palace of Westminster for centuries, until they were too close to the furnace one day in 1834 and acted as great kindling so the ensuing fire consumed not only the basement but almost the entire palace - at the time both a royal palace and the meeting place of parliament.  The loss of the palace was serious, but the loss of centuries of talley sticks was even more serious to students of history.  Also lost were the primary reference standards for the yard and the pound (weight) which led to the British adopted a new set of standards - and that is why British and U.S. gallons are different.

[hotdogPi]

On a different subject: stopped school buses have flashing red lights on them and stop signs that pull out. Everywhere else, flashing red and stop signs mean stop, then continue when clear. Why is the meaning of the signs and signals different for school buses? (Even railroad crossings are equivalent to a flashing red, not a solid red, if there's no gate physically blocking you.)

[webny99]

On a different subject: stopped school buses have flashing red lights on them and stop signs that pull out. Everywhere else, flashing red and stop signs mean stop, then continue when clear. Why is the meaning of the signs and signals different for school buses?

Don't they mean the same thing for school buses (stop, then continue when clear)?

You could argue there's a slightly different meaning of "clear" in the case of school buses - clear of pedestrians as opposed to clear of other vehicles - but it's ultimately pretty much the same meaning.

[Big John]

School Bus stop means stop until the stop sign is pulled and the flashing red lights stop flashing.

[formulanone]

On a different subject: stopped school buses have flashing red lights on them and stop signs that pull out. Everywhere else, flashing red and stop signs mean stop, then continue when clear. Why is the meaning of the signs and signals different for school buses?

Don't they mean the same thing for school buses (stop, then continue when clear)?

You could argue there's a slightly different meaning of "clear" in the case of school buses - clear of pedestrians as opposed to clear of other vehicles - but it's ultimately pretty much the same meaning.

If I'm not mistaken, the red lights flash in an alternating pattern, similar to a railroad crossing. It does not have a "winking" (temporarily blank) phase.

If anything, there's probably a few intersections that could use a treatment like this, but (1) it's not in the MUTCD for intersections (2) would probably get over-used if applied.

[JayhawkCO]

Finding a pair of jeans and then realizing they're button fly.  Who likes this?!?!

[1995hoo]

Finding a pair of jeans and then realizing they're button fly.  Who likes this?!?!

Ben Stiller's character in Something About Mary might like a button fly.....

[JayhawkCO]

Finding a pair of jeans and then realizing they're button fly.  Who likes this?!?!

Ben Stiller's character in Something About Mary might like a button fly.....

I mean, there has maybe been a time when camping and I got a little over eager to get back into the tent, but outside of the edge cases (I cringe a little using the word edge), buttons take ten times as long every time you undo your fly!  The only perk is that you don't have to button them up when drying them to avoid the weird fly "wrinkle" that some jeans get from the zipper getting too hot.

[jakeroot]

Finding a pair of jeans and then realizing they're button fly.  Who likes this?!?!

Ben Stiller's character in Something About Mary might like a button fly.....

Exactly my first thought. Ouch.

[qguy]

Levi's 501 buttonfly is the only jeans I wear. Since I was in my 20s, back when dirt was new.

[LilianaUwU]

I can't wear jeans at all, as they're wildly uncomfortable for me. Which brings me to something that bothers me: the stigma against sweatpants/jogging pants (from my experience wearing them all the time). What's wrong with being comfy?

[JayhawkCO]

I can't wear jeans at all, as they're wildly uncomfortable for me. Which brings me to something that bothers me: the stigma against sweatpants/jogging pants (from my experience wearing them all the time). What's wrong with being comfy?

I feel like it's gone away some recently.  At least for guys, joggers are seen as normal "out of the house"wear.  Athleisure overall is way more popular than it used to be.

[thenetwork]

I watch several reality shows on TV.  One thing I see time and time again is when they show a "sunrise" to indicate a new day.

The transition scene shows the sun "rising" and arcing to the LEFT.

Now, if you are filming a reality show based NORTH of the Equator, the sun always arc to the RIGHT, or clockwise in the sky.

Therefore, these crack producers or video editors use a sunset and play the video "backwards" to make it look like a sunrise.

How freaking hard is it to get up at the crack of dawn to film a real sunrise, or digitally reverse the image so the sun is rising and going in the "right" direction instead of catching a sunset and playing it backwards?

[formulanone]

How freaking hard is it to get up at the crack of dawn to film a real sunrise...

a) stock footage is cheap and easy
b) said programming spends lots of time in post-production anyhow
c) nobody wants to get up that early, especially the stars (the water-and-carbon ones)
d) most people don't sweat the details, hence propagation of tropes
e) all of the above

I can't wear jeans at all, as they're wildly uncomfortable for me. Which brings me to something that bothers me: the stigma against sweatpants/jogging pants (from my experience wearing them all the time). What's wrong with being comfy?

I feel like it's gone away some recently.  At least for guys, joggers are seen as normal "out of the house"wear.  Athleisure overall is way more popular than it used to be.

So as long as people are doing their job reliably, safely, and without disruption, I'm personally not a stickler for details of a dress code. Let people be comfortable so as long as they're not inept, lazy, genuinely offensive, or unsafe. If you don't need a solid and cohesive uniform, why have it?

Of course, the handbook for my job tells me otherwise, and it goes through phases of rigid enforcement to a proverbial wagging of the finger. Depends on who's around, and rarely anyone terribly important towards the peak of the org-chart shows up on Fridays.

[thspfc]

I also hate wearing jeans. They're uncomfortable, none of them fit me, and they look terrible.

[Scott5114]

Agreed to the jeans. It seems like no matter what, my waist decides it wants to settle on an odd number of inches, and jeans for men are almost always only available in even-numbered sizes. And then they are seldom roomy enough in the ass and thighs.

[ZLoth]

Something that bothered me this past week: Smart televisions and the expectation that you enter in the password such as p1!V0$AovF&V,ybTm82g to access the streaming service utilizing the television remote instead of displaying a code that you can enter through a web browser. At least I can use the Roku app to paste the password in, but the SiriusXM app on Roku doesn't even allow THAT! Can I at least view the password on the screen? Noooooo...

[CtrlAltDel]

I've noticed, at least at Texas A&M, that jeans are not as popular as they were when I was at college.

[tchafe1978]

I've noticed, at least at Texas A&M, that jeans are not as popular as they were when I was at college.

Leggings and yoga pants have become the new jeans.

[jakeroot]

Yeah, I wear joggers A LOT.

But I do have a couple pairs of jeans, since there are definitely places that require some dressing up.

[J N Winkler]

I can't wear jeans at all, as they're wildly uncomfortable for me. Which brings me to something that bothers me: the stigma against sweatpants/jogging pants (from my experience wearing them all the time). What's wrong with being comfy?

Nothing, I would say, though my personal choice for comfort is khaki trousers rather than sweatpants.  Joggers and so on are certainly safer for casual indoors public settings (such as the coffee nook off the lobby at a hotel or motel) than a bathrobe.  Footwear is the main area in which I push back against dress codes--men's dress shoes, not to say ladies' pumps, are hell not just on the skin and the small bones in the foot, but also the large joints in the leg.

Classic blue denim is a stout and stiff fabric, which makes it ideal for manual-labor occupations such as farming, ranching, and lumberjacking where a degree of resistance to impact and friction is desirable but the specific use cases don't quite rise to the level of requiring expensive leather gear such as chaps.  But it can also be uncomfortably hot, especially in the warmer and more humid summers that come with climate change.

Though jeans are increasingly seen as part of the dressy end of the casual-wear spectrum for both men and women (for the latter, Andrea Linett's The Cool Factor advocates various ensembles that include jeans and a navy-blue blazer with a soft top), personally I wear chocolate-brown khakis with a wrinkle-free light-brown dress shirt with an Oxford collar and add a tie (Windsor knot, bottom end low enough to cover my belt buckle) and a navy-blue "beater blazer" when necessary.  (I'm also a fan of undershirts, not just for sweat management but also for shaping, and prefer extra-thickness white cotton with short sleeves and round collar, or V-neck if the top button of the dress shirt will be left undone.)

I've not worn jeans in about 30 years, but after the winter covid surge petered out earlier this year, I shopped for them as part of exploring the lumbersexual look.  It took two afternoons of visiting multiple department stores and clothing boutiques just to approximate good fit.  Choices have to be made along a bewildering array of axes--color, saturation, degree of fabric distress (real or simulated), landing point of the belt line (high or low on waist), cut, treatment of cuffs, etc.  I also had the sense that tailoring in general is oriented toward sexual display (tight around the buttocks for the "bubble butt" look, tight around the crotch so that it's easier to see whether a male wearer has an erection) rather than comfort.  Friends who have organized their looks around jeans have told me they often need to go to boutiques such as Old Navy rather than to the major department stores to find ones that fit, and I certainly had an easier time there since their athletic-cut 32x34s almost fit (though I struggled to tuck in a shirt).  But even the near misses were uncomfortably hot and tight, and moving up a waist size was no help.

[Scott5114]

Another thing that makes finding a good jean fit difficult is that, in my experience, they relax as you wear them and shrink back up when they're washed. So a pair of jeans that fits well right out of the dryer is likely to be falling off after a couple of hours of wear.

[jakeroot]

"bubble butt"

"'Term I thought I'd never hear J N Winkler use' for $800, Alex."

Jokes aside, my girl loves it when I wear pants that show off my butt, so I know what you mean.

[Big John]

Another thing that makes finding a good jean fit difficult is that, in my experience, they relax as you wear them and shrink back up when they're washed. So a pair of jeans that fits well right out of the dryer is likely to be falling off after a couple of hours of wear.

Levi's advises you to freeze their jeans rather to wash them.  But it doesn't kill off the germs unlike what Levi's advises.

[GaryV]

I don't have to have jeans to show off my butt.  No one is ever going to miss seeing it.