Minor things that bother you

[JayhawkCO]

People who comment on our Facebook demanding a post about specific minor public roads be taken down.  The standard reason is typically of a variation of "we don't like non-locals." 

I used to co-admin on a forum discussing hot springs and we would get complaints about how members' posts were drawing too many people to certain springs.  The ethic in that community is that you can discuss the "unknown" springs but not give specific information about their location.  Many hot springs are listed in published hot springs guides, though.  The best complaint I got was that somebody posted some very nice photos of a VERY well known hot spring, and another user demanded that we take those photos down because they made that particular spot look too nice.  Sharing photos is a big part of the reason the forum exists.

That issue has been made mostly irrelevant by the proliferation of Facebook pages and TikTok videos which pretty much "advertise" hot springs, quite to their detriment.

I kind of feel the same way about dispersed camping in Colorado. It gets tougher and tougher to keep the good sites for myself, but I'm not on a forum to look for them either.

I am heading to one of the most remote hot springs in the world on Adak Island probably on Friday night. Very excited.

[Scott5114]

A long time ago it was considered faux pas on this forum to state the exact location of old, classic signs (things like ancient cutouts), lest that result in their replacement. Apparently a good chunk of that was driven by a particular eBay seller who would contact state DOTs and provoke replacements in order to cheaply obtain stock for his store. I think that seller stopped operating, though, so that hasn't been a concern for a long time.

[Max Rockatansky]

I purposely never asked that seller too many questions about where those older signs were coming from. 

[Rothman]

I purposely never asked that seller too many questions about where those older signs were coming from. 

I would have followed the opposite strategy to this one with him.

[Bruce]

The overcrowding of the outdoors, especially certain spots that go viral on social media, is a real problem. It's caused them to be destroyed or inaccessible to those who would be more careful about intruding on nature. It will only end in more asinine restrictions and barriers for the law-abiding, rules-following visitors.

[Max Rockatansky]

Nobody is crowding Road 612 anytime soon.  The road being dirt, not a sign route and not on Google Street View will forever deter 99.99% or people from ever using it.

[Max Rockatansky]

I purposely never asked that seller too many questions about where those older signs were coming from. 

I would have followed the opposite strategy to this one with him.

I'm just surprised there was an alternate take on the situation.  I never heard the variation about supposedly reaching out to DOTs and getting the old signs scrapped.  I'm wondering if this was actual cover story that I never heard or Scott being coy?

[7/8]

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[formulanone]

I purposely never asked that seller too many questions about where those older signs were coming from. 

I would have followed the opposite strategy to this one with him.

I'm just surprised there was an alternate take on the situation.  I never heard the variation about supposedly reaching out to DOTs and getting the old signs scrapped.  I'm wondering if this was actual cover story that I never heard or Scott being coy?

I'd suspected it at times, but there's also the laws of natural attrition; if it's an old sign, it's overdue for replacement. But when the sign is missing, leaving a blank post, and not replaced in kind, there's something fishy.

I'd tried not to give exact locations of old signs I've discovered or re-photographed from other users' discoveries. I've even gone as far as to naturally blur out backgrounds using a large-aperture shot, to reduce location clues when possible, and emphasize the subject. I don't worry about BGSes or nearly inaccessible locations so much.

But there's only so much you can do; two minutes on Google would tell you where this was located (it's gone now):

[hbelkins]

I purposely never asked that seller too many questions about where those older signs were coming from. 

I would have followed the opposite strategy to this one with him.

I'm just surprised there was an alternate take on the situation.  I never heard the variation about supposedly reaching out to DOTs and getting the old signs scrapped.  I'm wondering if this was actual cover story that I never heard or Scott being coy?

I don't remember that being an issue on this forum, but I do remember it on m.t.r and even the Yahoo road-related groups.

[kernals12]

Modern company names. In the good old days, when you founded a company, you named it after yourself and or the product you were selling and the words "amalgamated" "united" or "general" or some geographical qualifier. Now companies just come up with stupid sounding names that men in suits think are catchy.

Doesn't "General Search Engine" sound classier than Google and "Jobs-Wozniak Computers" better than Apple?

[Max Rockatansky]

I prefer modern companies have names that sound like super terrorist organizations.  Crowdstrike fits the mold perfectly I think. 

[1995hoo]

Modern company names. In the good old days, when you founded a company, you named it after yourself and or the product you were selling and the words "amalgamated" "united" or "general" or some geographical qualifier. Now companies just come up with stupid sounding names that men in suits think are catchy.

Doesn't "General Search Engine" sound classier than Google and "Jobs-Wozniak Computers" better than Apple?

One reason companies try to come up with more creative names has to do with trademark law. The more "creative" the name, the more likely you are to be able to enforce exclusivity in the use of that name.

"General Search Engine" is not likely to receive very strong protection because its name is "merely descriptive"—it simply tells you what the product is (or does, I guess). If you use your name, you'll run into problems if someone else has the same name. A good example of the latter situation is the endless disputes between the Hershey Company (known for making chocolate) and the completely unaffiliated Hershey Creamery Company (known for selling Hershey's Ice Cream). Both companies were founded in the same year, in the same county in Pennsylvania, by completely unrelated individuals who happened to have the same last name, "Hershey." The chocolate company immensely resents that the lesser-known ice cream company is allowed to use that name, but the latter is named for its founders.

Another example you read about in a law school intellectual property class was when CBS went after an auto mechanic somewhere in western New York State (I think the Buffalo area) for using his own name on his garage. He was named Ed Sullivan. He won. CBS's claim that people would think it was "the" Ed Sullivan operating that garage was, quite rightly, found to be ludicrous.

[kernals12]

Modern company names. In the good old days, when you founded a company, you named it after yourself and or the product you were selling and the words "amalgamated" "united" or "general" or some geographical qualifier. Now companies just come up with stupid sounding names that men in suits think are catchy.

Doesn't "General Search Engine" sound classier than Google and "Jobs-Wozniak Computers" better than Apple?

One reason companies try to come up with more creative names has to do with trademark law. The more "creative" the name, the more likely you are to be able to enforce exclusivity in the use of that name.

"General Search Engine" is not likely to receive very strong protection because its name is "merely descriptive"—it simply tells you what the product is (or does, I guess). If you use your name, you'll run into problems if someone else has the same name. A good example of the latter situation is the endless disputes between the Hershey Company (known for making chocolate) and the completely unaffiliated Hershey Creamery Company (known for selling Hershey's Ice Cream). Both companies were founded in the same year, in the same county in Pennsylvania, by completely unrelated individuals who happened to have the same last name, "Hershey." The chocolate company immensely resents that the lesser-known ice cream company is allowed to use that name, but the latter is named for its founders.

Another example you read about in a law school intellectual property class was when CBS went after an auto mechanic somewhere in western New York State (I think the Buffalo area) for using his own name on his garage. He was named Ed Sullivan. He won. CBS's claim that people would think it was "the" Ed Sullivan operating that garage was, quite rightly, found to be ludicrous.

Similar thing happened with a computer technician named Uzi Nissan.

[thenetwork]

Modern company names. In the good old days, when you founded a company, you named it after yourself and or the product you were selling and the words "amalgamated" "united" or "general" or some geographical qualifier. Now companies just come up with stupid sounding names that men in suits think are catchy.

Doesn't "General Search Engine" sound classier than Google and "Jobs-Wozniak Computers" better than Apple?

In a similar vein:  TV programs that were known by their full name when the began, but over time they moved to just initials to try to be "hip".

I believe Entertainment Tonight started the fad after the movie E.T. became a hit in 1983, then they thought it would be cool to start calling themselves after an alien --- ooooohhh!!!

Now you have SNL/GMA/SNF/MNF and several others that do the same thing.

As a later baby boomer, I say all by their full names, only using initials (rarely) in texting or typing (like above).

[SectorZ]

I prefer modern companies have names that sound like super terrorist organizations.  Crowdstrike fits the mold perfectly I think. 

Weather Underground, as a meteorologist, has always irked me, especially since I actually like the site and respect the hell out of Dr. Jeff Masters, its creator.

[SEWIGuy]

Modern company names. In the good old days, when you founded a company, you named it after yourself and or the product you were selling and the words "amalgamated" "united" or "general" or some geographical qualifier. Now companies just come up with stupid sounding names that men in suits think are catchy.

Doesn't "General Search Engine" sound classier than Google and "Jobs-Wozniak Computers" better than Apple?

No.

[kernals12]

A good example of the latter situation is the endless disputes between the Hershey Company (known for making chocolate) and the completely unaffiliated Hershey Creamery Company (known for selling Hershey's Ice Cream). Both companies were founded in the same year, in the same county in Pennsylvania, by completely unrelated individuals who happened to have the same last name, "Hershey." The chocolate company immensely resents that the lesser-known ice cream company is allowed to use that name, but the latter is named for its founders.

Why don't they just merge? There are definitely synergies: Hershey's Chocolate Ice Cream.

Similarly, Dairy Queen and Burger King should marry and bring peace to the fast food realm and Whataburger should acquire the New Mexico burger chain Lotaburger and form Whatalotaburger

[Scott5114]

The overcrowding of the outdoors, especially certain spots that go viral on social media, is a real problem. It's caused them to be destroyed or inaccessible to those who would be more careful about intruding on nature. It will only end in more asinine restrictions and barriers for the law-abiding, rules-following visitors.

There is plenty of outdoors available with no crowding at all. There are state parks in western Oklahoma that barely have the visitation to justify keeping them open. But of course those are often based around an obscure, but perfectly adequate, lake, or a canyon, or something like the Great Salt Plains. But those don't have the NPS Seal of Approval, and they're not in a Western state, so it's not "cool" to visit them.

I'm just surprised there was an alternate take on the situation.  I never heard the variation about supposedly reaching out to DOTs and getting the old signs scrapped.  I'm wondering if this was actual cover story that I never heard or Scott being coy?

What I posted is what Jake Bear said back when this was going on. I suppose he might have been being coy, but I sort of doubt it; I would imagine in that situation he'd be apt to call a spade a spade.

[Bruce]

Old-timey names are a nightmare when needing to search through archives. A distinct name helps a ton and is eye-catching, which is why we've been using them for product brands for well over a century. Only natural that the companies would later adopt that style of naming to follow suit.

[1995hoo]

A good example of the latter situation is the endless disputes between the Hershey Company (known for making chocolate) and the completely unaffiliated Hershey Creamery Company (known for selling Hershey's Ice Cream). Both companies were founded in the same year, in the same county in Pennsylvania, by completely unrelated individuals who happened to have the same last name, "Hershey." The chocolate company immensely resents that the lesser-known ice cream company is allowed to use that name, but the latter is named for its founders.

Why don't they just merge? There are definitely synergies: Hershey's Chocolate Ice Cream.

...

They have no interest in merging. Presumably one factor is their years of bad blood. I have a feeling the chocolate company would be happy to buy the creamery and then shut it down, if the latter's owners were willing to sell.

[wanderer2575]

In a similar vein:  TV programs that were known by their full name when the began, but over time they moved to just initials to try to be "hip".

I believe Entertainment Tonight started the fad after the movie E.T. became a hit in 1983, then they thought it would be cool to start calling themselves after an alien --- ooooohhh!!!

Now you have SNL/GMA/SNF/MNF and several others that do the same thing.

As a later baby boomer, I say all by their full names, only using initials (rarely) in texting or typing (like above).

And continuing along that line:  Celebrities (or is that "celebrities") who go by the initial of their first name and first syllable of their last name.  J-Lo.  A-Rod.  It was maybe sort of cute for the first dozen people but now it's a tired and unimaginative cliche.

[GaryV]

And continuing along that line:  Celebrities (or is that "celebrities") who go by the initial of their first name and first syllable of their last name.  J-Lo.  A-Rod.  It was maybe sort of cute for the first dozen people but now it's a tired and unimaginative cliche.

Also when they combine together into one word the names of celebrities who are a couple.

[kurumi]

In a similar vein:  TV programs that were known by their full name when the began, but over time they moved to just initials to try to be "hip".

I believe Entertainment Tonight started the fad after the movie E.T. became a hit in 1983, then they thought it would be cool to start calling themselves after an alien --- ooooohhh!!!

Now you have SNL/GMA/SNF/MNF and several others that do the same thing.

As a later baby boomer, I say all by their full names, only using initials (rarely) in texting or typing (like above).

And continuing along that line:  Celebrities (or is that "celebrities") who go by the initial of their first name and first syllable of their last name.  J-Lo.  A-Rod.  It was maybe sort of cute for the first dozen people but now it's a tired and unimaginative cliche.

A low point for the Golden State Warriors, 20+ years ago, was their catchphrase "Who will J-Rich dunk on next?"

That encapsulated a lot of things annoying about Space Jam-style NBA when your local team isn't winning. Who cares about "J-Rich"? Who cares about dunking? The W's were more than halfway through a streak of 12 losing seasons in a row. Wouldn't it be cool if they could put together a team that could, you know, play basketball and win games. (They eventually did figure it out.)

[ZLoth]

As an adult caregiver who does not allow his 83 year old mother to drive, this means that I have to take my mother to medical appointments. That sometimes involves exams where I'm stuck waiting for two hours in the waiting room. At least I have a job that allows me to VPN and work remotely. But if only there was some sort of desk where I could set up my laptop to work. When I last on Jury Duty in 2018, the Sacramento County Jury waiting area had small desks so that you can work. It is certainly better than reading several year old magazines that they have lying around.