Minor things that bother you

[ZLoth]

From NBC 10 Rochester, NY:

READ THE FULL STORY

If my parents caught me doing something this stupid, not only would I be grounded, but I would be reminded about it fore the rest of my life.

[kphoger]

The point is simply that the evidence in those cases didn't support foul play. The burn patterns matched slow, smoldering ignition in a low‑airflow environment, not explosions, attacks, or anything criminal. That's why the official findings ruled out enemies or homicide -- not because the cops "knew everything," but because the physical evidence didn't point to foul play.

That's just, like, what they want you to believe, man.
[/sarc]

[wxfree]

Didn't South Park have an episode about this?  Something about the retention of flatulence?

On a more serious note (as serious as you can be about this), my first thought was about naturally occurring flammable materials in a low oxygen environment (anatomically internal).  Science can't explain it not because it's supernatural and beyond explanation, but because it's rare and no one has happened to go up in flames in a laboratory where they can figure out what happened.

[Max Rockatansky]

Didn't South Park have an episode about this?  Something about the retention of flatulence?

Yes, Kenny specifically didn't want to fart in front of his girlfriend:

South Park I've found more often than not has a parody for weird things and phenomenon.

[wxfree]

Didn't South Park have an episode about this?  Something about the retention of flatulence?

Yes, Kenny specifically didn't want to fart in front of his girlfriend:

...

South Park I've found more often than not has a parody for weird things and phenomenon.

Kenny went up quite fast, suggesting there might be something a little different, such as an internal oxygen supply.  It looks like some kind of rapid smoldering.  The combustion seems to bond to the combination of the combustible material and the oxidizer.  This is why it doesn't spread easily in spite of its intensity.  The last chemistry class I took was in the late 90s, and at that time we didn't know about the fart molecules Randy discovered.  Their atomic composition and chemical properties might be the key.

[Max Rockatansky]

Didn't South Park have an episode about this?  Something about the retention of flatulence?

Yes, Kenny specifically didn't want to fart in front of his girlfriend:

...

South Park I've found more often than not has a parody for weird things and phenomenon.

Kenny went up quite fast, suggesting there might be something a little different, such as an internal oxygen supply.  It looks like some kind of rapid smoldering.  The combustion seems to bond to the combination of the combustible material and the oxidizer.  This is why it doesn't spread easily in spite of its intensity.  The last chemistry class I took was in the late 90s, and at that time we didn't know about the fart molecules Randy discovered.  Their atomic composition and chemical properties might be the key.

I find it amusing that early South Park didn't portray Randy Marsh as an absolute idiot.  That character began coming into his own around when the PF Changs episode aired. 

[hbelkins]

It's pretty blatant that in every single one of those cases there was foul play but it was hidden by authorities for whatever reason.

You should take off the tin-foil hat before typing next time.

What, you want me to believe that people just explode all of a sudden, and that there's no scientific explanation for it?

Spinal Tap had a problem with drummers perishing in that manner.

[elsmere241]

When a collector sends you a bill for a past medical appointment that insurance didn't cover, and the insurance company won't help you because it's about two weeks past the two-year deadline.

[bugo]

You're a very angry person

Have you noticed that a lot of people tend to get that way after you talk to them?

I don't get nearly as angry since I did this:

[bugo]

In Japanese, Tokyo sounds more like "toke-yo" rather than English's "toe-key-yo" and Osaka is more like "OH-saka" rather than English's "oh-SOCK-uh".

How do they pronounce Okada and Takeshita in Japan? In the US, it's "oh-KAH-duh" and "ta-KESH-ta".

[Rothman]

From NBC 10 Rochester, NY:

READ THE FULL STORY

If my parents caught me doing something this stupid, not only would I be grounded, but I would be reminded about it fore the rest of my life.

Well...Rochester...so...duh.

[wxfree]

Quoth the Font of all Knowledge: The name for Japan in Japanese is written using the kanji 日本 and is pronounced Nihon or Nippon.

So why do we call it Japan, which doesn't even a little bit sound like that?  Quoting again: The name "Japan" is based on Min or Wu Chinese pronunciations of 日本 and was introduced to European languages through early trade.

So the name "Japan" comes from Chinese.  Let's just say that bothers me.

Now, what do the Japanese call this country?  That's a fascinating question.  Do they say "United States" with a Japanese accent?  Since those are two common words, do they translate the adjective and noun into their language?  Maybe something like "added together statuses."

The Times is the most pretentious newspaper name.  It isn't the Times of something (which is a normal name), but just The Times.  Like it's the only one.  The word "state" is similarly pretentious.  A state is a political body, but the word refers to the way things are, the absolute and undeniable.  (To say "I am the state" is like saying "I am God."  It's saying "I am the way it is, the truth, the self-evident."  To me, the wording of that name, "I am that I am" is full of and overflowing with meaning.")  That's why in my fake Japanese I translated "state" as "status."  It makes that point in my fake Japanese that we often gloss over in English.  The State of Texas is a self-proclaimed god, but no one notices.  (The same applies to every state, but Texans are state-worshipping people, so I used it in my example.)

Words are such fascinating things, turning on slight tints of thought and hints of meaning.

[TheHighwayMan3561]

Looking it up Japan has three different names for the US it appears.

Colloquially they refer to us as "Amerika" transliterated (which surely won't annoy non-US North American people who hate when the US is shorthanded to "America")

The slightly more formal name used in the media is "Beikoki".

There's also an official US government name as well used by the Japanese.

[vdeane]

The fact that TM is starting to scope creep its way into making clinching not a worthwhile activity to do.  What is the point of trying to clinch an entire region or fill in the map, make it look good with no blips of clinched stuff at the borders or where a roadmeet tour connected via local roads, if the goalposts are going to constantly move?  Nothing can be relied on anymore, whether something is in or not, clinching trips cannot be planned based on the data because they might randomly add something in a few months/years, and with the addition of interstate bridges, there's no way to reasonably clinch some regions without introducing problems in adjacent regions (for example, I've now lost my 100% of NY probably permanently because of a random bridge over the Delaware River that's a long drive to get to with nothing new worth seeing on the way there/back, and even if I did fix it, I'd have a bunch of random clinches to nowhere protruding into PA!).

This is really starting to turn me off from the concept of clinching, to be honest.  I can't see myself ever veering away from interstates and mainline US routes, but everything else is starting to look pointless except for some routes that I have a specific interest in.

[Max Rockatansky]

everything else is starting to look pointless except for some routes that I have a specific interest in.

This is probably a healthier approach to spending your time behind the wheel anyways.

[Scott5114]

The fact that TM is starting to scope creep its way into making clinching not a worthwhile activity to do.  What is the point of trying to clinch an entire region or fill in the map, make it look good with no blips of clinched stuff at the borders or where a roadmeet tour connected via local roads, if the goalposts are going to constantly move?  Nothing can be relied on anymore, whether something is in or not, clinching trips cannot be planned based on the data because they might randomly add something in a few months/years, and with the addition of interstate bridges, there's no way to reasonably clinch some regions without introducing problems in adjacent regions (for example, I've now lost my 100% of NY probably permanently because of a random bridge over the Delaware River that's a long drive to get to with nothing new worth seeing on the way there/back, and even if I did fix it, I'd have a bunch of random clinches to nowhere protruding into PA!).

This is really starting to turn me off from the concept of clinching, to be honest.  I can't see myself ever veering away from interstates and mainline US routes, but everything else is starting to look pointless except for some routes that I have a specific interest in.

Have you brought this up on their forums? I imagine the point of adding these things is to get people more interested in clinching, not less, so if it's having the opposite effect they might like to know about it.

But on the other hand I'm not really sure why it matters that a clinch "leads to nowhere" in an adjoining state. Actually, as someone who's never been close to 100%ing anything on there I don't really feel one way or another about them adding new systems like this. I'm not really interested in clinching these bridges, but I'm not really interested in clinching Select Tourist Routes or Serbia Državni Put either. So I just...don't.

[kurumi]

Looking it up Japan has three different names for the US it appears.

Colloquially they refer to us as "Amerika" transliterated (which surely won't annoy non-US North American people who hate when the US is shorthanded to "America")

The slightly more formal name used in the media is "Beikoki".

There's also an official US government name as well used by the Japanese.

Katakana (which is usually phonetic): アメリカ (A-me-ri-ka)

Kanji alone (also phonetic): 亜米利加 (A-me-ri-ka). Usage is less common. The individual kanji meanings are approximately Asia, Rice (see below), profit, and add/include. If you're pissed off with the US, change the 亜 to 悪, meaning "bad".

United States of America is アメリカ合衆国 (Amerika Gasshuukoku). This one's pretty formal.

Remember the second character ("rice") from 亜米利加? That's used in the abbreviation: 米国 (beikoku, "rice country" == America). But the rice is there just for phonetic match. Since 日本 (nihon) is Japan, and 米国 is the US, 日米 means Japan-US relations (like the Jeopardy sketch) in terms of culture, trade, etc.

Thank you for attending my TED talk

[TheCatalyst31]

The fact that TM is starting to scope creep its way into making clinching not a worthwhile activity to do.  What is the point of trying to clinch an entire region or fill in the map, make it look good with no blips of clinched stuff at the borders or where a roadmeet tour connected via local roads, if the goalposts are going to constantly move?  Nothing can be relied on anymore, whether something is in or not, clinching trips cannot be planned based on the data because they might randomly add something in a few months/years, and with the addition of interstate bridges, there's no way to reasonably clinch some regions without introducing problems in adjacent regions (for example, I've now lost my 100% of NY probably permanently because of a random bridge over the Delaware River that's a long drive to get to with nothing new worth seeing on the way there/back, and even if I did fix it, I'd have a bunch of random clinches to nowhere protruding into PA!).

This is really starting to turn me off from the concept of clinching, to be honest.  I can't see myself ever veering away from interstates and mainline US routes, but everything else is starting to look pointless except for some routes that I have a specific interest in.

Have you brought this up on their forums? I imagine the point of adding these things is to get people more interested in clinching, not less, so if it's having the opposite effect they might like to know about it.

But on the other hand I'm not really sure why it matters that a clinch "leads to nowhere" in an adjoining state. Actually, as someone who's never been close to 100%ing anything on there I don't really feel one way or another about them adding new systems like this. I'm not really interested in clinching these bridges, but I'm not really interested in clinching Select Tourist Routes or Serbia Državni Put either. So I just...don't.

Judging by the dozens of river crossing threads on this forum, there's clearly some appetite for tracking bridge clinches. Whether TM is the right place to do that is a different question, but it looks like the bridge system is still very early in development. I'm not sure how I feel about it, but I do like the idea of having bridges that are a state route on one half and not the other, because those make my map look weird as it is.

What I hope we get on TM someday, especially as TM adds more new systems, is the ability to filter which systems matter to you on the state/region pages. I'm willing to drive most anything and I'm not too worried about my map being messy, but it would be nice to have a "just Interstates, US Routes, and state routes" option, for example. That being said, I realize that's a lot of programming for a site that's mostly run by one guy.

[vdeane]

The fact that TM is starting to scope creep its way into making clinching not a worthwhile activity to do.  What is the point of trying to clinch an entire region or fill in the map, make it look good with no blips of clinched stuff at the borders or where a roadmeet tour connected via local roads, if the goalposts are going to constantly move?  Nothing can be relied on anymore, whether something is in or not, clinching trips cannot be planned based on the data because they might randomly add something in a few months/years, and with the addition of interstate bridges, there's no way to reasonably clinch some regions without introducing problems in adjacent regions (for example, I've now lost my 100% of NY probably permanently because of a random bridge over the Delaware River that's a long drive to get to with nothing new worth seeing on the way there/back, and even if I did fix it, I'd have a bunch of random clinches to nowhere protruding into PA!).

This is really starting to turn me off from the concept of clinching, to be honest.  I can't see myself ever veering away from interstates and mainline US routes, but everything else is starting to look pointless except for some routes that I have a specific interest in.

Have you brought this up on their forums? I imagine the point of adding these things is to get people more interested in clinching, not less, so if it's having the opposite effect they might like to know about it.

But on the other hand I'm not really sure why it matters that a clinch "leads to nowhere" in an adjoining state. Actually, as someone who's never been close to 100%ing anything on there I don't really feel one way or another about them adding new systems like this. I'm not really interested in clinching these bridges, but I'm not really interested in clinching Select Tourist Routes or Serbia Državni Put either. So I just...don't.

I pushed back a bit when it looked like the "interstate bridges" system would go so far as to include "major" intrastate bridges, but overall I suspect that I'm in the minority on this.  I don't know how many there actually clinch things for the sake of "making the map look good".  I know I'm glad that I my planned overnight trip to the Hunterdon County meet collapsed; the data on which the route there was planned is already obsolete.  My attempt to make my NJ and PA maps look nicer would have just made both worse.

As for the dangling ends, that's a consequence of me always pulling maps by region, so if I pull up PA, and the bridges with NY appear, they'd be disconnected from anything else because I have little interest in clinching random PA routes so those bridges would be clinched by turning around at the first opportunity in PA.  I have a few blips from other things which I don't like, mostly roadmeets where I've never had the opportunity to clean up that section of the map by clinching more things (and the less said about Ontario, the better, although this has made me realize that there's little point in waiting until I clinch ON 2 and more of ON 401 to claim the short section of the route I've been on, even though my parents and I took the 1000 Islands Parkway to get there, which isn't on the map).  Heck, there was a point where I was planning clinches at roadmeets based entirely on whether one specific person would be attending, because he has a habit of requesting points at locations where the tour turned, so I couldn't rely on a tour avoiding clinching a whole mapped section to avoid eventually having to mark the section as clinched.

I can't help but wonder if they're getting close to fulfilling their original mandate for what's to be included and looking for more thing to draft rather than get everything activated and then just maintain, given that over in France they've been busy drafting the equivalent of county routes for years now.

Judging by the dozens of river crossing threads on this forum, there's clearly some appetite for tracking bridge clinches. Whether TM is the right place to do that is a different question, but it looks like the bridge system is still very early in development. I'm not sure how I feel about it, but I do like the idea of having bridges that are a state route on one half and not the other, because those make my map look weird as it is.

I was surprised that it went to preview that quickly.  It also looks like they're taking a more liberal definition of how close it need to be to a TM route than they did for the international bridges; when the international bridges were added, I never imagined bridges between two parallel routes in the system, rather than just where one route ends at the border and the other side doesn't have a route.

In my case, I don't ever use the main Mapview updating the display based on the current area because of how slow it is, only the individual region views and sometimes system views for things like the interstates, so the lack of connectivity is something I largely wouldn't notice, other than extreme cases like routes in Ontario stopping short of the border.

What I hope we get on TM someday, especially as TM adds more new systems, is the ability to filter which systems matter to you on the state/region pages. I'm willing to drive most anything and I'm not too worried about my map being messy, but it would be nice to have a "just Interstates, US Routes, and state routes" option, for example. That being said, I realize that's a lot of programming for a site that's mostly run by one guy.

It's been talked about for a while now, but the implementation would be the opposite of how I'd do it.  I'd have a user define in their .list file which systems they want to track, and then maps/stats on their page would just include/exclude based on how the user tracks.  Instead the vision is to have this be based on the settings of the person doing the viewing, to be applied to all people's pages that they view, and stored in a browser cookie.


Honestly, thinking about a few things, I suspect some of these impulse go back years, given how many of the contributors to TM complain about how Tim wouldn't let them do all the things they wanted on CHM.  Meanwhile, I'm thinking about how I agreed with Tim on most of those things (although I'm not so sure of his desire to have the Vermont state routes be split into two systems, given how at the time, they seemed to switch to circle shields through every major town center).

[LilianaUwU]

The main thing I have against the TM scope creep is that they want to include international bridges. Do I look like I want to go to the US in order to clinch Ontario? It wouldn't be safe for me, or many others in the hobby, to do so.

[TBKS1]

The fact that TM is starting to scope creep its way into making clinching not a worthwhile activity to do.  What is the point of trying to clinch an entire region or fill in the map, make it look good with no blips of clinched stuff at the borders or where a roadmeet tour connected via local roads, if the goalposts are going to constantly move?  Nothing can be relied on anymore, whether something is in or not, clinching trips cannot be planned based on the data because they might randomly add something in a few months/years, and with the addition of interstate bridges, there's no way to reasonably clinch some regions without introducing problems in adjacent regions (for example, I've now lost my 100% of NY probably permanently because of a random bridge over the Delaware River that's a long drive to get to with nothing new worth seeing on the way there/back, and even if I did fix it, I'd have a bunch of random clinches to nowhere protruding into PA!).

I've also noticed this as well, and admittedly for me I don't really care too much for these systems being added but I'm not necessarily going to say I'm against it either. I get the appeal, it can be pretty interesting to see how many border crossings you've done, but I live right near the center of the United States already and I don't have a passport yet. The chances of me crossing into Canada or Mexico in the next few years are essentially slim to none, so admittedly these systems don't really affect me that much. That being said, I still don't really believe it should be necessary to have to cross the border into Ontario to fully clinch all of Michigan.

I am currently #1 in Arkansas on Travel Mapping but to be honest I have zero desire to 100% clinch my own state. There's way too many split end routes or state highways that end in the middle of nowhere and are very poorly maintained. This is also why I personally like shield picture taking more, as all I have to do is just get a picture of the route shield and that's it. I'm not required to clinch all highway mileage in that regard, although I do like using TM to track where I've been, although my hierarchy is usually shield photos -> highways -> counties. Especially in Louisiana and Texas, you can see quite a few places where I drove out to a highway intersection to get a picture of the route shield and turned around right afterwards, I personally call these "spits".

[1995hoo]

Electrical circuits that don't match the circuit breaker descriptions. I was just replacing a light switch that had corroded due to age and was loose in the box. Turned off both circuits to that floor. Midway through the process, I accidentally touched the screw where I had attached the red wire and I got a mild shock. I suppose the lesson is to use the voltage meter to confirm the power is actually off.

I guess that could turn into a "major thing that bothers you," but the shock wasn't too bad and didn't hurt too much.

[bugo]

Colloquially they refer to us as "Amerika" transliterated (which surely won't annoy non-US North American people who hate when the US is shorthanded to "America")

That is so fucking annoying. One definition of "America" is "The United States". These doofuses who argue otherwise are arguing with the dictionary. If you ask any person anywhere in the world what America is, they're likely going to say "The US". And I've never heard anybody refer to North and South America combined as "America". It's a bunch of stubborn contrarians trying to be cooler than you.

[Scott5114]

As for the dangling ends, that's a consequence of me always pulling maps by region, so if I pull up PA, and the bridges with NY appear, they'd be disconnected from anything else because I have little interest in clinching random PA routes so those bridges would be clinched by turning around at the first opportunity in PA.

So, uh...don't turn around at the first opportunity in PA? There is not a dichotomy between "clinching everything in Pennsylvania" and "just getting this one bridge and immediately leaving", you know.

I tend to not just turn around at state lines, not because it bothers me what the map looks like, but rather that I dislike knowing that I was on a bit of road but not having any way to record it on TM because I didn't do a whole segment. With it lying on a state line it's more awkward because I usually only load one map at a time, so it's harder to remember "Oh yeah, I went to the state line and overshot a little bit". So my map has a lot of things like this on it:



As it turns out, the north-south road here did get me a clinch (NM 406), but I obviously made no attempt to clinch the other two roads leading into and out of NM (NM 456 and US 64). It will probably be a long time, if ever, until I clinch these. But the map is accurate to my actual experience, which is the most important thing, and it looks tidy too. It also gives me the benefit of spending thirty minutes or so in another state enjoying highway practices different than my home state's, which is my favorite thing about crossing a state line.

Heck, there was a point where I was planning clinches at roadmeets based entirely on whether one specific person would be attending, because he has a habit of requesting points at locations where the tour turned, so I couldn't rely on a tour avoiding clinching a whole mapped section to avoid eventually having to mark the section as clinched.

Attending meets based on whether or not someone else is going to be there is sorta weird.

But are you saying you didn't want the guy to do that? Because the only reason I actually have an account on the TM forum is because there was a turn that we made at the Natchez meet that didn't have a waypoint, so I asked for it. They were quite happy to add it, given that the waypoint would be potentially useful for a few people besides myself, since the meet tour turned there. The project likes helping people map their travels more accurately, so I think asking for points to help with that, especially when they could be of use for multiple people, is just using the project as intended.

Unless you're saying you only attend meets that this guy goes to so you can benefit, in which case I ask, why don't you do it yourself?

[bugo]

I am currently #1 in Arkansas on Travel Mapping but to be honest I have zero desire to 100% clinch my own state. There's way too many split end routes or state highways that end in the middle of nowhere and are very poorly maintained.

Not to mention all of the "secret" Institutional Roads. Some of these state highways are in difficult to access places like prisons. The governor might be able to set up trips to some of these places, but it would be pretty much impossible for a normal person to clinch all of them. The governor is also an idiot. It would be enough of a pain in the ass to clinch all of the signed routes with all of the dangling ends on the system. Many Institutional Routes are not open to vehicular traffic at all, and must be clinched by foot. College campuses are the best examples of these state highways.

I have a feeling that it will be much easier to clinch the signed routes, because I predict that ArDOT will decommission a bunch of minor state highways that don't go anywhere and only connect to the system at one end. They've already started decommissioning routes, and I expect that trend will accelerate in the future.

I downloaded the Arkansas Institutional Road Report from the ArDOT website, but I can't find it now. If anybody wants a PDF copy of it, send me a PM and I'll get it to you.