You cannot ever be at fault for an accident where you're rear-ended if you're driving at the speed limit, staying in your lane and generally driving in a safe manner.
If I go the speed limit in my area, I'll get rear ended. The speed limts in my area's highway are set 10mph lower than average people actually go, seemingly put in as a way for cops to rake in cash.
Bull. Shit.
The speed limits are not set 10mph below the average speed on the roads. What's really happening is that people see the speed limit and arbitrarily decide that speeding 10mph above the limit is "perfectly safe", based on their own sense of entitlement.
Thus they're breaking the law, and the cops fine them for it. Easy as that.
I replied to another comment of yours already, but something came to my mind.
My dad says pretty much the same thing as you, that he'll get in the left lane as early as possible, because otherwise no one is going to let him change lanes. He specifically mentioned some of the roads I drive on a regular basis, as examples. I have never had any trouble getting into the left lane on any of the roads he mentioned, or any other road, for that matter. I have no idea what I'm doing differently. I check for a gap, match speeds, put on my blinker and change lanes at a reasonable speed, never had a problem with it.
I usually drive anywere between 10km/h below the limit and about 10km/h over the limit, as shown by the speedometer in my car and depending on the conditions. Like most cars, the speedometer over-reads slightly, so my actual speed is probably somewhere around 5km/h over the actual limit. 10 over rather than 5 over, because it's far easier to place the speedometer needle right on a line at a glance instead of between two lines.
Is "the flow of traffic" above the traffic laws? No it isn't. Every action you take in traffic will have an effect on the flow, that's just how it is.
If mark-t knows that he'll be making a left turn up ahead, he should change lanes at a reasonable distance from the turn, put on his left blinker and obey the speed limit. People who want to go faster are then welcome to overtake on the right, as mark-t is clearly signaling his intention to turn left. It really isn't that difficult to comprehend, is it?
I, for one, prefer to get into the lane I know I will ultimately need to be in as early as possible and remain there, instead of waiting for it to come up because, particularly in heavier traffic, I may not have the opportunity to lane-change when I am closer to the point where I am making the left turn.
In that case, you're impeding the natural flow of traffic.
It's not 100% your fault, drivers should always keep a 2-second following distance. This would let you change lanes in a trouble-free manner, without risking a collision. Unfortunately, people are egoistic bastards who refuse to let anyone "cut in front" of them. I've have a lot of people deliberately speed up to "close the gap" that I was trying to change lanes into. Fuck 'em, there was plenty of space when I put on my blinker and started my maneuver, so I'm going to complete it as smoothly as possible, they can honk and curse all they want.
If we drive slow enough to follow another car at a safe distance, throughput suffers. If we travel higher speeds, we have to reduce the distance between cars and throughput also suffers.
No, we don't necessarily have to reduce speed to increase following distance, the two are not mutually exclusive. If everyone obeyed the 2-second rule (or even better, 3 seconds), there would be enough space that we would have to use our brakes less, thus causing fewer traffic waves and jams, reducing congestion.
The real problem is impatience. Impatient drivers tailgate, accelerate hard, brake hard, swerve from lane to lane and are generally a great disturbance to the flow of traffic. If everyone would just calm down and drive rationally, traffic would be greatly reduced, without reducing speed (much) and without reducing the total number of cars.
No, you self-centered ignoramus. The speed limit is the UPPER LIMIT of how fast you're allowed to go on a given stretch of road.
It's usually set based on the average driver in an average car on a wet road, giving a sensible safety margin on dry roads. It is NOT your prerogative to decide when to break this limit and by how much. There is NO SUCH thing as a "cheat" "built into the system". The limit is the limit, end of story.
Yes, if you're in the left lane for an extended amount of time and people pass you on the right, you'll get a ticket. Everyone who passed you on the right will get a ticket as well. But if you blast by someone on the right as soon as the smallest gap opens up, you'll be the only one getting a ticket, and a bigger one at that.
I've never seen someone get a ticket for this in the US, even though I believe they should. I've heard from friends in Germany that they will ticket a driver impeding traffic over one who is speeding, when both violations are visible to the officer.
No, they ticket both. One for not keeping right, one for speeding and possibly for tailgating as well.
Seriously though, I see your point, time is not an unlimited resource. You could cook batches during weekends or whenever you have time, portion them out and freeze them individually. Soups, stews and the like keep really well in the freezer and can be reheated in the microwave in minutes. Bonus points for stews in that they can be cooked on cheap chewy meat. It needs to cook for a couple of hours, but you don't even have to watch over it, just check every 30 minutes or so that it's still cooking. We ate a lot of soups and stews while I was growing up. A hearty stew with a little fresh parsley on top and a piece of bread on the side is a solid meal to grow on.
After moving out and having to cook for myself, I started using the recipes on http://thestonesoup.com/ more and more. They're simple, most of them only require 5 ingredients and they generally don't take very long to cook. Most of the ingredients are easy to find or easily substituted, too. I bought the original "5 ingredients, 10 minutes" cookbook from there, and I've gotten a lot of use out of it.
My dad is a Bose reseller, I've heard pretty much all of their products. They're all overpriced shit. My dad honestly thinks they're the best you can get, which is why he became a reseller. I have no idea why he would think that, but I guess being a drummer in an amateur rock band for ~35 years has something to do with it. Bose, it's tinnitus-approved!
As for another highly-marketed and hyped brand, I used to work for Bang & Olufsen. Most of their products aren't shit at all (with a few notable exceptions like re-branded horrendously marked-up MP3 players), and sound rather excellent. They're just over-designed and over-priced for what they are. Unlike Bose, they're actually all very well-built, with good-quality materials. No trickery at all, if looks like it was built from metal and glass, you betcha it's actual metal and glass, not just airbrushed plastic shit. I still have not heard a speaker that sounds better than a Beolab 5, no matter the price.
If you think you want Bose, get Bang & Olufsen instead. You're still paying for design and the name, but at least you'll be getting good sound quality as well.
Some laser pointers do put out IR wavelengths as a byproduct of the way they're built. Low-power laser pointers aren't a problem, the IR simply isn't powerful enough to do anything. But with 100mW+ laser being sold to ordinary people, there is a very real IR hazard from cheaply-made badly-filtered (or not filtered at all) laser pointers, especially green laser pointers.
The reason it's so dangerous is that unless you have special dual-wavelength safety glasses, they'll only filter out the visible light, leaving the IR output to wreck havok on your eyes.
P&T are libertarian nutballs. Anything they say or do should be treated with the utmost scepticism as they obviously have an extremely tenuous grasp on reality.
On most Android devices, you can enable the "Unknown sources" option in the settings menu and install packages directly from.apk files, bypassing the Play Store completely. It does require the developer to make an.apk file available directly, of course. For instance, the Humble Bundle app is installed this way: https://www.humblebundle.com/app
I've recently replaced my aging netbook with an Android tablet and I love it. I'm still in the process of finding the best apps for my needs, it's a completely different app ecosystem than the one I'm used to on desktop Linux. The lack of a physical keyboard hasn't been the setback that I thought it could be and it generally does everything I used the netbook for, but better. Mail, web, video, music, games (Carmageddon!), Skype, IM, you name it. And I get upwards of 10 hours battery life on the power saving mode, which is more than powerful enough for anything but graphics-intensive games. The only small setback I've found is that a lot of apps are rather smartphone-centric, which means they either use only a small portion of the 10" display or stretch in ugly ways. From what I hear, it's getting better, though.
Shifting at the peak of the power band is only useful if you drive around at full throttle constantly.
Do you mean the torque peak or the HP peak? That's at 3900rpm and 5650rpm respectively in my car and much higher than the 2200-2500rpm I usually shift at, which is the most widely recommended shift point for gasoline-engined car.
I know my car simply doesn't calculate fuel usage below 30km/h, which can skew the numbers if I do a lot of rush hour driving. I keep track of my mileage on fuelly, and at the moment, it's at 8.9l/100km compared to the 8.8l/100km my car shows. The difference is smaller than on your truck, but it's definitely there.
Nice example of shit that never happened. Have you actually ever talked to actual unemployed people? BY FAR the majority of them hate being without work, but they just can't find any jobs within their skillset. Every unskilled position is filled by non-union people working at or below minimum wage already.
Of course there are people who vehemently refuse to work, for whatever reason. Would you rather they be thrown in the gutter and left to die, or given a small allowance, enough to put a roof over their head and food on their table? Let me give you a hint, the first option is barbaric, primitive and abhorrent. The second option is the only humane choice.
Activate 2-step authentication as well. Every 30 days, I have to enter a code that I receive via SMS in order to login to my Gmail account on a trusted computer (my home desktop). On every other computer, I have to enter a new code on every login attempt. So unless an attacker gains access to both my password and my phone, they won't be able to get in.
I'm 5'10", 210lbs and I consider myself fat. My BMI is 30, which puts me in the "obese" category, statistically speaking. Adding 50lbs would put me way into "visibly obese" territory, in fact that's what I used to weigh before I started working out and eating healthier food.
Then again, no matter what I do I can't seem to get below 200lbs. I do crossfit 3-4 hours per week, always take the stairs, stand at my desk at work, ride my bicycle, cut out white rice, white bread, potatoes etc. from my diet, stay away from sweets and all those things. I wouldn't even mind weighing in at 210lbs if I could just lose the gut.
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You cannot ever be at fault for an accident where you're rear-ended if you're driving at the speed limit, staying in your lane and generally driving in a safe manner.
If I go the speed limit in my area, I'll get rear ended. The speed limts in my area's highway are set 10mph lower than average people actually go, seemingly put in as a way for cops to rake in cash.
Bull. Shit.
The speed limits are not set 10mph below the average speed on the roads. What's really happening is that people see the speed limit and arbitrarily decide that speeding 10mph above the limit is "perfectly safe", based on their own sense of entitlement.
Thus they're breaking the law, and the cops fine them for it. Easy as that.
I replied to another comment of yours already, but something came to my mind.
My dad says pretty much the same thing as you, that he'll get in the left lane as early as possible, because otherwise no one is going to let him change lanes. He specifically mentioned some of the roads I drive on a regular basis, as examples. I have never had any trouble getting into the left lane on any of the roads he mentioned, or any other road, for that matter. I have no idea what I'm doing differently. I check for a gap, match speeds, put on my blinker and change lanes at a reasonable speed, never had a problem with it.
I usually drive anywere between 10km/h below the limit and about 10km/h over the limit, as shown by the speedometer in my car and depending on the conditions. Like most cars, the speedometer over-reads slightly, so my actual speed is probably somewhere around 5km/h over the actual limit. 10 over rather than 5 over, because it's far easier to place the speedometer needle right on a line at a glance instead of between two lines.
Ah yes, the all-powerful "flow of traffic".
Is "the flow of traffic" above the traffic laws? No it isn't. Every action you take in traffic will have an effect on the flow, that's just how it is.
If mark-t knows that he'll be making a left turn up ahead, he should change lanes at a reasonable distance from the turn, put on his left blinker and obey the speed limit. People who want to go faster are then welcome to overtake on the right, as mark-t is clearly signaling his intention to turn left. It really isn't that difficult to comprehend, is it?
I, for one, prefer to get into the lane I know I will ultimately need to be in as early as possible and remain there, instead of waiting for it to come up because, particularly in heavier traffic, I may not have the opportunity to lane-change when I am closer to the point where I am making the left turn.
In that case, you're impeding the natural flow of traffic.
It's not 100% your fault, drivers should always keep a 2-second following distance. This would let you change lanes in a trouble-free manner, without risking a collision. Unfortunately, people are egoistic bastards who refuse to let anyone "cut in front" of them. I've have a lot of people deliberately speed up to "close the gap" that I was trying to change lanes into. Fuck 'em, there was plenty of space when I put on my blinker and started my maneuver, so I'm going to complete it as smoothly as possible, they can honk and curse all they want.
If we drive slow enough to follow another car at a safe distance, throughput suffers. If we travel higher speeds, we have to reduce the distance between cars and throughput also suffers.
No, we don't necessarily have to reduce speed to increase following distance, the two are not mutually exclusive. If everyone obeyed the 2-second rule (or even better, 3 seconds), there would be enough space that we would have to use our brakes less, thus causing fewer traffic waves and jams, reducing congestion.
The real problem is impatience. Impatient drivers tailgate, accelerate hard, brake hard, swerve from lane to lane and are generally a great disturbance to the flow of traffic. If everyone would just calm down and drive rationally, traffic would be greatly reduced, without reducing speed (much) and without reducing the total number of cars.
Even better: It's not a game, it's not a race, the speed limit is the law. End of story.
No, you self-centered ignoramus. The speed limit is the UPPER LIMIT of how fast you're allowed to go on a given stretch of road.
It's usually set based on the average driver in an average car on a wet road, giving a sensible safety margin on dry roads. It is NOT your prerogative to decide when to break this limit and by how much. There is NO SUCH thing as a "cheat" "built into the system". The limit is the limit, end of story.
I live in Europe, it doesn't work that way.
Yes, if you're in the left lane for an extended amount of time and people pass you on the right, you'll get a ticket. Everyone who passed you on the right will get a ticket as well. But if you blast by someone on the right as soon as the smallest gap opens up, you'll be the only one getting a ticket, and a bigger one at that.
I've never seen someone get a ticket for this in the US, even though I believe they should. I've heard from friends in Germany that they will ticket a driver impeding traffic over one who is speeding, when both violations are visible to the officer.
No, they ticket both. One for not keeping right, one for speeding and possibly for tailgating as well.
The latter is the bigger fine.
Ooh, so edgy.
Try stepping outside sometime.
Bedtime at 7, are you some kind of nazi?
Seriously though, I see your point, time is not an unlimited resource. You could cook batches during weekends or whenever you have time, portion them out and freeze them individually. Soups, stews and the like keep really well in the freezer and can be reheated in the microwave in minutes. Bonus points for stews in that they can be cooked on cheap chewy meat. It needs to cook for a couple of hours, but you don't even have to watch over it, just check every 30 minutes or so that it's still cooking. We ate a lot of soups and stews while I was growing up. A hearty stew with a little fresh parsley on top and a piece of bread on the side is a solid meal to grow on.
After moving out and having to cook for myself, I started using the recipes on http://thestonesoup.com/ more and more. They're simple, most of them only require 5 ingredients and they generally don't take very long to cook. Most of the ingredients are easy to find or easily substituted, too. I bought the original "5 ingredients, 10 minutes" cookbook from there, and I've gotten a lot of use out of it.
Everyone deserves at least one honest meal a day.
Strawberries are sweet and generally used in desserts. They're treats.
Try pricing out stuff like beans, kale, cabbage, spinach etc. instead. Inexpensive and very filling.
My dad is a Bose reseller, I've heard pretty much all of their products. They're all overpriced shit. My dad honestly thinks they're the best you can get, which is why he became a reseller. I have no idea why he would think that, but I guess being a drummer in an amateur rock band for ~35 years has something to do with it. Bose, it's tinnitus-approved!
As for another highly-marketed and hyped brand, I used to work for Bang & Olufsen. Most of their products aren't shit at all (with a few notable exceptions like re-branded horrendously marked-up MP3 players), and sound rather excellent. They're just over-designed and over-priced for what they are. Unlike Bose, they're actually all very well-built, with good-quality materials. No trickery at all, if looks like it was built from metal and glass, you betcha it's actual metal and glass, not just airbrushed plastic shit. I still have not heard a speaker that sounds better than a Beolab 5, no matter the price.
If you think you want Bose, get Bang & Olufsen instead. You're still paying for design and the name, but at least you'll be getting good sound quality as well.
Citroën has been doing it since 1955, in fact.
Best ride comfort in the business, short of über-luxury rides such as Rolls-Royce, for a fraction of the price.
Some laser pointers do put out IR wavelengths as a byproduct of the way they're built. Low-power laser pointers aren't a problem, the IR simply isn't powerful enough to do anything. But with 100mW+ laser being sold to ordinary people, there is a very real IR hazard from cheaply-made badly-filtered (or not filtered at all) laser pointers, especially green laser pointers.
The reason it's so dangerous is that unless you have special dual-wavelength safety glasses, they'll only filter out the visible light, leaving the IR output to wreck havok on your eyes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_pointer#Infrared_hazards_of_DPSS_laser_pointers
Yeah, let's have some good old private sector corporate corruption instead!
P&T are libertarian nutballs. Anything they say or do should be treated with the utmost scepticism as they obviously have an extremely tenuous grasp on reality.
On most Android devices, you can enable the "Unknown sources" option in the settings menu and install packages directly from .apk files, bypassing the Play Store completely. It does require the developer to make an .apk file available directly, of course. For instance, the Humble Bundle app is installed this way: https://www.humblebundle.com/app
I've recently replaced my aging netbook with an Android tablet and I love it. I'm still in the process of finding the best apps for my needs, it's a completely different app ecosystem than the one I'm used to on desktop Linux. The lack of a physical keyboard hasn't been the setback that I thought it could be and it generally does everything I used the netbook for, but better. Mail, web, video, music, games (Carmageddon!), Skype, IM, you name it. And I get upwards of 10 hours battery life on the power saving mode, which is more than powerful enough for anything but graphics-intensive games. The only small setback I've found is that a lot of apps are rather smartphone-centric, which means they either use only a small portion of the 10" display or stretch in ugly ways. From what I hear, it's getting better, though.
Must have been hard to find a gun that small.
Shifting at the peak of the power band is only useful if you drive around at full throttle constantly.
Do you mean the torque peak or the HP peak? That's at 3900rpm and 5650rpm respectively in my car and much higher than the 2200-2500rpm I usually shift at, which is the most widely recommended shift point for gasoline-engined car.
I know my car simply doesn't calculate fuel usage below 30km/h, which can skew the numbers if I do a lot of rush hour driving. I keep track of my mileage on fuelly, and at the moment, it's at 8.9l/100km compared to the 8.8l/100km my car shows. The difference is smaller than on your truck, but it's definitely there.
Nice example of shit that never happened. Have you actually ever talked to actual unemployed people? BY FAR the majority of them hate being without work, but they just can't find any jobs within their skillset. Every unskilled position is filled by non-union people working at or below minimum wage already.
Of course there are people who vehemently refuse to work, for whatever reason. Would you rather they be thrown in the gutter and left to die, or given a small allowance, enough to put a roof over their head and food on their table? Let me give you a hint, the first option is barbaric, primitive and abhorrent. The second option is the only humane choice.
Activate 2-step authentication as well. Every 30 days, I have to enter a code that I receive via SMS in order to login to my Gmail account on a trusted computer (my home desktop). On every other computer, I have to enter a new code on every login attempt. So unless an attacker gains access to both my password and my phone, they won't be able to get in.
https://accounts.google.com/SmsAuthConfig
I'm 5'10", 210lbs and I consider myself fat. My BMI is 30, which puts me in the "obese" category, statistically speaking. Adding 50lbs would put me way into "visibly obese" territory, in fact that's what I used to weigh before I started working out and eating healthier food.
Then again, no matter what I do I can't seem to get below 200lbs. I do crossfit 3-4 hours per week, always take the stairs, stand at my desk at work, ride my bicycle, cut out white rice, white bread, potatoes etc. from my diet, stay away from sweets and all those things. I wouldn't even mind weighing in at 210lbs if I could just lose the gut.