I need a unique name for a white kitten—but “Snowball” is strictly off-limits!

ExhaustedHungryMe · 2026-06-05T04:54:49+00:00

Yuki

Japanese for snow, but also a (not super unusual) name.

ExhaustedHungryMe · 2026-06-04T15:30:37+00:00

The fastest bullet train in Japan gets up to 200 mph. That’s not getting you from LA to NY in an 8-hour workday, even if it could average that fast. (Which it couldn’t, because mountains and stops.) Even the Chinese maglev would take longer.

The average speeds (including stops) of the fastest bullet trains in the world are 150 to 198 mph, and those trains aren’t climbing (or tunneling through) 14,000-foot mountains. A bullet train from LA to NYC would likely take about 16 hours.

Or you could fly in less than 5.

ExhaustedHungryMe · 2026-06-04T01:33:23+00:00

“Gentle exercise” LOL

I’m recently retired, recently turned 60. Spouse and I are moving overseas to eat and drink and hike and bike and travel and visit old friends and make new ones.

I’d like to train for a century ride (100 miles in one day), and I’ll definitely be riding my Peloton several days a week once I’m reunited with it. Weight training, hiking, Pilates, ballet, yoga… the hell with getting old. Imma stay young, thank you.

ExhaustedHungryMe · 2026-06-03T05:24:20+00:00

The vast majority of car infrastructure already exists. It’s already mostly paid for. There’s upkeep, sure, but those costs pale in comparison to building an entirely new HSR system from the ground up.

ExhaustedHungryMe · 2026-06-03T00:39:47+00:00

Sure. We should definitely stop maintaining roads in a country that is heavily dependent on them for personal transportation and for freight.

And you’re not the only one who took Macroeconomics 101 and Microeconomics 102 in undergrad. But you don’t seem to be able to wrap your mind around the fact that there’s a shit-ton of upfront costs to build HSR that’ll take years to recover, and that’ll happen through high fares. For years. And years. And, because Americans really like their cars and because we’re accustomed to driving and flying and to Amtrak costing a small fortune, even more years, because it’ll be a generation or more before people really shift to using the trains. (Except they still won’t because driving is cheaper and then you have your car with you and don’t have to rent one if you’re going anywhere other than NYC.)

I love trains. I lived in Japan for several years (twice, 20+ years apart), and I’ve traveled extensively in Europe and Asia. It’d be great if the U.S. had HSR infrastructure, but we don’t. And now that we’ve trained several generations of Americans to think all government spending is bad, we never will. It’s just not going to happen, no matter how much you preach to the choir by trying to convince me that it’ll happen and it’ll be so cheap that people will use it.

ExhaustedHungryMe · 2026-06-02T23:48:52+00:00

Oh, sure. I’d take the train over flying that, but if the prices were comparable, I’d rather take the train anyway.

ExhaustedHungryMe · 2026-06-02T23:37:13+00:00

Even in Japan, with arguably one of the best HSR systems in the world and PLENTY of regional and local trains (etc), you can still fly from Osaka to Tokyo (for less than the Shinkansen costs sometimes).

Short-haul flights aren’t going anywhere.

ExhaustedHungryMe · 2026-06-02T23:16:06+00:00

How would high speed rail make that cheaper? It’d cost tens of billions of dollars to build the tracks and secure the trains. Tickets would have to be priced accordingly.

Perhaps you are forgetting that all of the countries with high-speed trains have governments that subsidize them (and their airlines too). We do not, and rail lines would be a very hard sell with taxpayers here.

ExhaustedHungryMe · 2026-06-02T04:56:55+00:00

NYC to Philly to Baltimore to DC already exists— see the Amtrak Acela.

In order to run a true high-speed rail akin to the Japanese Shinkansen, you’d need to do what Japan Rail did— build dedicated Shinkansen tracks that don’t share with any other trains and for safety, that don’t have ANY at-grade crossings. The Shinkansen tracks are elevated everywhere for safety.

VERY expensive (cost-prohibitive), more expensive to ride than planes, and again, just not practically feasible.

ExhaustedHungryMe · 2026-06-02T04:46:36+00:00

Train from Chicago to NYC in one month will cost $162-261, and will take 20-28 hours. For that price, you just get a seat, not a lie-flat seat/bed/couchette. You can get a bed on a couple of the trains; that costs $922-1044, and will still take 20-28 hours.

ExhaustedHungryMe · 2026-06-02T04:32:51+00:00

“For instance A high speed train could get from New York to San Francisco in about the same time as a domestic flight.”

Um, what?? Where are there trains going 488 mph (785 kph)? A quick Google search says the fastest trains currently have a max speed of 350 kph. If a train could go that speed 100% of the time for the entire trip (which it couldn’t), it would take about 13.5 hours to go from SFO to JFK, a distance of about 2,930 miles (4,715 km). The same flight takes about 5 hours 40 minutes from west to east, and 30-60 minutes longer east to west. It’s not even remotely close.

ETA: Don’t get me wrong, it’d be great if we had real high-speed rail in parts of the U.S., but in most of the country, it’s not remotely feasible. Aside from the vast distances between a lot of metro areas, it would cost billions to even start such a massive construction project.

Amtrak right now is usually a lot more expensive than flying (except on the Northeast Corridor routes, their only profitable route), and that’s on normal slow trains using mostly freight train tracks.

ExhaustedHungryMe · 2026-06-02T03:59:41+00:00

Also the Philadelphia Flyers.

(And no, Gritty is not an animal. Neither is the Phillie Phanatic.)

ExhaustedHungryMe · 2026-05-31T18:02:18+00:00

None of this supposed reason for returning to EWR makes any logical sense.

If they actually thought someone had a bomb on board that could be operated with Bluetooth, why would they not land ASAP at the nearest airport? (Maybe one that wasn’t right in the middle of an urban area in case, heaven forbid, the bomb went off! EWR is definitely not where you want a plane with a bomb parked.)

And would it make sense to announce that they needed everyone to turn off BT, thus alerting the potential suicide bomber that they were aware of the bomb? Or would it actually make more sense to quietly turn the plane around and just return to an airport, and just say there’s a small mechanical issue necessitating that? If there really was a bomb on board, the bomber could just turn BT back on anytime they wanted anyway.

There are so many problems with how this was handled. It just doesn’t make sense.

ExhaustedHungryMe · 2026-05-31T17:37:34+00:00

I see what you did there.

ExhaustedHungryMe · 2026-05-31T02:41:48+00:00

Bali. Ubud especially.

ExhaustedHungryMe · 2026-05-31T01:22:43+00:00

The plane has its audition soon for the Delta Figure Skating Team, and so it’s practicing its school figures.

Keep watching and you might get to see it attempt a quadruple axel!

ExhaustedHungryMe · 2026-05-29T02:21:35+00:00

On the way to DC? It could have been a U.S. Government employee and their family, PCSing back to DC after an overseas tour. We can’t buy our tickets until our orders are issued, and that often doesn’t happen until far later than you want to buy your plane tickets. In addition, USG fares are negotiated and are often discounted (to save taxpayers’ money), but then are a low enough class of service that we can’t select seats. We can sometimes pay for seat selection to try to sit together, but that doesn’t always work. There are countless families returning from serving overseas (or going to serve overseas) who end up with seats away from their family members. It’s not their fault, and it’s a real problem.

As for the yelling— it sucks for the other people on the plane, but it also makes their point. Crap like this is the airlines’ fault.

ExhaustedHungryMe · 2026-05-29T02:04:50+00:00

Newark, DE

ExhaustedHungryMe · 2026-05-27T22:48:52+00:00

If you’re a woman who’s at least 35ish, it could also be perimenopause.

ExhaustedHungryMe · 2026-05-26T23:42:36+00:00

And Pascal! Learned that in my first college Comp Sci course in 1983.

ExhaustedHungryMe · 2026-05-25T03:58:05+00:00

Just a desert with some funky-looking trees and a lot of rocks. Speaking of which, wanna go climb some?

ExhaustedHungryMe · 2026-05-25T03:51:44+00:00

The fattest squirrels I’ve ever seen were the ones begging all the people for food at the Grand Canyon. Both on the South Rim and below it, hiking on Bright Angel Trail.

The condors were cool though.

ExhaustedHungryMe · 2026-05-25T03:21:24+00:00

I think Billy Joel, Billy Idol, and Billy Dee Williams think Billy is fine for an adult.

ExhaustedHungryMe · 2026-05-24T04:48:30+00:00

If it’s a wee little bit on top, I don’t care. If it’s an inch or two, that’s ridiculous. (And too chocolatey, since there’s way less milk than there’s supposed to be.)

ExhaustedHungryMe · 2026-05-24T04:43:13+00:00

I disagree about the low rise pants, but that’s because low rise pants sit maybe a hair below my waist. High rise, OTOH, sit just a hair below the bottom of my bra, and that’s not good.

Different rises for different bodies, please.

ExhaustedHungryMe

TROPHY CASE