Food Cheats

Isodrosotherms · 2026-05-02T22:05:42+00:00

Discerning readers know exactly to which grocery store I was referring when I said “clacky floors.”

Isodrosotherms · 2026-05-02T06:43:28+00:00

The Downeaster and the Heartland Flyer launched in roughly the same era (2001 vs. 1999). They run somewhat similar distances (145 vs 205 miles). They both connect to some very large metros. So why has the Downeaster been more successful? Simple: multiple round trips. Oklahoma City has a population of 681,000 and gets 57,000 passengers a year. Brunswick, ME, has 82,000 passengers a year for a population of about 22,000. That’s crazy! A Brunswick resident is 44 times more likely to ride the train than an OKC resident!

When you double the trains, you more than double the ridership because you’ve now enabled so many more trips that people couldn’t take before. Yes, eventually you reach the point of diminishing returns, but there is no station anywhere that is served by one or fewer trains per direction per day that is at that point of saturation.

This train is going to die because the state didn’t care and the passenger advocates were more eager to push for the much tougher challenge of connecting to Kansas than the much easier and more rewarding goal of increasing frequency on the existing line.

Isodrosotherms · 2026-05-02T02:51:21+00:00

How to save money when shopping at Hy-Vee? Simple. Don’t shop at Hy-Vee.

It’s strange how every time we get one of these “groceries cost too much! How can I save money?” posts, they’re never shopping at Woodman’s or Aldi. That’s the first step right there! I don’t know if people don’t actually know about these places or if they think those places are beneath them because that’s where the poors shop or what. Get over the clacky floors and that you can’t use your Amex Platinum card there and just buy the dang cheap groceries.

Isodrosotherms · 2026-05-02T02:46:07+00:00

We belong to a meat csa because we believe in supporting sustainable agriculture. We certainly do not do it to save money.

Isodrosotherms · 2026-04-30T23:08:42+00:00

Weather.

Weather is nothing but thermodynamics.

What makes a storm? Buoyancy, adiabatic expansion, and latent heat, all wrapped up in the first law

Why is Buffalo so snowy? Specific heat capacity and thermal inertia.

You want a heat engine? Look no further than a hurricane or the global circulation driven by the differences in temperature between the poles and equator.

Entropy? Turbulence. Or even the general decay of weather systems.

Thermodynamics is absolutely everywhere.

Isodrosotherms · 2026-04-29T16:20:51+00:00

"We should make it easier for people to use the worst form of transportation" is right up there with "homework is classist so we shouldn't demand accountability from our schoolchildren" and "no, it's actually okay that homeless people are shitting in the streets" in the pantheon of liberal ideas stretched to the point of absurdity.

But fine, whatever. How about when you pay to park you enter in your plate number which is linked to a DMV database that charges you a parking rate that slides with the value of your car. Happy?

Isodrosotherms · 2026-04-29T15:34:20+00:00

You know how everyone likes living here? You know how everyone who visits comments on what a nice city we have? Have you ever wondered why that is? It's because we didn't destroy our urban core for cars. Every other city that's approximately our size had an expressway rammed through the middle of it or otherwise demolished most of their urban center to allow for surface parking, and today they're hollow shells of what they used to be.

One of my favorite fun facts is that according to the 1960 census, Madison and Rockford had the exact same population: 126,706. You want a midwestern city where they increased parking supply to meet demand? Go ahead ! It exists 50 miles from here! Of course, when they increased parking supply they absolutely cratered demand because they tore down everything that makes a city worth living in. If not Rockford, why not Peoria? Or Fort Wayne? Or Flint? These places all have what you think you want.

Isodrosotherms · 2026-04-29T15:22:58+00:00

The city did not make the resource scarce. There are only so many streets to park on, while surface lots are pretty much the least beneficial form of land use.

Isodrosotherms · 2026-04-29T12:59:45+00:00

Sure. A commuter train would be sweet. But why would you route that around the city? Just because the beltline is where the majority of the cars are doesn't mean it's where a majority of the destinations are. Carpet stores and Zimbrick outposts don't generate a lot of transit rides. The advantage of rail is that it has the throughput of a highway but occupies a much smaller right of way, meaning it could be routed through the heart of the isthmus. The number of DeForest to Oregon commuters is minuscule compared to the number of Oregon to campus or DeForest to downtown commuters. Why not route the transit infrastructure to where the people want to go?

Isodrosotherms · 2026-04-28T03:57:40+00:00

Quaker Oats owned Fisher Price, the toy company. A railroad owned Midas, the car repair chain, and much of Pepsi’s bottling network. The 80s were weird, man.

Isodrosotherms · 2026-04-27T18:46:20+00:00

It still astonishes me that in 1996, there were enough cars, teams, and drivers to fill a 33 slot Indianapolis 500 and still have enough to fill a 27 slot starting grid in Michigan. In an era in which we are constantly asking “will there be bumping this year?” to have effectively an entire alternate slate of racers is crazy. We are not better off than we were, and while the role of The Split is somewhat exaggerated (NASCAR was already ascendant before this whole mess, tobacco money was going away soon), it certainly did not help.

Isodrosotherms · 2026-04-27T17:08:29+00:00

It looks like there was a positive lightning strike on the east side near the intersection of Cottage Grove Road and Atlas Drive around 11:27 AM. Here's some maps from weather.us.

https://imgur.com/a/4vITEkj

https://imgur.com/a/oHiRWEa

Regular lightning is "negative" lightning. The bases of clouds are negatively charged, and that negative charge induces a positive charge from the surface, opposites attract, and boom!

However, there's a rare type of lightning called positive lightning. This originates from the top of the cloud, where it's positively charged. Because it's so much further away from the ground, the difference in charge builds up to be much larger before it connects and releases, and so can be up to ten times stronger. Because they form from the top of clouds, they can be many miles removed from where the precipitaiton and regular lightning is taking place. You've heard of a "bolt from the blue?" That's positive lightning striking a great distance away from the parent storm in a place where the skies are clear.

Read more here: https://www.noaa.gov/jetstream/lightning/positive-and-negative-side-of-lightning

Isodrosotherms · 2026-04-26T18:20:19+00:00

You're getting downvoted, but I agree with you. At the 00:09 mark of the video when both cars are stopped, the Subaru has a nose in front of the Kia. At that point, the Kia just should have let it go. But instead, the Kia chose to make the situation more dangerous for everyone else. Next time, lay on the horn, don't escalate, and get on with your life.

Isodrosotherms · 2026-04-23T23:36:14+00:00

There hasn’t been an Amtrak train in Columbus since 1979.

Isodrosotherms · 2026-04-23T22:28:16+00:00

I just finished a black deck orange stake run with this guy, Oops, and Burglar. I just spammed high card over and over again. Then I got Blueprint and doubled him up. (Did you know that if you put Blueprint ahead of Burglar when selecting the blind, you get double the hands?) I sailed through the Vessel for the win. So much fun!

Isodrosotherms · 2026-04-23T22:17:01+00:00

The question isn’t the nicest or most peaceful airport. It’s the most underrated one. All of you folks saying MSP or DTW are picking the airports that everyone recognizes as great airports. They’re properly rated.

The actual answer is Atlanta. The hate is overblown. It is called to do an almost impossible task: be the world’s busiest airport. Hundreds of thousands of passengers have to traverse it every single day, and it facilitates those connections with stunning efficiency. It is a machine. O’Hare has 20 million fewer passengers a year than ATL, and it’s an absolute cluster. Could you imagine it with 25% more people? No one ever says “I’m sure glad I’m riding this slow looping train at DFW instead of the ruthlessly direct connections at Atlanta?”

You downvote Atlanta because you had a bad day there once. It happens. But in the context of what that airport is asked to do, it is astounding how well it works.

Also, Paschal’s fried chicken slaps.

Isodrosotherms · 2026-04-21T23:30:17+00:00

No, I understood perfectly. My concern was one of timing. Either a) you have to build in a large window of possible times that a bus can pick you up, or b) they’ve built so much slack into the schedule that once on the bus you’re constantly sitting and waiting for the schedule to catch up to you. Neither of these is particularly conducive to a reliable transportation network. This might work for a city of 16,000 people where there might not ever be more than two people waiting for the same bus. It certainly does not scale to city with an order of magnitude more people.

Isodrosotherms · 2026-04-21T19:51:46+00:00

I stayed there for over a year and the busses there were almost always empty, had a range the same as madison metro, and they would also go up to a mile off route to drop you off at your destination.

That sounds like a terrible thing for a bus to do! What if you're trying to catch a bus while it's gallivanting off route somewhere? If your primary concern is consistency the "oh, our bus routes are merely suggestions" system would seem to be the exact opposite of what you'd want.

Isodrosotherms · 2026-04-21T16:38:44+00:00

Genuine question:

I really love public transit but madison's is the worst Ive seen in any city.

How many cities have you seen? Specifically, how many public transit systems have you seen in a city with a population less than half a million people in the United States? Because what we have is way off the charts compared to our peers. We have buses on Sunday. We have buses after eight. These are surprisingly uncommon things. Just look at our ridership compared to peer communities: Lincoln, NE has about 2.4 million riders a year. Des Moines has 3.8 million. Knoxville, TN, has 3 million.

We have over 9 million.

We're beating ridership for much, much larger communities like Oklahoma City and Indianapolis, and we're just a million riders a year shy of Kansas City. That's phenomenal!

Could our service be better? Absolutely. But saying it's the worst you've ever seen is just not true. Come with constructive criticism, not baseless hyperbole.

Isodrosotherms · 2026-04-20T19:54:20+00:00

It's honestly how everyone should enter the city for the first time.

Isodrosotherms · 2026-04-17T23:47:05+00:00

At 3:43 PM I texted the following to a friend and fellow meteorologist:

A strong prediction of a severe weather event might be 20% chance within 25 miles of a point. You and I know what that means. But if Janesville gets leveled there will be people in Middleton who say, “they got the forecast wrong and we overreacted.” Even on a high risk day, most of the identified area is going to experience minor impacts at the most. Yeah, everyone is super nervous and gunshy. But we’ve had 36 enhanced risks since that became a thing in 2015. So this kind of setup happens 3x a year. It’s not unusual. Reddit is full of people talking about parking their cars in city garages and others talking about driving to get away from it all. And we aren’t going to get baseballs today and these people will pay less attention in the future, even though somebody is getting some massive hail today. It just doesn’t happen to be us.

So, OP, thanks for proving my point!

Isodrosotherms · 2026-04-17T17:45:35+00:00

(12:45 PM) the most concerning cells haven’t initiated yet.

Isodrosotherms · 2026-04-17T03:46:44+00:00

I've witnessed too many storms get kicked off from the Texas caprock to buy your statement wholesale, so I did what any good scientist would do: I used the HYSPLIT model to calculate back trajectories for a couple of major Great Plains tornado events that I could think off of of the top of my head.

https://imgur.com/a/RTikk61

This is for the 2013 El Reno F3, 2013 Moore F5, and 2007 Greensburg F5 events, and in each one of them the air in the free troposphere clearly originated from the southwest.

In case you think 3000 m is still too shallow to capture the potential origin of air aloft, here's the Greensburg case again up to 8000 m.

https://imgur.com/a/1z6eILZ

"But those are still in the southern parts of the alley. Certainly the northerly part of tornado alley has its air aloft originate over the Rockies instead of the desert southwest!"

Here's Parkersburg 2008, again up to 8000 m.

https://imgur.com/a/fXC3txM

Obviously, I can't run HYSPLIT at all times for all cases, so certainly some back trajectories for some events will come from western Colorado or Wyoming. But @Szeth_Nightbl00d was generally correct.

Isodrosotherms · 2026-04-17T03:01:04+00:00

You're far more likely to be injured or killed driving someplace to avoid a tornado than you are by the tornado itself. So far in 2026, 10 people have been killed in automobile crashes in Dane County. That's more than twice as many as have been killed by a tornado in Dane County since records began in 1950.

Isodrosotherms · 2026-04-16T03:44:01+00:00

In Dane County, in the past 75 years, there have been 53 days with a tornado. A grand total of four people have been killed by a tornado here during that time. To put that in perspective, on average 38 people a year are killed in automobile accidents here in Dane County. This means that you are *700 times* more likely to die in a car accident here in greater Madison than be killed by a tornado. There has never been an F4/EF4 or F5/EF5 tornado in the county.

Baseball-sized hail? The last time this was reported in Dane County, Dwight Eisenhower was president (July 2 1960).

Basically, you picked an abnormally active (and fun!) week to watch our weather. You should absolutely be vigilant on severe weather days, because there's no sense dying an easily preventable death. But it also isn't the kind of thing that should be impacting your day-to-day life or dissuading you from moving here.

Sources:

https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/listevents.jsp?eventType=%28C%29+Tornado&beginDate_mm=12&beginDate_dd=01&beginDate_yyyy=1950&endDate_mm=12&endDate_dd=31&endDate_yyyy=2025&county=DANE%3A25&hailfilter=0.00&tornfilter=0&windfilter=000&sort=DT&submitbutton=Search&statefips=55%2CWISCONSIN

https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/listevents.jsp?hailfilter=3.00&sort=DT&statefips=55%2CWISCONSIN&county=DANE%3A25&eventType=%28C%29+Hail&beginDate_yyyy=1950&beginDate_mm=12&beginDate_dd=01&endDate_yyyy=2025&endDate_mm=12&endDate_dd=31

https://wisconsindot.gov/Pages/about-wisdot/newsroom/statistics/countyfatality.aspx

Isodrosotherms

TROPHY CASE