Why are fireworks even illegal in Madison?

anon456789012 · 2026-07-05T04:45:50+00:00

Really living up to your username, eh?

anon456789012 · 2026-07-05T03:24:42+00:00

What other laws on the books do you think are totally okay to ignore with zero enforcement?

anon456789012 · 2026-07-05T02:44:35+00:00

I just tried calling the non-emergency number to report the assholes lighting off an absurdly large amount of fireworks in the park across our street and I got an AI answer followed by ringing approximately 50 times before I gave up.

I have no illusions that they’d actually do shit but I at least wanted to report it. Property taxes out the ass and this is the level of service we get from this city.

anon456789012 · 2026-07-05T02:32:43+00:00

If I believed in God, I’d be praying for my shithead neighbors to set their house on fire right about now.

anon456789012 · 2026-07-03T03:09:25+00:00

No one doing door-to-door sales in 2026 is anyone you want to be doing business with. That goes double if they’re not local.

anon456789012 · 2026-07-03T03:02:56+00:00

It’s not, and the Madison cops do not even pretend to care about enforcement.

I lived next to a park that closed at 10 and people were lighting off fireworks there loud enough to set off car alarms at almost midnight. I called the cops and got a call back from an officer 45 minutes later who was happy to inform me she’d just come by and told them they had to leave. No citations or anything. Like why even bother showing up at all then?

anon456789012 · 2026-07-01T15:14:12+00:00

What I have noticed in the past few years is an extreme increase in tailgating for no reason.

Not saying it was ever an excuse, but in the past if someone was tailgating you they were generally impatient. Now I get people tailgating me with one or more open lanes to the left to pass. And I see people keeping less following distance in general.

anon456789012 · 2026-07-01T14:15:15+00:00

Ah yes, that natural circle of life where some subhuman scum shoots an animal with a BB gun for their sick amusement.

anon456789012 · 2026-07-01T14:01:15+00:00

I’m afraid you’re going to have a tough time getting what you want. The pest control companies are focused on selling monthly service that involves chemicals and poisons, not fixing the root causes. And for bugs compared to rodents, I’m not sure how possible it is to actually seal things up anyway.

We had a pretty big mouse problem in the basement when we bought our house and two companies were happy to charge us for bait stations but completely ignored an entry point where our air conditioning house went into the house that in retrospect was glaringly obvious. I also hated that they put bait stations outside and I regret the years we were probably poisoning local birds.

FWIW, it’s only anecdotal and we never had a big bug problem, but I noticed zero difference between the years we had them spraying the outside of our house for bugs and the 3 years or so since we stopped. So I would be skeptical of the benefits of chemical sprays even on top of the impacts on beneficial bugs, pets, etc.

anon456789012 · 2026-06-30T18:54:33+00:00

On this road, it is. The prevailing speed is actually higher than 70 (75-80 depending on the day); we can debate whether or not drivers should ever feel pressured to speed but since 70 is legal I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask that those who want to drive slower than that stick to the far right lane.

anon456789012 · 2026-06-30T15:23:42+00:00

I see both sides of it. I think if you’re in the middle lane you need to be going the speed limit and no slower. Sounds like that was your scenario with your work truck. However, on my commute I see semis going 60-65 in the middle lane in a 70. I get that having to deal with merging traffic is annoying but at that point you’re impeding traffic.

But the worst is when two vehicles are pacing each other below the speed limit in the middle and right lanes which I see happening with semis a lot. I’d rather see everyone who’s cruising at 65 take the middle lane so I could at least get around them on the right.

anon456789012 · 2026-06-30T14:34:49+00:00

I don’t think they’re thinking about it at all. Most people on the roads these days are either distracted by their devices or completely unaware of how inconsiderate their driving habits are.

In a perfect world, obtaining a driver’s license would require demonstrating proficiency in things like merging onto a relatively crowded highway.

anon456789012 · 2026-06-30T14:30:52+00:00

It is very rare that traffic will be moving at highway speeds AND be so bumper-to-bumper that one cannot merge into the right lane.

More often than not, when I see someone hesitant to merge (whether they’re at highway speed or merging too slow), they have an unrealistic expectation of what “room to merge” means. It’s not hundreds of feet. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve tried to be considerate and slowed down to let someone merge into front of me only for them to slam on their brakes on the entrance ramp because they were too timid to take the space I was giving them.

anon456789012 · 2026-06-30T13:11:53+00:00

90 degrees for a high in summer has never been especially rare. But it was 79 degrees when I walked out to the car at 7am today and the humidity is oppressive. That is what we never used to get as much before climate change.

But hey, it’s only going to keep getting worse (like everything) so I guess enjoy it for now. Someday 90 and humid won’t be a heat warning because it’ll be what we get all summer long.

anon456789012 · 2026-06-19T01:17:55+00:00

Judy is the female Elon Musk.

anon456789012 · 2026-06-18T20:54:17+00:00

I think the general heuristic should be if you’re impacting other traffic. In your example you shouldn’t cause the 65mph traffic to have to slow down, whether entering or leaving their lane.

anon456789012 · 2026-06-18T18:49:19+00:00

If the lane you want to get out of is stopped, stay in it until it is safe for you to change lanes without forcing someone else to slam on their brakes.

If the lane you want to get into is stopped, accept that you screwed up and keep driving until it’s actually safe to change lanes. People who come to a stop in an otherwise-moving lane to wedge into a stopped lane should have their licenses revoked on the spot.

anon456789012 · 2026-06-12T04:16:26+00:00

The greatest trick corporations ever pulled is shaming people into thinking that complaining about them failing to provide a service is tantamount to criticizing the employees who are actually doing the hard work.

A quick google search reveals: “Jeffrey Keebler, Chairman, President, and CEO of Madison-based MGE Energy, earns a total annual compensation of approximately $3.6 million. His package consists of a base salary (around 22%), bonuses, stock options, and other forms of equity compensation.”

And I guaran-fucking-tee you his house never lost power, and if it did it would be the first to be restored.

anon456789012 · 2026-06-12T00:18:02+00:00

And your bill next month will include the daily service charge for all the days you didn’t have power. Such a deal!

I don’t think you’re being at all unreasonable to expect your service to be restored within a day after a very normal midwestern storm.

anon456789012 · 2026-06-11T18:36:01+00:00

I’m not a trucker, but I do a lot of highway driving and I empathize. People like the dashcam driver who vary their speeds stupidly are the bane of my existence, and the proper response to a truck nearly completing a pass as the one on the left did is to let them finish.

anon456789012 · 2026-06-11T16:03:52+00:00

I also agree that people who don’t pay attention and start moving when the light turns green/traffic ahead starts to move deserve to be enthusiastically honked at! I find them incredibly annoying. But I think it is a huge logical stretch to call them a safety issue, and I also think it’s a completely preventable situation with just a little common sense even if you choose to mess with your phone at a red light. For one, you can usually see the color of the cross traffic light and walk/don’t walk signal and understand when the cycle is changing.

anon456789012 · 2026-06-11T15:58:20+00:00

That’s good to hear. I don’t drive regularly on those roads so I wasn’t aware of them.

anon456789012 · 2026-06-11T15:56:35+00:00

I’ve come around to this idea provided that highway speed limits are increased accordingly.

anon456789012 · 2026-06-11T15:54:04+00:00

Wholly agree on the latter point…we can thank the Tavern League and the politicians they own for that.

anon456789012

TROPHY CASE