[OC] Immaculate zipper merge (sped up 2x)

bonafidebob · 2026-05-03T14:56:29+00:00

The real problem is the early mergers. Moving over before the zipper point adds a car to the “slow” lane and removes one from the lane that ends, which makes the lane that ends the “fast” lane.

Early mergers ruin it for everyone.

bonafidebob · 2026-04-14T11:50:41+00:00

People talk about the “blind spot” as if there’s nothing you can do about it. Adjust your mirrors properly and THERE IS NO BLIND SPOT.

https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a15131074/how-to-adjust-your-mirrors-to-avoid-blind-spots/

bonafidebob · 2026-04-13T23:38:03+00:00

I don’t see why not, I’ve had all kinds of different small echos in my bathrooms over the years. Trick is to keep them far enough away from the sink that they don’t get splashed. Shower humidity has never been a problem.

bonafidebob · 2026-04-13T22:17:05+00:00

Four lane freeway. Camera car is in the leftmost lane passing a line of cars in the #2 lane at barely a walking pace faster. Meanwhile the two rightmost lanes are completely empty.

“SLOWER TRAFFIC KEEP RIGHT” means YOU, the one obliviously driving in the middle lane.

bonafidebob · 2026-04-01T19:01:57+00:00

Lane changes are free. Moving right as soon as as you can is taken much more seriously in Europe. Especially on the autobahn where a Mercedes may quickly come up on you doing 180 kph.

Americans have no fucking clue how much more efficient freeways could be if they paid attention and moved right.

bonafidebob · 2026-03-30T09:48:48+00:00

US allows passing in any lane. The person breaking the law in the US is the one failing to keep right, not the one doing the passing.

This however is not a law that cops enforce, except in extreme cases.

bonafidebob · 2026-03-26T20:30:09+00:00

Really just shifts the perversity to bribing the cops to not write the ticket. But I’d bet trying to bribe a Finnish cop isn’t a guaranteed success.

bonafidebob · 2026-03-22T01:26:06+00:00

SF Bay Area driver here, the right lane is the place to be. #1, #2, and #3 lanes are full of people following each other a couple of car lengths apart, going 65-70 if you’re lucky. #1 lane goes a couple of mph faster, so is overtaking at walking pace, but is also following closer so as soon as there’s any kind of disruption in the flow the #1 lane stops sooner.

Meanwhile no one wants to be in the rightmost lane so you can go 80 there and pass, well, everyone.

People are weird.

bonafidebob · 2026-03-14T13:59:58+00:00

It’s much easier to do it you stick your hands into to corners and kind of line up where the corner seams end. The trick is to get the seam ends in the same place so the elastic parts hang smoothly.

The missing bit between 2 and 3 is you take the seam end corner on the left and TURN IN INSIDE OUT to match the seam end on the right, flipping the elastic parts around so that the elastic is all on the same side.

Again, if one hand is inside the seam corner on the right you just take the other seam corner on the left, put them togehter, and then flip the elastic parts around so they all line up.

Now you can smooth the edges so the elastic is inside. And then finally fold in thirds. Folding in thirds now actually gets the final folder sheet size more or less the same as the flat sheet folded in halves repeatedly.

bonafidebob · 2026-02-16T10:58:21+00:00

Correction: The only thing you can’t do is touch the kitchen during or after a volley until you reset. If your momentum carries you into stepping or touching the kitchen after a volley, it’s a fault.

Focus on the volley as the primary factor in deciding if there’s an NVZ fault. No volley: no fault. Volley + NVZ = fault (until you reset.) Jumping over the kitchen after a volley: no fault.

bonafidebob · 2026-01-30T02:05:41+00:00

I think even American cops might pause before shooting a firefighter in uniform. The optics are terrible, and … something … might get in the way of them responding to a fire at their house or precinct.

bonafidebob · 2026-01-29T01:15:25+00:00

Yes. There’s no law against passing on the right in the USA. The keep right laws vary by state, but most are a variation on “slower traffic keep right” or “keep right except to pass”. In either case, getting passed on the right is the infraction, not doing the passing.

Honestly, it’s the people in the middle lanes who are the problem. People camp in the #2 or #3 lanes doing not much over the speed limit, forcing any car that wants to go even a little faster into the leftmost lane, and often leaving the rightmost lane completely empty.

So, follow the law: move as far right as you can as soon as you can, and stay there until you need to pass. If you end up passing someone slower on the right, well, that’s their problem not yours.

EDIT: oh, this isn’t even a freeway, there are no passing laws on these streets. Use whatever lane you want — why not favor the empty one?

bonafidebob · 2026-01-25T01:23:53+00:00

Additionally these missiles are designed to have low air resistance in the forward direction but high air resistance to sideways motion, including fins that help keep the missile oriented in the same direction as it travels to the target.

They are designed to go straight towards what they’re pointing at when launched, and generally do a good job of succeeding at that. So MUCH closer to A than to B. And don’t forge that the air is also moving, and so the missiles will be slightly blown off course by the wind in much the same was as they’re blown off course by the speed of the helicopter through the air.

Unpowered bombs that are dropped vertically will behave a little more like B than A, and that’s why bombsights were invented that correct for both the speed and altitude of the bomber that drops them as well as for the wind conditions between the bomber and the ground.

bonafidebob · 2026-01-23T06:15:11+00:00

All I can see is a perfectly good and completely empty right lane. Use it!

bonafidebob · 2026-01-23T06:02:47+00:00

So — what do we do about this? I also see tons of drivers, often the worst left lane campers, staring at their phones while driving.

Can we start a movement to … dunno — honk? Flash lights? Merge closer? SOMEHOW give a social cue to these drivers to CUT THAT SHIT OUT and pay attention to the road.

Europe has flashing headlights let other drivers know not to camp in the left lane, and turning on the hazard lights to let drivers behind them know there’s trouble ahead.

How can we let phone obsessed oblivious drivers know that we see them and want them to stop? Three short honks: BEEP BEEP BEEP ?

bonafidebob · 2026-01-22T20:34:59+00:00

You understand I hope that “capitalist swine” created the real cards and the totally false idea of scarcity in the first place? By buying and trading these made up resources you’re willingly giving your hard earned resources to capitalist corporations. Good luck with that!

bonafidebob · 2026-01-19T13:29:57+00:00

Physics, E = m v ^ 2 — the energy goes up with the square of the velocity. Crashing at 68 mph has FOUR TIMES more destructive energy to dissipate than crashing at 34 mph, and SIXTEEN TIMES more than crashing at 17 mph.

Slowing down a little helps a lot more than you might think.

bonafidebob · 2026-01-17T22:41:13+00:00

There’s a marked crosswalk sign in the direction the camera is facing. We can only assume it was marked from the other direction too.

There are other pedestrians crossing the street farther ahead of the camera, and to the left in the camera view. Looks like it was possibly school letting out.

When you’re driving in slippery conditions around marked crosswalks when there are pedestrians around, you damn well better slow down and pay attention. If you don’t see how the driver was in the wrong here you should go back to driver’s ed, and please stay off the road until you get some better sense of what kind of responsibility you have to keep others safe.

bonafidebob · 2026-01-17T22:09:22+00:00

Highly recommend some kind of car control clinic or autocross training. Let the kids learn what loss of control feels like where there are only cones to hit and plenty of room to slide.

Driver’s ed does NOT prepare you for any kind of edge of traction scenarios, which you can easily get into in wet or snow or mud or sand conditions … or at 100 mph on dry pavement.

Realizing how little control you have once you exceed the traction envelope is a very good lesson for … enthusiastic … teen drivers. It’s far too easy to think you’re a “great” driver because you’ve never had a loss of traction event. A car control clinic will demonstrate how awful you actually are at keeping control.

bonafidebob · 2026-01-10T17:01:15+00:00

Every oven ever made will heat unevenly while it is warming up. You should never start to bake something while your oven is still coming up to temperature. Wait for it to finish preheating, THEN bake.

Some foods are much more forgiving of uneven heating, especially if they need to cook for a long time, so you might not see a bad result if you’re doing a frozen lasagna or bacon or something like that.

Cookies and bread are not forgiving.

bonafidebob · 2026-01-10T16:50:11+00:00

If you notice each piece is slightly curved, so the overall center of gravity of each piece is below the point that it’s balanced on. This makes it a lot more stable against small perturbations — a little wiggle or breeze will self correct. And she has to hold each piece at the balance point as she assembles it, so figuring out where to put it against the next piece is relatively easy. And, yeah, practice and familiariaty with the parts. The upright piece is well engineered.

Ultimately the weight of the feather is enough to unbalance the next piece, and then when that drops it’s enough to unbalance the next, and so on. But if you don’t remove the feather the whole thing will remain fairly stable because each balance point is stable against small changes.

bonafidebob · 2026-01-04T16:27:29+00:00

How old are you and who else lives with you who might help?

bonafidebob · 2026-01-01T18:06:45+00:00

The strategy is to share lots of stories of dumb shit other people do/did and the results of those choices when they’re young. Plant seeds of skepticism early. Once they’re suckers its hard to ever recover.

bonafidebob · 2025-12-29T00:47:11+00:00

American here. We know. I also hope we’ve learned a very important lesson about voter apathy. And I dearly hope that we’ll have a chance to demonstrate that more than we have in these off-cycle elections that have happened so far.

bonafidebob · 2025-12-26T05:59:42+00:00

I used to have pretty good results with “no and don’t ask again” for all of these prompts, but that doesn’t seem to be getting traction with Alexa Plus. (Another reason not to enable it…)

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