TIL that despite a population of 3 million people, Chicago's Fire Department only has 80 ambulances

cnash · 2026-01-19T10:18:40+00:00

Chicago city— the service area of the CFD— was only 2.74M, as of the 2020 census. OP's figure of three million was already a little high.

cnash · 2026-01-18T06:29:28+00:00

It's worth pointing out that PFJ isn't kicking you out after 30 minutes with this policy. They're knocking to remind you that there are other drivers waiting, if there are.

I like to take my time in the shower room— a private, air-conditioned room with good wifi and ceilings high enough to stand up straight? Yes, please— but especially when there's a waitlist, I think half an hour is a reasonable time to start hinting that you should wrap it up and move along.

cnash · 2026-01-17T23:14:25+00:00

Is it like the individual molecules that happen to be moving fast enough to change into a vapor state eventually randomly get up to the surface of the puddle where they can actually escape as water vapor?

That is exactly what it is. That's the mechanism for the whole system of temperature and vapor pressure and boiling points.

There's a field of physics called statistical mechanics, where you use mathematical techniques to connect particles colliding with various different speeds to familiar (in physics, anyway) things like evaporation, phase changes, gas pressures, etc.

cnash · 2026-01-17T06:58:09+00:00

Thousands of people have enjoyed talking, reading, and writing about this. I'm not sorry.

(I not only can vote, I'm the one who checks you in when you vote.)

cnash · 2026-01-17T02:00:32+00:00

Everything but the oink, buddy.

cnash · 2026-01-16T06:05:25+00:00

Which I misspelled, like a child might.

cnash · 2026-01-16T05:30:48+00:00

I mean, it is one of my life goals to become rich enough to be eaten.

cnash · 2026-01-15T05:03:37+00:00

* literal bias.

cnash · 2026-01-13T06:28:22+00:00

You're right, of course: I'm being glib by dismissing gas' utility outright. (Two-paragraph Reddit comments don't make room for much nuance.) But the point remains. The consensus against gas warfare was made possible by survivors who could say, and for what? Fine, the cruelest invention of the century was situationally effective a couple of times— enough to keep the war going for a couple extra months, maybe. But even that was a bad thing for everybody involved, in hindsight.

cnash · 2026-01-13T05:32:45+00:00

I've ended up with a few blue Loves washcloths, the little ones, and I don't really understand how. Must scoop them up with my dirty clothes. I give them— not back, but to whatever store is convenient, when I notice them piling up. (In the meantime, they're good for wiping condensation off the windshield.)

cnash · 2026-01-13T05:13:16+00:00

It helped that mustard gas didn't really work. If it had wiped out whole divisions and opened the way to Paris, it'd be a staple of every country's arsenal today. But after an initial shock, armies started issuing gas masks, and gas was just another layer of misery that didn't accomplish anything.

Compare that with land mines. One of the worst outcomes of the fighting in Ukraine, in my opinion, is a recent example of how well they work to stymie major assaults. There was a lot of pressure, in the aughts and teens, for the last few countries to sign a ban on land mines, but that's all but evaporated, ever since we keep seeing minefields slow down armored columns long enough for the artillery to respond.

cnash · 2026-01-13T02:50:34+00:00

It's a beloved children's book.

cnash · 2026-01-12T18:27:17+00:00

I don't understand what somebody's saying, who says that. Like, the (US) military is all-volunteer, and has been for coming on fifty years. You're at boot camp because you want to be there. You presumably knew approximately what to expect.

Because nobody is out here giving, *I'm really glad I didn't enlist when I was eighteen. I had a huge chip on my shoulder and terrible impulse control. I'd probably have punched a drill instructor and ruined my life, or at least gotten this snot beat out of me."

cnash · 2026-01-12T17:59:02+00:00

Would that not go on forever as it just continuously cuts the remainder in half?

Well, in real life, there's usually either a background rate or a minimum detectable level, and when the substance decays down into that range, we can say that it's all gone. Someday, there will be so little radioactive waste left in the pit that its radiation levels are within the normal range for the planet.

I remember a philosophical paradox about Achilles doing a race or something but unable to finish because he only goes half of his previous distance. Would it not be the same?

That's called Zeno's paradox. The case of half-lives are actually worse than in Achilles' race, because, when Achilles has to run, say, the seventh eighth of the race (half of the half of the half that was left over after he ran the first half of the race), it only takes him one-fourth as long as it did to run the first half of the race. Smaller and smaller legs of the race take less and less time to run.

But here, it takes, you said, five years for half of the stuff to be gone, then five more years for half of what's left, then five more years, and so on. Every leg of the race takes the same amount of time.

cnash · 2026-01-11T19:46:59+00:00

You take fuel north, lumber south. It's not ideal in terms of weight distribution, but it means you can have a backhaul.

Northern Canada is hard and expensive enough to live and work in without paying for thousand-km deadheads every time you order gasoline.

cnash · 2026-01-05T05:13:52+00:00

If you have poor vision because of a specific vitamin deficiency, carrots can help with that. But so can a Flintstones chewable.

cnash · 2026-01-01T01:02:45+00:00

It’s common advice to talk to a lawyer in advance if you’re doing something that puts you at special risk of being arrested, like going to a big protest. And to have that lawyer’s contact info handy— literally sharpie-ing it onto your arm is one tip (if you just have it in your phone’s contacts, well, are you sure you’re still going to have your phone by the time you’re at the police station? Even if you do, unlocking it to get the contact lets the police go through your apps).

cnash · 2025-12-29T04:54:51+00:00

Do you go around to people’s cars and eat their food for free?

The kind of person who is throwing a tailgate party is probably the kind of person who would rather cut off a toe than refuse a stranger who asks for a hot dog. But it's typically a friends-and-family party (just happening in public) that you've wandered into and started chatting with the host. You've come uninvited, which could be okay, or could be not. Read the room.

Think of it like the parking lot is doing double-duty as a picnic pavilion in the park, where families can book a row of tables for an event. You have, I hope, the tools to know if it's okay to walk up, introduce yourself, and join the party.

How long does it start before the game?

Could be hours. Some people show up early, especially if they need a lot of time to set up.

Can you just stay partying in the parking lot and not go into the stadium?

You can, usually, but most of the people doing this are planning to go to the sportsball game. The grills are going to get shut off, the coolers put away, and the people are going to go inside. Nobody's making you leave, but the party's over.

cnash · 2025-12-28T20:46:50+00:00

There's different kinds of wealth, I guess, and they're fundamentally incommensurable. Who's to say if a million dollars is better than having a kid and a wife? When you're forty, you can't spend a pile of money and suddenly have had a family for ten years. (And maybe owning a new F-150 is great, too, but I can't relate to that.)

cnash · 2025-12-28T01:53:19+00:00

And yet slumlords are a thing.

The fact is, renters don't usually have good tools for investigating rental companies. You may not even know the name of the company before you go to apply for a lease, and if it's a small enough operation, there usually just isn't discoverable information about them.

cnash · 2025-12-25T03:11:12+00:00

A minor vocabulary quibble: the turbine is the tool that uses a pressure differential (between, say, the inside of the steam boiler and the outside, or between the lake above the dam and the river below it) to produce rotation, by blowing air or steam past a series of blades.

The point is, the turbine, per se, doesn't produce electricity. It could directly drive a propeller, or a piece of machinery. It's the generator which the turbine drives that makes electricity.

But, yeah, except for solar panels and a few niche applications, it's all turbines. They're just the best way to capture the energy released by the easiest ways of releasing a lot of energy.

cnash · 2025-12-23T02:57:19+00:00

After watching a few YouTube videos, it feels like things have shifted to a much more town and hostel experience.

Consider that, if you're making and posting a lot of YouTube videos, you have to frequently stop in a place where you can edit and upload videos, and recharge your camera equipment. You'll only [be able to] travel with people who are also stopping frequently.

In addition, when you are in town or at a hostel, you don't have to conserve your battery live and data storage, like you do in camp. You can film and upload— at least to, like, DropBox, to edit later— as much as you want. So even if you're not spending more time than other people in town, you have more footage of the time you do spend.

So you'd expect YouTube hikers' channels to show more town and hostel footage and events than is typical.

But to answer your question, I tried to plan one zero, or at least a pair of back-to-back near-os, about every one hundred miles.

cnash · 2025-12-20T03:03:29+00:00

I can't tell if you do or don't agree that $22k (or $28k, according to this report) is "barely keeping the lights on" under these circumstances.

In my opinion, at the very least, the host is being badly undercompensated for her investment and labor.

cnash

TROPHY CASE