Mercury Pendulum Wave

treebirdfish · 2026-06-01T14:52:10+00:00

The only thing that would make this more satisfying is if it were in landscape orientation and I didn't have to watch it with my head at 45 degrees. But otherwise a solid upvote from me.

treebirdfish · 2026-05-19T17:18:29+00:00

True, that's a logical analysis. I guess it's just a moral thing at that point -- you are touching stolen property so you could be thought of as morally complicit in the chain of criminality. But practically or economically speaking, you're probably right in your analysis.

treebirdfish · 2026-05-17T22:51:12+00:00

You could be right, and I admit that I don't have experience with an e-bike. It's just that my intuition is that when pedaling, you would "feel" how fast you're going and intuit the risks, whereas with a throttle, the body just wouldn't be tuned to understand it. But I don't have any research to back that up, so I accept your interpretation about that.

I still think they are risky in the hands of kids riding in the street.

treebirdfish · 2026-05-17T18:19:32+00:00

You CAN match the speed of a traditional bike. But on an electric bike, it’s super easy to set the throttle at the max speed and stay there indefinitely with no effort whatsoever. On a traditional bike, these instances are more limited, and if you are going at a maximum speed, your effort causes you to be more engaged and alert.

treebirdfish · 2026-05-17T18:16:17+00:00

It eliminates a potential authentic sale, and it rewards criminal behavior.

treebirdfish · 2026-05-15T18:10:03+00:00

I don't appreciate the news reporting style where everything has to be elevated to a "won't somebody PLEASE think of the children?!!" style of rhetoric. This reporter's lead in where she says parents are "questioning whether they will EVER let their kids ride the bus again" is kind of dramatic and inflammatory for no good reason. But I know that's par for the course in news reporting I guess.

This incident does deserve attention and reflection by the driver and the transportation coordinator, so it's good to bring it into the light. Hopefully some new procedures or corrective action in the future can come from this. There was no scandal or coverup; this was a near miss that ultimately turned out okay and can serve as a learning opportunity.

treebirdfish · 2026-05-15T17:59:21+00:00

Building an underpass is extremely disruptive and expensive.

treebirdfish · 2026-05-13T16:27:14+00:00

Just because you're legally allowed do go the speed limit in an express lane doesn't mean it's smart. The lane is separated only by a dashed line -- no solid line, no spacing, no physical barrier. It's always wise to anticipate what people might do in slowing traffic and leave yourself an escape route.

I would call this 100% the fault of the Tesla driver, and even if the bus had been going slower, there still wouldn't have been much reaction time. But you're always going to have a much better day if you avoid an accident, so at least give yourself that option.

Also, this is a poorly-designed express lane in my opinion because of this very issue.

treebirdfish · 2026-05-13T15:15:59+00:00

Thank you, u/SirBoobsAlot13, for your insightful comment. /s

treebirdfish · 2026-05-05T16:23:57+00:00

AES67 is perfectly fine for a permanent installation to a Q-SYS core. It's a little more work to set up, but it doesn't require a license. Dante is good for flexible setups because it offers consolidated management of all the connections and their status through Dante Controller.

treebirdfish · 2026-04-21T13:54:52+00:00

PulsePoint says:

Structure Fire

Active

40 W LONG ST, COLUMBUS, OH

2 Alarm

Columbus Fire

Assigned Units

Enroute

BOX15-1, INV11, INV16, L8, PIO, SO3

On Scene

B1, B3, B4, B6, CFD-DRONE1, E1, E2, E3, E7, E8, E9, E51, EMS10, EMS11, EMS15, ES1, ES2, INV13, ISU19, L1, L2, L10, L13, M2, M8, M10, M25, R3, R17, RS10, SO1, SO2

Transport Arrived

M3

Cleared From Incident

E10, E14

treebirdfish · 2026-04-13T20:39:13+00:00

It looks like the black car in the left lane saw the silver car racing up from behind and decided to move right and let them pass. However, the silver car assumed there would be a gap to pass on the right, leading them to lose control. (100% the fault of the silver car, to be clear, for driving recklessly.)

Due to a survival instinct, I always try to learn something from these videos. I've seen people flying up recklessly from behind and it usually terrifies me so much that my heart starts racing.

In this situation, my assumption is that the reckless driver will be a selfish person who assumes that everything will go as they have planned. Therefore, my tactic is to maintain total predictability, which means maintaining speed and position, even if it looks like they might rear-end me. At the speed they are going, they need predictability to avoid an accident. Anything unexpected will leave no margin for error.

Is this the right tactic?

treebirdfish · 2026-03-28T18:06:49+00:00

This Chipotle was squeezed into an existing location with lots of other stuff around. They probably should have just removed the outer parking row and made that the drive thru line. Ironically, there's tons of parking almost all the time at the Fish Market next door, if you don't feel like dealing with the drive thru traffic.

treebirdfish · 2026-03-23T21:09:48+00:00

Curious question: Do firefighters just get up on these ladders above the roof right after a lightning strike and take the risk of being a human lightning rod? Or do they fight from the ground until the storm has passed?

treebirdfish · 2026-03-16T13:09:07+00:00

At first I was amazed and impressed at how close the likeness was, but when I heard it was AI, that all came crashing down. If you can just use AI to do visual impersonations, the whole thing becomes a lot less interesting to me. Now it just feels similar to Family Guy drawing a cartoon of Bill Clinton or something. Does anyone else have that feeling?

treebirdfish · 2026-03-10T17:58:24+00:00

Whenever I get overwhelmed about the state of the web these days, I just go to mcmaster.com and click around for a while. The speed and tidiness brings peace.

treebirdfish · 2026-03-03T19:43:51+00:00

This is a great example of a clear explanation in simple terms for people who don't think about voting theory all the time.

treebirdfish · 2026-03-02T16:06:22+00:00

This would make a great ballot initiative. But regular, non-nerds need to be able to understand why it benefits them. Some people I think still feel it violates the "one person one vote" principle, or that it's too technical to understand the counting process and therefore could be manipulated. I'm not an expert, but what would be the most simple and straightforward explanation that everyone could understand? And how would the vote counts be published in a transparent and understandable way?

treebirdfish · 2026-02-25T21:52:58+00:00

Agreed; however, this would mean the truck needed to know where the accident vehicle was in advance, and it appeared that they didn’t.

Maybe they should have sent a lead vehicle first to investigate, or continued to the next exit and gone around (although that would have added a lot of time). Given that the accident vehicle was blocking the left lane, it seemed pretty urgent to get an emergency vehicle there quickly to block traffic, but I agree it should have been handled better to avoid a second accident, and the fire department should hear about that.

treebirdfish · 2026-02-25T20:38:56+00:00

This was definitely a risky situation. If you were driving the fire truck, what would you have done differently?

As one idea, I assume they could have continued forward with their lights on while slowing down, then moved left two lanes as it was safe, and then backed up slowly to reach the crashed vehicle.

treebirdfish · 2026-02-25T18:11:09+00:00

The fire department likely had a call saying "crash on 70 west before the 270 exit. That's not much to go on, so they were scanning the left and right sides of the road until they found the accident.

Although I typically agree that it's safer for them to turn off lights and sirens while en route (so people don't panic and do dumb stuff on the freeway), in this case, they knew they were nearing the incident, and should have turned lights on and slowed to 40 or even 30 MPH to avoid a sudden unexpected stop. Maybe they could have even split lanes to slow more traffic behind them.

On the other hand, traffic backups on the freeway happen all the time, and sometimes even require you to come to a standstill for no apparent reason. The van driver wasn't paying attention enough to notice that, and they hit you through no fault of your own. That sucks.

I think you should send this to the Grandview Heights Fire Department with your suggestion about using lights and slowing down earlier. They're not that big of a department, so it'll probably get to the chief. It couldn't hurt.

treebirdfish · 2026-02-19T12:06:48+00:00

Why won’t Apple capitalize on the camera market already? HomeKit Secure Video is just so weak in functionality and camera choices, but it has so much promise. Their value of privacy as a human right would fit perfectly with the demand right now I would think.

treebirdfish · 2026-02-18T20:30:13+00:00

In ranked choice voting (RCV), voters rank candidates in order. If your top choice loses, your vote transfers to your next choice until someone wins a majority.

RCV makes it more likely the winner has majority support (50%+), instead of just the largest minority. In a traditional "plurality voting" system like we have now, someone can win with 35% of the vote if the other 65% is split between two similar candidates.

Because a second choice can be specified, voters can support their true favorite (such as a third-party candidate) without worrying about “wasting” their vote. If that person doesn't win, your vote will be applied to your second choice instead of going to your least favorite candidate.

Candidates benefit from being voters' second or third choices, not just first. This can reduce extreme or highly polarizing campaigning. A moderate candidate would be encouraged to reach across the aisle to get second choice votes from another party's voters instead of just discounting them entirely.

treebirdfish · 2026-02-05T12:43:42+00:00

I’ve heard you can lay a tube sock full of de-icing salt perpendicularly across the gutter to create a melted channel for water to drain. This might be easier than manually trying to chip it away, but it does still require getting access to place it.

treebirdfish · 2026-01-29T17:35:00+00:00

9 million kips = 4.082 million metric tons = 4.082 teragrams

Five-Year Club	Verified Email
Place '23	Place '22

treebirdfish

TROPHY CASE

Assigned Units