I think the scam calls are annoying, but it takes basically no effort to ignore them when I’m not in the mood to mess with them, so I don’t mind them so much.

I figure though if I can keep one tied up talking to me for a few minutes that’s one less chance for them to be scamming someone’s grandmother. It’s a tiny drop in the ocean, but it’s still potentially one less person getting scammed that day, and that’s worth something.

There’s probably a lot of different variables, cows vs bulls, the breed, how they’re being raised, if they have calves with them, how you’re behaving, etc.

In general though, safest bet is always going to be to give them space and not approach them. Not to say they’re necessarily going to be aggressive or anything, but that’s just kind of rule number 1 with any animals you’re not familiar with.

Annecdotally, when I was a teenager, I did Philmont, which is a big property the Boy Scouts of America (now changing their name to Scouting America) owns in New Mexico, where scouts can go backpacking. They also maintain a working cattle ranch there, and I believe so e of the neighboring ranches allow their cattle to (grave? Free range? Roam? I’m not sure of the correct terminology) the Philmont property, so it’s not uncommon to encounter cows in various places there.

They give pretty much the same lecture, don’t approach them, don’t do anything to spook them, and give them some space.

At one point my group was hiking along a trail coming to a junction, and a few dozen cows came down the trail we were about to head up and went into the woods. We weren’t super close to them, but it was probably about the closest I’ve been to a cow outside of a petting zoo in my life, and there was nothing but a few yards of open trail between us. We just stood back and watched them go about their business, the cows didn’t pay any attention to us, we hung out for a couple minutes after they passed in case there were any stragglers, and sure enough there was a lone cow that came running down the trail trying to catch up with its friends.

I’m no cow-ologist, but my general understanding is that they tend to be fairly laid back, and if anything curious. That said, they’re big, powerful animals and you don’t want to spook them.

I don’t know the specifics of this project, but not all Amtrak trains are electric, they also run diesel and dual mode (diesel/electric) trains (I’m pretty sure, but not certain that the northeast corridor is all electric)

There’s also other things worth considering like emissions from construction or maintenance vehicles, some lines are used for freight and passenger rail, construction might stir up any crap that might be in the soil, I suspect there’s some amount of metal dust created by the constant grinding of wheels on rails, plastics from brakes and such, leaks from any hydraulics onboard the train, refrigerant leaking from the air conditioning, etc.

In the grand scheme, even if they’re running straight diesel trains, leaking fluids, asbestos brake pads, etc. it’s probably all negligible in emissions compared to just living in Baltimore, maybe even offset if it leads to more people using Amtrak instead of driving but all of it is still worth considering.

It depends on what I’m doing

If I’m going somewhere out of easy driving distance and hoping maybe some friends will come along, I’ll start floating the idea about a year out, start making more solid plans about 6 months out. Give people time to get passports, save up for plane tickets, etc.

If it’s an overnight to a long weekend with just me and my wife, maybe a couple weeks, we could probably do day-of sometimes but we gotta make sure someone can watch our dog.

Looking further into it, your numbers do seem to be more accurate and I’m going to edit my above comment to reflect that.

Serves to illustrate my point about fucky numbers though, there’s lots of bad sources out there that are cherry picking different stats and statistics that sound like but aren’t quite what you’re looking for, doing some questionable math, bullshit written for SEO algorithm purposes and AI generated content making up numbers, etc, and I’m not immune to falling for that. Whatever the hell I was googling earlier (unfortunately I keep my browser and search history wiped pretty clean and I’m having a hell of a time trying to retrace my digital steps, otherwise I’d share where I got those numbers and where I went wrong) was giving me the very distinct impression that the 75th percentile was roughly in the ballpark of 100K individual

These numbers are always a little fucky unless you really want to go combing through some incredibly dull spreadsheets, reports, statistics, etc. to find exactly what you’re looking for

EDIT #2: I’m an idiot who doesnt heed my own warnings about fucky numbers. Disregard the rest of this comment unless you want to see me being wrong, leaving it up because I own up to my mistakes. See the following comments for details

But from a couple minutes of googling, it looks to me like the top 25% of income in the US puts you at around $100k/person, give or take maybe about 10K or so depending on where exactly you’re sourcing those numbers.

That’s of course only part of the picture, net worth, investments, all kinds of creative accounting, etc. also play into that, but I only have so much patience to comb through all of it.

That’s not what I’d consider wealthy, but I’d probably consider that to be a pretty comfortable income for a lot of people. Again, a lot of variables there, but in general that would probably be enough to make sure your basic needs are all covered, and probably to save a decent bit on top of that, be able to send your kids to a decent college and pay for at least part of it out of pocket, and at least generally enough to give you a leg-up over a family making the median income at about half of that.

EDIT: My wife and I fall a bit short of that by probably about 30K each, we’re doing OK, not struggling but not making a whole lot of forward progress either. That kind of money would be almost like having a whole 3rd income for us

Not exactly the same thing, but my wife and I saw Logan at a drive in theater when it came out

Towards the end when he’s all fucked up and near death, the audio started doing all kinds of weird shit, cutting in and out, getting fuzzy and distorted, etc.

We thought it was a pretty cool effect to show the sort of state he was in and we were all about it.

Then we heard some crystal clear audio coming from the cars next to us, turns out it was just my car’s battery dying from running the radio.

Still think it was a cool effect, would watch it again that way if it were an option.

I’ve since picked up a battery powered radio for future drive-ins (we try to go at least once a year)

You could chant primary colors at kindergarteners online line for a maximum of 20 hours per week, or in person for a maximum of 10 hours per week

That may work for you, and if it does I’m happy for you, but for me, as much as I want more time for myself and my hobbies, one thing I want even more is to not ever spend any amount of time doing anything even remotely like that.

I also have no real interest in working abroad even if I didn’t think that job sounded horrible. A week or two of vacation, sure, but by the end of week 2, I’m ready to go home, and that’s really the point here, I want to be able to just stay home, and only leave when it’s to do something I want to do.

The problem is that the one thing I want to do that I’m not already doing is “not work”

I don’t have any grand plans to take up new hobbies or anything in my retirement (though I’m sure I’ll continue collecting hobbies just as I always have) I just want to be able to do them on my own schedule

Every time I see one of those “employees must wash hands” signs, I think about getting some custom made “and everyone else should too” signs made up to start posting below them in public bathrooms everywhere I go.

As a child on a taco commercial once said

¿Por qué no los dos?

Both show promise though need further research to determine how they should be used most effectively and safely, they have similar legal hurdles, and different patients may respond better to one, the other, or possibly even a combination of both,

I am so ready to hop on the PHEV or even full electric bandwagon.

I do have 2 major hurdles though.

First is there aren’t a lot of vehicles out there, at an affordable price point for me that quite fit my needs. I’ve pretty much dialed in that a midsized SUV or small pickup truck is just right for me. There’s some exciting options coming down the pipeline, but none that are out there have quite hit the sweet spot for me yet. (I am champing at the bit for Ford to release a PHEV AWD maverick with a midgate to make up for that short bed. That’s basically my ideal vehicle, I’d also be stoked for Toyota to do a plug in 4runner, my current car is a 4runner and I like it a lot, if either of those happen before I’m ready for my next car theres a good chance that’s what I’m getting)

Second is charging, I live in a townhome with no garage or driveway, so if I want to charge at home I’m pretty much stuck running about a 30ft extension cord across my front lawn and sidewalk. That’s less than ideal, and my HOA hasn’t exactly been friendly to others in my neighborhood who have gone electric who have done that. I can probably work around that though, the way my schedule works, unless I go in for overtime I usually don’t work more than 3 days in a row, so if battery-only range gets a little better for PHEVs (which hopefully they will by the time I’m able to budget for a new car in a few years) I can probably do most of my commuting on one charge and find an hour or two on my days off to go somewhere with a fast charger.

In the meantime, I just try to get my wife to do as much of the driving as possible when we’re both off since she has a prius, our schedules don’t always align, but when they do I only drive if we need my bigger car for something.

It’s a long way off, but we also fantasize about the possibilities of self-driving cars someday when all of the problems are worked out. Since we have different schedules (she works a regular 9-5, I work 3pm-3am on a 2-2-3 schedule,) we could have one self driving car for most of our commuting and errands, it could take her to work, come home and take me to work, pick her up and take her home, and pick me up at the end of my shift, and go charge itself in-between.

It of course varries from one school or area to another, and from different age groups.

I ended up going to 4 proms, my own junior and senior proms, the senior prom my junior year because a girl asked me, and then I ended up dating a girl at another high school after I graduated and ended up going to her senior prom (in case anyone’s getting skeeved at that, we were both 18 at the time we started dating, just a few months difference between us, I just barely made the cutoff to be part of the previous grade and she just missed it)

That last prom was the only one where I was actually dating my date, the other 3 we just went as friends, although I did have a pretty big crush on the girl I took to both of my own proms but could never quite work up the nerve to ask her out.

There were never any elaborate promposals or anything, that was just starting around that time and hadn’t quite caught on yet, my sister a couple years behind me did it, nothing too elaborate I think she gave her friend a cake and balloons.

The promposal thing is mostly just that it’s silly and fun, and nowadays I guess it probably makes for a funny tiktok.

Prom was not a particularly big deal in my area, if I had to attach any particular significance to it, it’s just that it’s kind of your first “adult” formal event that you’re attending for your own sake, not because you’re going to a cousins wedding, not something like your first communion or bar mitzvah or whatever when you’re still very much a kid. You get to dress up, you get a fancy meal, you rent a limo, maybe you go to a cool post-prom party and you’re going to be out till the wee hours of the morning mostly left to your own devices. It’s fun for its own sake, and the kind of event most teens don’t really get to experience very often.

Part of the problem is not having the money or space for an extra vehicle.

I drive an SUV, I don’t particularly like driving an SUV, I get a lot of use out of having a larger vehicle, I’m an avid DIYer who makes frequent trips to the hardware store to pick up lumber and such, I have a lot of outdoor hobbies and usually end up being the one who drives so I’m carrying gear for several people, I don’t exactly go off roading, but those hobbies sometimes take me on some poorly maintained, deeply rutted, muddy roads and 4wd has gotten me out of some jams, I occasionally drive onto the beach to go fishing, usually find myself towing a small trailer a couple times a year, and I’m an essential employee that lives in an area that gets snow with a weird schedule that usually has me commuting before the snow plows have gotten through everywhere.

But even though I probably get more actual use out of an SUV than most people, most often I’m still only driving about 20 miles or less a day, on paved roads, in weather that doesn’t require anything more than working headlights, wipers, and tires that aren’t totally bald.

If I had the budget and parking space I’d probably have the cheapest base model EV I could find for most of my commuting and small errands and save the SUV for my days off and when it snows. That’s not the case though.

If it is in fact the moment you walk in the door, then it absolutely is the architecture. If the architecture didn’t have any effect on it, whatever’s disrupting the signal would also interfere with the signal outside.

Damn near every school building I’ve ever been in is a behemoth of brick, concrete, and cinder blocks. Cellular and other radio signals have a hard time penetrating that.

Same for a lot of hospitals, big retail stores, and other similar places.

I work in 911 dispatch, we have caution notes attached to the addresses of a lot of schools, hospitals, various office buildings, etc. in our area that there’s poor cell reception or that our responders can’t get radio reception inside the buildings, so we know how we can or can’t communicate with our units when they’re responding to an emergency there. I can guarantee you those places aren’t purposely jamming police radios.

I lose my cell signal in parts of several of my local grocery stores, big box retailers, etc. that’s just part of being inside of a big concrete and metal box. Why would they even want to interfere with my ability to use my phone?

A lot of these buildings were built before cell phones were even a thing, so reception was not a concern in their design. Even in newer buildings, it’s often not a major consideration.

And as others said, jamming a cell signal is a huge no-no from the FCC. If anything, and I doubt they’re even doing this much, they have picocells (basically tiny cell towers) in the building that they’re turning off at certain times. If they didn’t have them, there would still be no signal in those parts of the building.

First of all, I’m not at all against medical (or recreational for that matter) marijuana. It helps people, and those people should have access to medications that help them, and I’d rather have the current system than no access to medical marijuana at all. I feel like I need to start off with this because otherwise I feel like parts of this comment may come off as anti-marijuana, and that’s not my intention at all.

But it’s always been kind of wild to me how the programs we have are handling medical marijuana, I’m pretty sure if a doctor tried to handle any other medication like we usually handle medical marijuana, he’d lose his license.

Marijuana isn’t one drug, it’s several, THC, CBD, Terpenes, various other cannabinoids and other active ingredients, all with different interactions with your body and with each other that can produce a variety of effects on their own or in combination with the others.

And often you’re given little to no medical guidance on which ones will actually help with which issues, how much or how often you should take them, and in what way.

It’s kind of like being given a bucket of assorted pills that may or may not help your condition and being told to mix and match them and try taking them in various ways until you feel better.

And don’t even get me started on smoking it. Yes, it can be an effective delivery method, and you can go back and forth on how marijuana smoke is more or less harmful in various ways than tobacco, but at the end of the day putting smoke in your lungs is bad for you, and I don’t think there’s a doctor in the world who would disagree with that. If nicotine was some sort of wonder drug that could help with various conditions and you could get a prescription for it, I guarantee you it wouldn’t come in the form of tobacco, you’d get pills, patches, maybe some kind of inhaler, vape or nebulizer, injections, suppositories, etc. some sort of purified product with a known dosage.

It’s practically impossible to really do medical grade QA on a plant, there’s going to be variation from one plant to another, or even from different parts of the same plant depending on weather, light, water, fertilizer, and other variables in the growing conditions, not to mention just the genetic variations in the plants, and knowing exactly how much of which active ingredients are in the product is kind of key to being able to dial in what is an effective dose.

Yes, a lot of that has to do with all of the shitty laws and regulations we have around marijuana and our broken medical system in general, I’m not going to go into that too much because this comment is already going to be long enough that a lot of people won’t read it, but I’ll leave it it’s hard to study marijuana to figure what works and how, and it’s hard to build up the kind of industry needed to make actual pure and consistent medical grade marijuana products.

Now of course, if we handled medical marijuana the way it probably should be for the best results, it would probably turn out to be a hugely expensive undertaking under our current healthcare system. There’d probably be a lot of doctor-patient interaction to help you dial in your dosages, with more guidance on how and when to take it, we’d probably be getting into territory where you’d need some sort of a compounding pharmacist who could provide you with a custom blend of the right active ingredients in precise ratios in the delivery method that’s most effective for your condition and needs, there’d be a huge pharmaceutical industry (and probably all of the corporate greed that goes with it) that would need to be built to provide these medications, etc.

And unless we have some major overhaul to our healthcare system, that would all probably price a lot of patients out of being able to afford these treatments.

And yes, the current system works well enough for a lot of people, but it’s possible that it could work even better for them and for even more people if we treated marijuana more like other medications.

I don’t exactly have a grand plan on how to fix things. I don’t want to make marijuana more expensive or inaccessible for the people who need it. I don’t want to feed into the pockets of big pharma. But I do want to make sure that our treatments are as effective as possible, that we’re treating marijuana seriously as a medication and that people view it as such, and that we’re not just settling for our treatment options being “good enough” when we can do even better. We didn’t stop at willow bark, we built on it to develop modern aspirin and other NSAIDs, and someday we will probably do the same for marijuana, there will probably come a day when almost no one will turn to plant-derived marijuana products for medical reasons because we will have long since isolated, synthesized, and developed entirely new classes of drugs based on what we learn from studying marijuana that do the same things more effectively, more safely, and with even less side-effects.

It sounds like it’s a ban on using the phone during school, not on simply having a phone with you.

Which honestly sounds like a rule every school has pretty much had for like 20+ years.

I was in Montreal for the eclipse, I’m sure it was a very busy tourist weekend and they were ready for the influx of us English speakers coming to town, but I didn’t have any issues anywhere.

It was probably my favorite city I’ve ever visited. Everything we ate was amazing, even when we just stopped into some random hole in the wall Chinese takeout place for a quick bite.

Public transit blew anything I’ve ever experienced in the states clean out of the water. I was also kind of in awe at how bikeable the city was.

There’s not many cities I’ve visited that I’m itching to go back to, but I’m definitely planning to go back sometime.

To be fair, you didn’t say it had to be a modern technological invention, just that it impacted the modern world

My wife and I went on a road trip for the 2017 eclipse. At one point she was driving around and I was goofing around in the passenger seat with our eclipse glasses.

Couldn’t see shit through them, I could see the sun, maybe just barely the vague outlines of certain big things off the side of the road if they were in full sun

I could absolutely see the sun glinting off of every bit of chrome on cars that drove past though. Couldn’t see the cars themselves, just a brief little flash of light.

Kind of made me wonder what kind of cumulative eye damage you might get from millions of small flashes from chrome bits on cars over your lifetime. It could very well be negligible, I’m certainly no eye doctor.