Things I Have Enjoyed & Learnt 007
Here is the introduction.
Things I Have Enjoyed
You Don’t Need A Full-Size Pickup Truck, You Need a Cowboy Costume
Whereas fully one-quarter of new vehicle owners state that fuel economy is a top priority for them, nearly half as many truck buyers report holding this as relevant, and only four percent say they would pay extra for a greener vehicle ... 75 percent of truck owners use their truck for towing one time a year or less (meaning, never). Nearly 70 percent of truck owners go off-road one time a year or less. And a full 35 percent of truck owners use their truck for hauling—putting something in the bed, its ostensible raison d’être—once a year or less.
A new USCSB video dropped and they have a new intro to celebrate 50 years. It is quite something.
In the absence of reddit I've gone back to Metafilter. I had forgotten how good it is.
The absolutely insane Kurtsystems horse racing "pre-training system".
Pasta Evangelists. Have I mentioned this before? Very good mail order pasta which freezes very well.
Visiting the East Neuk of Fife. This year was our sixteenth and I hope there are sixteen more.
The entire Donald Trump indictment read aloud as a podcast.
Silo. I've read the books so I know what's going on but it's still a very good show.
Whichever madlad managed to get the NYPD to put "All Colours Are Beautiful" on the side of their cars.
The @bioreconstruct account on Twitter posts incredible aerial photographs of Disney. See 10 Years Of Bioreconstruct for the greatest hits.
Things I Have Learnt
The "factor" in suncream is the extent to which it reduces the strength of UVB. Factor 50 reduces it to one-fiftieth of its initial intensity.
If a boat is taking on water from above the waterline and the water is moving downwards that is flooding; if it is taking on water from below the waterline and moving upwards that is bilging.
The static electric charge in your tumble dryer means that it's much more radioactive than background.
Banking does not round numbers in the "normal" way. They use "round half to even" in which numbers are rounded to the nearest even number, e.g. 9.5 and 10.5 both round to 10. This prevents errors in averages etc. from accumulating. The average of 8.5, 9.5 and 10.5 is 9.5, but when using the "normal" round-up method the average of the rounded values is 10, whereas by using round half to even the average is 9.3.
Ablaut reduplication is why we have chit-chat and not chat-chit, flip-flop not flop-flip, hip-hop not hop-hip, King Kong, zigzag, and so on.
Bridges with long spans and tall supports are further apart at the top than they are at the base because of the curvature of the Earth. The supports for the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge in New York are 40 mm further apart at the top than they are at the base. (And thermal expansion means the roadway is 3.6 metres lower in summer than it is in winter.)
The End
Maybe it'll be the summer holidays by the time I send the next one of these. I can't wait. Also if anyone has any suggestions for what to see/do/eat in Manchester, please let me know.
Alby