The California Thread

Discussion in 'Politics & Current Events' started by Knave, Nov 9, 2018.

  1. The Jitty Slitter

    The Jitty Slitter Moderator
    Staff Member

    Bayern München
    Germany
    Jul 23, 2004
    Fascist Hellscape
    Club:
    FC Sankt Pauli
    Nat'l Team:
    Belgium
    People who didn't drive the classic cars of the 70s don't understand the basics of traction and at all. It's become a cargo cult where you just hop in and the car works by magic

    I saw a guy who had clutch failure last week who was revving the engine high and then trying to force it into gear - how does he imagine having lots of RPM on the plates is helping? What does he think that awful grinding sound means? Where does he think all that kinetic energy is going?
     
  2. raza_rebel

    raza_rebel Member+

    Dec 11, 2000
    Club:
    Univ de Chile
    I see cars using the brief 100 feet of the exit ramp to go around other cars already in the right-hand land on the interstate. It feels like a weekly occurrence. That and using the shoulder to overtake as many cars as possible before having to jump back into traffic. These two items were very common during rush hour.

    Something else I noticed in the past year is a car with hazard lights at the base of a turning lane or the start of some road split. That or they comfortably sit in the bus stop loading/unloading zone. I see this more and more whilst running and 95% look like they stopped there to take a phone call or text.
     
  3. The Jitty Slitter

    The Jitty Slitter Moderator
    Staff Member

    Bayern München
    Germany
    Jul 23, 2004
    Fascist Hellscape
    Club:
    FC Sankt Pauli
    Nat'l Team:
    Belgium
    Haha yes! Or driving a couple of km up the slip road to reach the exit ramp in heavy traffic is another classic of the genre

    Round here hazard lights are the internationally recognised signal for yeah i have just parked illegally and will be back in 15-20 mins :rolleyes:

    The new wave of food delivery drivers do this all the time - e.g simply block an entire lane while they head off to some apartment somewhere :ROFLMAO:
     
    raza_rebel repped this.
  4. Cascarino's Pizzeria

    Apr 29, 2001
    New Jersey, USA
    Twist in SF assault case

     
  5. cliche_guevara

    Jun 1, 2004
    San Francisco, CA
    You have to remember most of us in CA grew up in areas where the freeways have 4 lanes in each direction. I think the middle 2 lanes confuse people? Meanwhile in some countries you can get a ticket for passing on the right.

    Driving through the Central Valley on the 5 is the worst because it's mostly people from the Bay travelling to SoCal or vise versa who have no idea what to do with 2 lanes in each direction. I do not care if I'm passing someone on the right if they're doing ********ing 60 in the left in that case. It's a 75+ zone man! But then you get aggressive drivers paired with shitty drivers and that's when a 7 hour drive can become a 11 hour one.
     
    rslfanboy repped this.
  6. roadkit

    roadkit Greetings from the Fringe of Obscurity

    Jul 2, 2003
    Fornax Cluster
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    99 is no better. It's like Death Race 2000, LOL
     
  7. The Jitty Slitter

    The Jitty Slitter Moderator
    Staff Member

    Bayern München
    Germany
    Jul 23, 2004
    Fascist Hellscape
    Club:
    FC Sankt Pauli
    Nat'l Team:
    Belgium
    This is where I am hoping that tech in the form of the cars talking to each other, could allow them to automatically adopt the most efficient road position/speed?

    It fairly often happens here that someone 'falls asleep' in the centre or left lane, instead of moving right so that traffic backs up - which can become dangerous

    Passing on the right here is a strict no-no ... insanely dangerous. But it is also illegal to flash your lights to 'wake' someone up and get them to move.

    What would make the most sense is if the cars ordered themselves instead of being so reactive
     
    Smurfquake and Mike03 repped this.
  8. QuakeAttack

    QuakeAttack Member+

    Apr 10, 2002
    California - Bay Area
    Club:
    San Jose Earthquakes
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    I just came back from a trip to San Diego. I have to admit making one or two stupid, aggressive moves. The main problem wasn't other cars, but trucks passing other trucks. Oh...and I passed on the right.
     
    Smurfquake and luftmensch repped this.
  9. Q*bert Jones III

    Q*bert Jones III The People's Poet

    Feb 12, 2005
    Woodstock, NY
    Club:
    DC United
    My wife freaks out whenever I do that but in NYC it's utterly commonplace.
     
  10. luftmensch

    luftmensch Member+

    .
    United States
    May 4, 2006
    Petaluma
    Club:
    Los Angeles Galaxy
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    It’s an unfortunately necessary response to idiocy.
     
  11. Smurfquake

    Smurfquake Moderator
    Staff Member

    Aug 8, 2000
    San Carlos, CA
    Club:
    San Jose Earthquakes
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    This is the world in which I want to live.

    I get all my best thoughts from science fiction stories. There's a scifi book called "The Mote in God's Eye" in which an alien species has developed highly specialized roles - the engineer, the warrior, the mediator, a smaller number of specialized types like a messenger or a medical specialist, and then a "master" who runs a clan with some number of the other types. The engineer types do all the labor, which includes driving the car and truck equivalents, and they have been bred over millennia to be very good at their jobs. So some visiting humans want to cross a busy street and they're waiting for a break in traffic, but one of their handlers, a mediator-type, just walks out into the road, and the engineers driving the vehicles just swerve around them without slowing down. That's how I want traffic to work - something pops up in the road, and the cars all talk to each other to figure out how to keep going without having to slow down or stop.

    We're a long away from that - Elom's self driving cars are trying to coexist with human drivers which will always be a lot harder because people are unpredictable - it would be awesome if we could create a segregated roadbed where only self-driving cars which sign on to a communication protocol to talk to the other self-driving cars can drive.
     
    Mike03 and The Jitty Slitter repped this.
  12. The Jitty Slitter

    The Jitty Slitter Moderator
    Staff Member

    Bayern München
    Germany
    Jul 23, 2004
    Fascist Hellscape
    Club:
    FC Sankt Pauli
    Nat'l Team:
    Belgium
    Yes! This stuff would be awesome to avoid stop and go.

    Also having suggested travel slots. Like if I am doing a 50k drive, it might be good to pre-log it hours before so an AI could suggest the best departures times/speeds and live updated via a traffic management. So if a lane gets closed, the app could actually suggest to 1000s of drivers to delay, or to slow down
     
  13. roby

    roby Member+

    SIRLOIN SALOON FC, PITTSFIELD MA
    Feb 27, 2005
    So Cal
    Or....we could just dispense with all that crap and demand the Jet Pacs we were promised 50 yrs ago! :rolleyes:
     
    Dr. Wankler repped this.
  14. chaski

    chaski Moderator
    Staff Member

    Mar 20, 2000
    redacted
    Club:
    Lisburn Distillery FC
    Nat'l Team:
    Turks and Caicos Islands
    Will it be the right lane or the left lane?
     
  15. roadkit

    roadkit Greetings from the Fringe of Obscurity

    Jul 2, 2003
    Fornax Cluster
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Hanoi is like that. "Just walk into the street. The traffic will go around you."
     
  16. roby

    roby Member+

    SIRLOIN SALOON FC, PITTSFIELD MA
    Feb 27, 2005
    So Cal
    Why must you make everything political? :(
     
  17. The Jitty Slitter

    The Jitty Slitter Moderator
    Staff Member

    Bayern München
    Germany
    Jul 23, 2004
    Fascist Hellscape
    Club:
    FC Sankt Pauli
    Nat'l Team:
    Belgium
    lol

    that was pure terror.

    especially making a turn across heavy traffic
     
  18. Q*bert Jones III

    Q*bert Jones III The People's Poet

    Feb 12, 2005
    Woodstock, NY
    Club:
    DC United
    Even the craziest cities for traffic have an internal logic that is the key to making sense of the place. Go to Cairo, Bangkok, or Mumbai, and once you get the internal logic, you can get around without too much fuss.

    Hanoi has no internal logic.

    Every interaction with another human in the form of a car, bike, or pedestrian, is a simple Prisoner's Dilemma. If you win, then you can take another step. If you lose, you get maimed. It's exhilarating, but also exhausting.
     
    Dr. Wankler, luftmensch and spejic repped this.
  19. The Jitty Slitter

    The Jitty Slitter Moderator
    Staff Member

    Bayern München
    Germany
    Jul 23, 2004
    Fascist Hellscape
    Club:
    FC Sankt Pauli
    Nat'l Team:
    Belgium
    Most I know living there have had more than one serious motorbike accident

    Perhaps the most terrifying moment of my life was making a turn across heavy highway traffic into the french hospital. My pillion passenger was giving the advice "turn slow and steady ...' and in the first moment my wing mirror was whipped off the motorbike by a dude actually coming up behind me.

    the idea people get out of the way is true only to the extent they can, not included the significant percentage of drunk out of their minds dudes
     
  20. superdave

    superdave Member+

    Jul 14, 1999
    VB, VA
    Club:
    DC United
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    California goat herders’ salary rules leave risk of wildfires - Los Angeles Times (latimes.com)

    "Goat herders were recently reclassified by California labor regulators, differentiating them from sheep herders — a new distinction that means goat herders will no longer be eligible for a monthly herders’ compensation, set at a minimum of $2,755 plus required overtime. Instead, employers will be required come Jan. 1 to compensate goat herders at an hourly rate, now set at $15.50 for farmworkers, plus required overtime.

    And given the nature of a goat herders’ job, which is considered on-call 24/7, industry leaders and the California Farm Bureau estimate that change would come out to almost $14,000 a month."

    That's some serious coin for herding goats.
     
    luftmensch repped this.
  21. BocaFan

    BocaFan Member+

    Aug 18, 2003
    Queens, NY
    Especially considering dogs do most of the work.

    But yeah, I didn't know that minimum wage also applies when someone is on call.
     
  22. spejic

    spejic Cautionary example

    Mar 1, 1999
    San Rafael, CA
    Club:
    San Jose Earthquakes
    They are in a near-by trailer, so they are getting paid the whole time even if they are doing nothing. It's like how a firefighter gets paid for the time spent at the station, even if they are sleeping.

    I'm sure this will mean Marin just won't hire them.
     
    BocaFan repped this.
  23. superdave

    superdave Member+

    Jul 14, 1999
    VB, VA
    Club:
    DC United
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Right, but firemen are usually 1 day on, 2 off.
     
  24. spejic

    spejic Cautionary example

    Mar 1, 1999
    San Rafael, CA
    Club:
    San Jose Earthquakes
    The one that works in this area said he's usually on a job site for two days.
     
  25. luftmensch

    luftmensch Member+

    .
    United States
    May 4, 2006
    Petaluma
    Club:
    Los Angeles Galaxy
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    I see sheep being hired out for grazing more often than goats, but I imagine they’re used for different types of vegetation, grasses for sheep and everything else for goats. We knew somebody years back who kept a goat in her backyard just to keep the blackberry bushes at bay, they’ll eat pretty much anything no matter how thorny.
     
    The Jitty Slitter repped this.

Share This Page