Pumped

"Had a baby three weeks ago and bought these. "Pump anywhere," they said. "It's whisper quiet, nobody will know you're pumping at all," they said...."

Extended discussion comparing different breast pumps at the source.

Apparently Florida has anti-incest billboards

Via the Cringetopia subreddit.

Career advice

Discussed at the WhitePeopleTwitter subreddit.

So what is all this then ??? - updated

Photographed last week in north-central Minnesota, these painted decoys were clustered in a drainage ditch beside a rural highway, not close to any populated area.

I presume this is a whimsical art installation.  It certainly provided an unexpected diversion during a long drive.

Updated 2019:

It's still there.  I drove by it again on my way up north last week.

The location is here, along Highway 27 northeast of Lake Mille Lacs.

Flash flood rescue

Spluegen, Switzerland.  Photo credit Graubuenden Police/Reuters, via The Atlantic.

Ursa major damage

California police are reminding drivers to lock their car doors after a bear let itself inside an unlocked vehicle near Lake Tahoe and destroyed the interior...

While trapped inside, the bear apparently ripped the seats apart, tore open the glove compartment and pulled down part of the ceiling. The animal also urinated, defecated and spit all over the destroyed interior, police said. The department called the vehicle “a total loss.”

Police were eventually able to open the rear hatch to let the bear escape.

Via Neatorama.  Image cropped for clarity from the original.

Ever wonder how multi-lane highways are snowplowed?

The process is nicely illustrated in this photo posted today in the Wisconsin State Journal.  It requires large, powerful trucks of course, but also an impressive degree of coordinated teamwork.  The difficulty arises because of an impenetrable concrete barrier separating the two directions of traffic (placed there to prevent catastrophic cross-overs).

Snow in the innermost lane has to be moved across three or four lanes and has to be cleared from that shoulder into a ditch.  It can't be done by one truck at a time, because that would pile the snow into the passing lane.  And the entire highway can't be done at one time, because the snow passed by 2-3 trucks would overwhelm the fourth one. 

Notice in the photo above that the trucks on the left of the photo are driving in previously-plowed lanes (as shown for the traffic going the other way).  Those central and outer lanes are done first, and then the entire team has to assemble in order to clear the snow from the innermost one.

Quite remarkable.  These snow-removal truck drivers are winter heroes here in the Midwest (even if they do sometimes leave huge solidified masses of frozen snow where your driveway meets the road...).

Interesting idea

Peachtree, Georgia runs on golf carts

YouTube link.

Stick with the story at least until you see the parking lot at the local high school.

A bike lock that's "better than nothing"

YouTube link.

Princeton student, 1983

Found in the Old School Cool subreddit.  Identity of the young woman at the link.

Pet Cemetery

YouTube link.

"Filmmaker Sam Green was just about to fly out of Columbus, Ohio when his friend offered to make a quick detour. “She asked if I wanted to see a little pet cemetery that's across the street from the airport,” Green told The Atlantic. Armed with his camera, Green captured the tombstones of a menagerie of dearly departed animals...

Green said that he finds graveyards for pets especially moving because the headstones tend to be much more emotive than those found in human cemeteries. “You can say, ‘Buster was the best parakeet who ever lived,’” said Green. “With human graves, everything is so much more constrained.

Via The Atlantic.  Best viewed full-screen.

"I'm alone. I'm scared."

There are countless tragedies arising from the California wildfires.  As I get older I have increasing empathy for senior citizens who not only lose all their possessions in floods and fires, but who also have no close family or established support group to fall back on.

Marilyn Pelletier got a knock on her door in Paradise as the Camp Fire raged and was told she had five minutes to leave. She grabbed her medicine bag and her small dog, and when she left "the whole sky was pink."

"You could see the fire coming," she said. "It was devastating. It's horrible. The worst thing I've ever experienced in my life. I was just — I'm grateful I got out with my life."

Pelletier moved to Paradise two years ago after her husband passed away, and bought a house in the town which was destroyed in the fire, she said.

"It’s a beautiful home — it was. It was real pretty,” Pelletier said. "I'm devastated. I'm heartbroken, I'm alone, I’m scared."

The screencap and quote come at the end of a two-minute video on this page.

Driving in California yesterday

YouTube link.

Ahmed explains how random selection works

Via.

What are the gizmos inside this sign ?

Inside the golden arches and the nameplate is a series of what appear to be aluminum plates with a regular array of holes.  I'm guessing these must be components of a lighting system (perhaps for LEDs ?), but can't figure out how they work.  Nothing important, but curious minds want to know, and I thought some reader here might have the answer.

Credit: REUTERS/Jonathan Bachman

Which is which ?

You probably know the difference between these two elevator buttons, but which is which?  (not that it matters - they probably don't work anyway).

Answer: the one with the line is for the front.

Today (10/6) is Mad Hatter Day

Explained here:

Mad Hatter Day is 10/6. The date was chosen from the illustrations by John Tenniel in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, wherein the Mad Hatter is always seen wearing a hat bearing a slip of paper with the notation "In this style 10/6". We take this as inspiration to behave in the style of the Mad Hatter on 10/6 (which is October 6 here, although in Britain MadHatterDay occurs on June 10...but I digress...)

Mad Hatter Day began in Boulder, CO, in 1986, among some computer folk who had nothing better to do. It was immediately recognized as valuable because they caused less damage than if they'd been doing their jobs.

As I searched this topic on the 'net today, it was interesting to see how many observers misinterpret the 10/6 on his hat as being either a style number ("The Mad Hatter’s top hat, according to Lewis Carroll, was of the 10/6 style") or worse ("my birthdate (10/6) is on his hat although I think that is his hat size!"). The correct interpretation, of course, is that "the paper in the Mad Hatter's Hat was really an order to make a hat in the style shown, to cost ten shillings sixpence."

(Reposted)

"Sipping seawater through clothing"

Most of you have probably heard the story of the Indonesia teenager who survived on a fishing raft adrift in the ocean for 49 days.   This is the part that interested me:

The teenager only had a few days worth of supplies and survived by catching fish, burning wood from his hut to cook them, and sipping seawater through his clothes to minimize his salt intake.

I've heard of drinking water through cloth to remove particulates, but I can't see how it could possibly lower the salt content of seawater.   Other reports indicate that he did capture some rainwater, and maybe the flesh of any fish he could catch would be less hypertonic than seawater (?).  But he did survive 49 days adrift.

Stephen Hawking's memorial stone in Westminster Abbey

The formula represents the temperature of a black hole.  Image via.