Mildly interesting

[taiwan_girl]

[Axtremus]

• Possessing a satellite phone or Global Positioning System (GPS) device in India is illegal and can result in fines, detention, or arrest."

Source: https://travel.state.gov/en/international-travel/travel-advisories/india.html

The GPS ban is surprising. Pretty sure there are like a billion smartphones in India that have GPS receivers which technically makes them GPS devices.

[Mik]

Hard to understand.

[jon-nyc]

Everyone intuits that they’re more dangerous but wow.

I bet bikes are even worse though.

[jon-nyc]

Bikes aren’t worse - about 79 per billion.

Fortunately I ride trails almost exclusively.

[Mik]

Bikes are 10 times more dangerous than cars? Surprising.

[jon-nyc]

Not to me it isn’t. You’re just so vulnerable. The slightest contact can be fatal, especially if you fall toward the road

[Mik]

That's why I don't ride on roads anymore. But then I have a bike trail at my side yard, and a 90 mile one two miles away.

[jon-nyc]

Yeah I can take my trail up 50m without riding on a road. And can go 400mi to Buffalo and have 85-90% be trail.

[jon-nyc]

The 50mi from the Bronx to Brewster used to be the Putnam Railroad, in service from 1881-1958. I get it at Ardsley, less than a mile from my house. I can take it up 40mi to Brewster or down about 12.5 to Van Courtland Park in the Bronx without leaving paved trail.

Further south I’m maybe a mile or three on roads until I get to the trail along the west side highway that takes me to lower manhattan.

Up north there’s a few miles of road at Brewster until I’m on trail again for another 50 miles to New Palz.

Plenty, in other words.

[Doctor Phibes]

@Mik said in Mildly interesting:

Bikes are 10 times more dangerous than cars? Surprising.

I think that stat is a bit misleading, since bikes are a lot slower than cars. Arguably a better statistic is deaths per time spent traveling.

[LuFins Dad]

I think 40% of those deaths are cardiac associated from Lycra cutting off blood flow.

[jon-nyc]

The Grappler, a new device used to stop high speed chases.

Link to video

[Mik]

That’s great

[LuFins Dad]

Meh… Not sure that I care for them forcefully stopping a stolen car in the middle of a busy highway like that.

[jon-nyc]

I don’t think it’s so forceful if the guy doesn’t try that shit at the end. The net catches it, and you bring it to a stop by putting the brakes on the cop car.

It seems to me the safest approach besides just giving up the chase altogether.

[jon-nyc]

Even though it was first grown and discovered in Ethiopia, coffee’s global spread began in Yemen, through the port of Mokha.

In Mokha, some people mixed roasted coffee with milk. And there came “mocha”.

[Mik]

65 years ago, 1960, Meet the cast of The Flintstones: Left to right: Bea Benaderet as the voice of Betty Rubble, Jean Vander Pyl as the voice of Wilma Flintstone, Alan Reed as the voice of Fred Flintstone, and Mel Blanc as the voice of Barney Rubble and Dino. Together they brought life to the modern stone age family.

[jon-nyc]

They sort of look the parts.

[Mik]

No redhead.