> ..the top of the ladder represents the best possible life for you and the bottom of the ladder represents the worst possible life for you... on which step of the ladder do you feel you personally stand at the present time?
10, I'm living my best possible life. It's conceivable that my "best possible life" may not be as happy as the lifes of other people, but I have achieved the maximum that's possible for me.
Any other "possible life" would require some combination of different genes, being in a different place and living at a different time.
I see a high mark as a sign you lack the ability to dream. I can imangine living in a mansion with my own personal hockey rink, and dozens of other weird luxuries that I could never afford (and realistically wouldn't use often if at all). Just the difference between that dream and my normal suburban house lowers me to a three. I can think of lots of non house things my best possible life would have - not all are even physically possible and many others are not moral (a few dozen wives who are devoted only to me)
In 1971 there where ships with almost twice the displacement of the Dali.
They weren't freight ships destined for Baltimore, but it wasn't hard to imagine future freight ship sizes when designing the bridge in the early 1970s.
The London sewer system was designed in the 1850s, when the population was around two million people.
It was so overdesigned that it held up to the 1950s, when the population was over 8 million. It didn't start to become a big problem until the 1990s.
Spiders bite with their fangs, much like vampires bite with their fangs, they don't sting. I might call the tarantula "hair" that makes you itch a sting, but I would feel a bit silly calling it that.
They bite (and suck) with their (elongated and specialized) mouthparts. Insects don’t have noses (they breathe through their skin and smell primarily with their antennae).
Oh I thought I couldn't hate them anymore and I learn this. My leg currently has large hives on it from multiple bites, the antihistamines I have are doing bugger all.
I'm old enough to remember when supermarkets only had brown paper bags. They were weak and the handles tear off easily, and anything cold will make the bag wet and it will fall apart usually from the bottom. Supermarkets must have spent a lot of money replacing customer's broken items when bags failed even before leaving the store.
So when doing the calculus for brown paper bags don't forget to include the cost goods wasted when they fail.
Thankfully we did the full stupid circle quickly enough that the gray hairs in the paper bag industry remembered this and the current generation of bags lacks the handles so people are forced to carry them from the bottom.
Those are not the brown paper bags the GP was referring to. Those fall under the earlier category of "forgot our reusable bags a couple of times and then got on with it". The ones that are left are to replace "small plastic bags you put fruit or pastries in".
Australian supermarkets have excelled at replicating this paper bag fiasco.
The white plastic bags they replaced are magnitudes of order more durable and able to carry, I should test this, at a guess ten times the weight. Basically you can fill a white plastic bag with 1.25 litre water bottles to the extent no more can physically fit in the bag and it will be safe to carry and reuse 50 times.
Fortunately the white plastic bags are still available online (eBay / Amazon / etc) so I just buy 50 for my own use as required and use them till they nearly fall apart then repurpose them as bin liners.
They’re incredibly cheap, don’t really get dirty in an unhygienic way, can be washed if something does spill in them, and they fold up in to almost no space.
> Basically you can fill a white plastic bag with 1.25 litre water bottles to the extent no more can physically fit in the bag and it will be safe to carry and reuse 50 times.
Yeah that's not good, the way they do that is with more plastic in the bags. A single bag weighs as much as 5-10 old timey single use bags.
I'm old enough to remember when supermarket brown paper bags didn't have handles... Agree with the other commenter that the handles are pointless but the bags work fine if you just ignore them.
Incidentally, given that I'm _not_ old enough to remember a time before supermarkets had plastic bags, either the invention of attaching handles to paper bags took a very long time to migrate to my corner of California, or this comment makes no sense
I'm old enough to remember when supermarkets had boxes. All the goods they sell comes to them in big cardboard boxes, and and supermarkets would have a fenced off area where they dumped all those boxes, so whenever a customer needed a box to put their groceries in to take them home, they'd get a box from that fenced off area.
I haven't seen those in decades unfortunately. It was a great way to reuse those boxes.
I don't recall ever seeing one of those in the person-facing parts of the store, but I've not had issues either asking someone who works there in the store or going around the back of the store where they do loading and unloading and asking there.
The handles on brown paper bags are noob traps. You're supposed to hold the bag against your body with one arm, your hand on the bottom of the bag. They work fine like this. I've walked home totaling hundreds if not thousands of miles (two or three times a week for many years) with paper grocery bags like this and never had issues.
Probably a good place to post a 400 year old recipe for pancakes. I've made them, they are very good. Note that what is considered a "pancake" has changed over the years and changes with location.
The "old" internet still exists and is alive and well on what I'll call "single issue" web based forums. Photo.net is still here, as are similar groups for cars, bikes, and rabbit holes I have yet to break my ankle in.
Unlike social media, few of these forums have mechanisms to "like" or upvote posts so there is no reward for posting just to attract attention, whether it be positive or negative. That changes the dynamic IMHO. People post to seek answers to their questions, or to share their knowledge and answer other people's questions. This is the way.
I'd include HN in this group of ye olde internet forums. It does have a mechanism to vote, but it's different and the expectation of the readers are brutal to frivolous posts (of which I have made only couple and paid for dearly).
Unlike social media, few of these forums have mechanisms to "like" or upvote posts so there is no reward for posting just to attract attention, whether it be positive or negative.
Those types of forums are great, but just as a counterpoint, I get a lot of that type of value from Facebook Groups as well. There are niche specialty interest groups with people of different skill depths conversing on probably just about anything.
It's mixed in with the rest of your Facebook feed most of the time so it is a categorically different experience/"community" than an independent forum but I don't think the "like" mechanics materially affect the discussion in those places.
> Unlike social media, few of these forums have mechanisms to "like" or upvote posts so there is no reward for posting just to attract attention, whether it be positive or negative.
I’m not convinced. 4chan doesn’t have any of these mechanisms, so the proxy just becomes the number of replies you receive. The chief benefit of forums is that they are smaller. This is good if the original base of users is good, and untenable if they are bad—and they usually are bad. I always hated forums when I was younger and was glad when Reddit killed them. Of course, Reddit brought its own problems, but even in the state it is in today I find it infinitely preferable to forums.
Myth Busted: Some people really did only buy it for the articles.