Four years of sight reading practice (sandrock.co.za)
64 points by chthonicdaemon 3d ago 25 comments
Direct TLS can speed up your connections (marc-bowes.com)
71 points by tanelpoder 8h ago 27 comments
Ancient law requires a bale of straw to hang from Charing Cross rail bridge
45 alexbilbie 47 5/22/2025, 8:52:17 AM ianvisits.co.uk ↗
"Primo Levi was working in a varnish factory. He was a chemist, and he was fascinated by the fact that the varnish recipe included a raw onion. What could it be for? No one knew; it was just part of the recipe. So he investigated, and eventually discovered that they had started throwing the onion in years ago to test the temperature of the varnish: if it was hot enough, the onion would fry."
This doesn't seem like a utilitarian solution, more of a signal with a symbolic intention?
Honestly, this is all guesswork. But I can imagine something like that to be the case.
Even the British courts, in sharp contrast to many other places, "deliver the law as it is, and not as we wish it to be" -- see for example [0] or [1].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashford_v_Thornton
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owens_v_Owens
"When the headroom of an arch or span of a bridge is reduced from its usual limits but that arch or span is not closed to navigation, the person in control of the bridge must suspend from the centre of that arch or span by day a bundle of straw large enough to be conspicuous and by night a white light."
Does that mean the law is not being complied with, in this case, since the bales are hanging from adjacent bridges, not the "centre of that arch or span" itself?
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cmlrx89jdv2o
(To be precise: where is that accepted practice, rather than aberrant behaviour by some judges?)
The law requires a bale of straw to be hung from a bridge as a warning to mariners whenever the height between the river and the bridge’s arches is reduced, as it is at Charing Cross at the moment.
That seems clear enough! OK, the reason why it specifically has to be a bale of straw isn't obvious, but apart from that it seems very reasonable, just outdated.
Edit to add: straw does make sense as a makeshift crash barrier -- you'll notice if you hit it, but hopefully won't actually damage your ship. It seems like you would always just plough through and hit the actual bridge, though.
At night it’s a light. It’s obviously a notification system. You visibly see the bale of straw before you get to the bridge and you know to slow down and stop and investigate what the clearance issue is.
Well of course when you get stuck then it's too late.
If something has changed, using something out of place or temporary in appearance seems to be the most effective way of getting human attention... A bale of straw feels like it fits the bill.
Some states (IL in particular) have absurd fudge factors, so you have 14ft spaces signed as 12.xx and 13'6" trucks drive under them all day every day like it's nothing which basically trains them to ignore the signs.
And that's before you consider all the drivers who can't read english at road speeds so anything that isn't the standardized yellow sign right on/beside the object is going to go unnoticed to them a large amount of the time.
> The "brown M&M clause" was a specific contract requirement by Van Halen that demanded all brown M&Ms be removed from a bowl of M&Ms provided backstage before their performances. This clause was not a frivolous demand but a way to test if the concert promoters had read the entire contract carefully. If brown M&Ms were found, it indicated that other important technical details might have been overlooked, which could pose safety risks for the band and the audience.
It was a massive display of pyrotechnics and staging - the requirements in the rider weren't there for fun, it was for actual safety.
It’s a small distinction, but actually if the band showed up and found all the brown M&Ms still there the plan would have already been a failure.
The reason it was in the contract was to make sure the promoter had read the contract before signing it and understood what they were getting into.
Band riders are almost invariably redlined. Bands ask for all sorts of crazy shit and you cross out stuff you can’t provide or give a substitute brand name (like if the venue has an exclusive vendor relationship with Coke instead of Pepsi stuff like that) and then you work out any kinks and finalize it.
The reason to put the M&M clause in there is to get the promoter to strike the clause during the contracting process because any competent promoter will read every line carefully and strike something like that.
So when they do you know they read it and know what they are doing are comfortable signing a deal with them.
You would never want to be arriving at the venue with the clause still in force, that’s a sign you have a larger problem.
Source: I was a concert promoter in the 90’s
You invoke "safety" in the same manner that peddlers of all sorts of evil invoke terrorism or think of the children and then you cap it off with a straw man, as if there's serious money to be made with or without this mundane and niche law or comparable ones.
Bridge height postings more or less stand on their own merit and probably don't need laws to continue to exist. The fact that they are legislated at all is mostly a reflection of the fact that the state was the only entity positioned to deal with such an issue when they first became of enough value to be worth doing basically all the time.
When the rationally acting rational actors are pressed for answers about how their vision of the world would work they tend to reply with either examples from science fiction space fantasy novels or something that is just a simple dictatorship.
In order to add to the conversation you should sprinkle some effusive praise about the AI/Crypto/Fintech/Quantum scam du jour (or criticism of Apple) into your comments to throw them off the scent.
Something like:
"Oh boy I really get what you're saying! Here at my quantum fintech startup we're using LLMs to turboencabulate novertrunnions. By the way did you know that safety regulations are written in blood and after years of working effectively the public may forget why they were implemented in the first place but the underlying issue will just return absent the regulation and a newer generation will just have to rediscover why the regulation was created and that's something we should avoid?"
The initial tease excites the techbro-- they start daydreaming about being a billionaire dictator of a mars colony and that floods their brain with pleasure hormones which lower their defenses.
This leaves a small, but existent, chance that you can hammer some reality into their antisocial brains.
It could be, to the contrary, that the legislators have come up with "straw bale" as something that simply does not belong under the bridge, in order to raise the brows of the people navigating the river, and make them wonder what's going on, all that in order to draw their attention. If so, it serves its purpose even more as straw bales are getting less common.
If they are needed they can be voted upon again by parliament, and will no doubt pass.
In fact I would say not only should all laws have built in expiration dates, such expiration dates should be shorter the lower the percentage of votes in parliament it too to pass them!
If you can only get a 51% majority in parliament to pass a law, that law should not exist beyond that election.
A bit tongue in cheek, of course - but I can't image the amount of unnecessary work regular continuation of _every_ law would cause. Time limits on laws are already a thing, but it shouldn't be a default.
i guess at this point it's a cherished tradition :D. there's probably a youtube mashup of all the phone-recorded strikes.
https://www.lakemchenryscanner.com/2025/05/20/box-truck-hits...
The fact that most most worshippers make up their tiny little version of their religion (lets call it a sect for a change), where they selectively ignore or minimize those ancient rules and restrictions they don't like is to me hilarious in the worst sense possible. Tells a lot about our human nature since bronze age (and how it didn't change), not much about existence of such deities or some higher meaning to our existence.
But thats me, rationally looking at the world, not indoctrinated since childhood (thank god for such parents!) and simply not understanding the lure of this opium for masses. I could make much better ones on the spot if needed, but why?
I agree with your sentiment, but if you don't understand why religion has the pull it has, then perhaps you're overestimating your capabilities :)
When I went through grieving after death of a loved one, I've seen so many opportunities for my suffering brain to be highjacked by religious offerings. She still doesn't seem entirely dead to my brain many years after.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_of_the_people