I went to a country on the equator that cracked the code. Live at the equator but on a bigass mountain many thousands of feet in the air and you’ll get the consistent days and weather but at a temperature that won’t roast puny AC adapted people alive 😭🧠

I was dreading summer this year in SC since the scorching spring just canceled the rain for weeks on end and launched us into extreme drought, one of the worst since they started making records. So I expected surely summer would twist the knife and crispify everything even worse. Then surprisingly summer turned around and has unusually had almost too regular deep bouts of moderating rain and thunderstorms that pulled us back to only abnormally dry for the year so far and kept things from getting too hot (though the humidity has miserable, like stepping out into a mouth). I thought spring was supposed to be the rainy season here… still, even with a lush green summer saving us I think it was still not great for a lot of the native insects and the less drought tolerant native plants. One of my blueberry plants and the maypop seedlings I had going up and died even with some supplemental watering and the previously numerous bees mostly vanished when their numbers dropped off a cliff. That left little competition when paper wasps hatched and proliferated after the worst was over and I’m a lot more leery of those territorial guys and the aggressive yellowjackets than the cute bumblebees due to my phobia. 😔

We had road rage before we had cars, never mind seatbelts.

On 28 November last, a lawyer and a solicitor were travelling to Meudon on business. They had passed the barrier and were driving along the river on the Pont de Grenelle side, when they noticed that the driver of a bourgeois carriage in front of theirs was amusing himself by cutting them off, sometimes throwing himself to the right, sometimes to the left, forcing them onto the verges, which were nothing but a pool of mud, galloping to be in front of them as soon as they tried to get back on the pavement and then pretending to walk at a step. This merry-go-round had been going on for twenty minutes when the impatient lawyer got out and asked the coachman what the meaning of such behaviour was. To explain the situation, the coachman struck him with a whip, which almost threw him under the horses’ feet. At this sight, not only did the lawyer’s travelling companion rush to his assistance, but a gentleman who was with three ladies in the other carriage, not bothering to open the door, passed through the window to get there more quickly. The three of them had the greatest difficulty in subduing the furious coachman, who even hit them, or tried to hit them, several times with his fists. The police were called, he was taken to prison and his carriage was impounded. At the hearing, it was impossible to make Gaumont understand all the rudeness and brutality of his behaviour. He just replied to all the comments made to him: ‘Let them bring in the other coachman; I had no animosity towards him, I didn’t know him’. The Court sentenced him to one month’s imprisonment and a fine of 25 francs.

Barthélemy G., an irascible coachman, drives a Compagnie Feuillerat omnibus on the line from Boulevard Périer to the Jardin Zoologique. Yesterday afternoon, the omnibus driven by Barthélemy G. was late. It was joined by an omnibus of the Compagnie Nouvelle, which was about to pass in front of it, when Barthélémy G. suddenly jumped from his seat and climbed onto the platform of the rival omnibus. He rushed at the driver of this omnibus, Mr Maurice Liard, and bit him cruelly on the nose. He then stabbed him twice in the face. In his fury, G. was about to commit a more serious act, when a ticket inspector intervened in the nick of time and put an end to this painful scene, with the help of a few passengers. Barthélemy G. was taken before Mr Dive, police commissioner for the 4th arrondissement, who detained him at the disposal of the public prosecutor.

Today, in front of the Jardin des Plantes, two coaches coming in opposite directions were passing each other, leaving a fairly narrow gap between them. At that moment, a coach travelling at high speed came between the first two. One of them broke a wheel. The driver who had caused the accident continued his journey without responding to the complaints of the injured party. Shortly afterwards, however, the driver was forced to drive past the overturned carriage. The person whose carriage he had broken threw himself on the horse’s bridle to get the name of the person responsible for the accident. The coachman, we are told, whipped the face of the person he had already harmed. Several people were attracted by this regrettable scene. But the gathering that it had caused soon dispersed.

On the pavements of Paris, coaches for hire are in a constant state of hostility towards omnibuses. This often results in brawls, the seriousness of which has made it essential for the authorities to intervene. Yesterday, at about three o’clock in the afternoon, an omnibus belonging to the administration of the Constantines, and driven by the coachman Gilbert, was passing along rue Coquenard. A cabriolet for hire, driven by the coachman Millon, tried to get ahead of the omnibus; at first it encountered some difficulty, which aroused his anger. As it passed the omnibus, he insulted the Constantines coachman, calling him the coachman of the paupers’ cart. Whiplashes were even exchanged between the two drivers. Millon, in order to strike more easily, got out of his carriage and struck Gilbert twice. The latter tried to get out of his seat to defend himself, but got tangled up in his reins and fell heavily to the pavement. He would inevitably have been crushed by his carriage had not a passer-by managed to stop them by running out in front of them. Millon was arrested and taken to the local police commissioner.

A guy in Camden shot and killed 13 in 1949 before surrendering after he ran out of ammo. In 1891 a guy fired a shotgun into a crowded Liberty, MS schoolhouse and injured 14. These kinds of crimes were out there in the world before you were young. More difficult to road rage if you and those near you don’t have the means to afford a carriage and crowd the roads.

People die when collided from behind by some drunk going crazy fast, get T-boned by someone going through lights that they ought not to have, etc. and it’s much easier to die from those kinds of accidents if you aren’t secured and will rattle around inside like a ping pong ball or get launched out of a window. My literal job is in large part considering things that could go wrong for certain processes and establishing safe countermeasures against those.

I’m not stroking out in fear wearing a seatbelt? It’s a regular thing I do every time with zero downside.

On the days I got hit I can definitely say I didn’t wake up planning to be hit, I drive like a grandma but just because you’re stopped at a light doesn’t mean the person behind you will care.

In 1971 there were 1.4x the road deaths as in 2025 despite having the country only having 60% of the 2025 population. I wouldn’t say you have zero control over whether or not you get into an accident but very surprising things can happen suddenly and give you very little time to react. In that situation I’d want to focus on safely maneuvering the car and not be distracted with panic buckling with my life on the line.

The drugs at play aren’t limited to androgens. For example in swimming many people have been busted for Methylhexaneamine, a performance enhancing stimulant.

Everyone is looking to shave off any time they can. Just taking drugs alone definitely isn’t enough to put you at the Olympic level. But if you have trained and trained relentlessly and have those sorts of passive genetic advantages you mentioned for your flavor of sport… that may not be enough to assure victory. You can expect your top opponents have similar advantages, since in a world of billions of people who are more mobile than they used to be you are likely not the only person with those particular in-born genetic advantages who trained a ton and has a good strategy… what can you do to get even the slightest edge?

I replied to the other fellow but in no way am I calling them lazy, actually many of the drugs they use allow them to train harder for longer and as an Olympians they take full advantage of that to push the boundaries of what is possible. Those agents aren’t an “I win” button but at the highest levels people will do literally anything to push themselves to be able to shave off even fractions of a second or gain whatever advantage they can, and being able to train more and bounce back quicker is tempting.

I explicitly said they are searching for EVERY edge they think they can get. That includes insane hard work and practice. The hard-training Olympian who is doped will easily crush someone who is doped but just sitting around eating bon bons. Actually many agents people dope with are used because they allow people to train harder for longer and recover more quickly which is invaluable as an athlete. Saying that many athletes are doping is saying many don’t have integrity, not that they don’t work hard - that couldn’t be further from the truth at the Olympic level.

Let’s be real, the regular Olympics are already doped. Their entire careers are on the line with the pride (and eyes) of the nation bearing down on them and demanding results… and we think they and their teams aren’t taking every edge they think they can possibly get away with? All the time famous athletes of yesteryear are being revealed to have been up to shenanigans when science catches up to retest their samples more effectively or some investigation gets a co-conspirator to spill the beans.

There’s microdosing below what tests can detect, novel designer drugs that can’t yet be detected, therapeutic use exemptions for drugs that would normally be banned, setting up situations to evade tests unless you are prepared to take them, tampering with the sample, good old fashioned corruption… probably tons of things that would never occur to me but that would to highly motivated teams with vast amounts of money on the line.

Dang that was one of the three I was first introduced to as a kid. Teacher recommended using AskJeeves, Dogpile, or what she called her “personal favorite”, Google.

Not sure how Dogpile still exists