Ozexpatriate

Here's what browsing can do - and I was using (mostly) incognito browsers. "Thank you?" AdChoices by Google: This is the Wheeltappers page:

Supermarkets. Harumph. I never stopped shopping in person during the pandemic. Back then I wore a mask. I still shop at the same place. It had changed hands to a large corporate chain before the pandemic. It was never the same. In the old days this location had a pretty 'decent' bakery - at least for cakes. (It's actually equipped as a very large bakery.) When it changed hands it was no where near as good, but if you weren't picky you could still make a 'simple' custom order. I went in today to order a cake for my youngest son's birthday. I wanted to order precisely what I ordered last year - small 5" rounds with two layers - and a particular topping (chocolate butter cream and a chocolate ganache). The young lady with purple hair and nose ring looked at me like I was from Mars. Just about every cake I pointed at in the display case was not available as a custom 5" round order - they all came in frozen from the corporate bakery. So "German chocolate cake" it is. My son won't mind. The supermarket chain is in negotiations to be acquired by an even larger chain (who has a store less than a mile away) - there are anti-trust / monopoly concerns about this merger. It makes me wonder if this is already impacting service. When the old supermarket was acquired by the larger chain they closed their existing supermarket across the street from the chain they now want to merge into. Those premises remain unoccupied 8 years later - except at Halloween when a pop-up Halloween store materializes annually, in Brigadoon fashion.

As I'm sure you know, this is a problem for summer cabin owners on the tundra. A Swedish colleague had a similar problem with his summer cabin on 'the archipelago'. (Visitors to Stockholm will know this area - lovely.) His was a water line to a dishwasher if I'm not mistaken and being Sweden his cabin had beautiful wooden floors - because that seems to be the 'law' in Nordic countries. Did you at least replace the broken bit with PEX?

Electric roller blinds are wonderful - available as blackouts if needed. You can still hide them with conventional drapes if you don't like the look from the inside. Most of them are 'decorative' however. They are completely* cordless and remote controlled, with little batteries inside the mechanism. * Except when the batteries need recharging. I know people complained about floor-ceiling glass walls as a 'style' (it's not new - its "Barhaus school" from the days of the Weimar Republic, echoed in mid-century modern like the Eames House in the 1950s) but with reflective (on the outside) roller blinds the glass-house interior heating effect would be greatly minimized - though on a sunny wintry day it would be very energy efficient.

The difference is less than an order of magnitude - and both kinetic energy and momentum are proportional to mass, rather than exponentially so. So 50 kt compared with 150 kt. (One of the articles made the point about MV Dali being "three times the size" of Blue Nagoya.) There's no question that something 3 times the mass will have 3 times the potential impact. How much would cause catastrophic failure is a function of the bridge design. With the direct hit on the pier this was the worst-case scenario for this bridge. I remain unconvinced that with precisely the 'wrong' angle of incidence that a dolphin would have prevented this accident - though if they created enough deflection of the ship's movement they would. The use of the dolphins will decrease the probability of a catastrophic failure. I suspect they are not a 'absolute' guarantee.

Assuming they are paying passengers and not upgraded frequent flyers who purchased an economy ticket.

Do they celebrate St. George's day in Russia and Georgia? The Ribbon of St. George is a patriotic symbol in Russia. St. George features on the coat of arms of Moscow. St. George appears on the Russian Presidential Standard. It's usually in the background when Vlad is on the telly.

As a follow-on, this is a 'good' article. CNN: ‘Absolutely a wake-up call’: Key Bridge tragedy has markings of 1980 Baltimore crash, but worse It makes the comparison that the largest ships in 1975 had a capacity of 2,500 TEU*. The Neo-Panamax Dali is 12,500 TEU - five times the capacity. * Twenty foot container Equivalent Units. I'm unable to find a displacement for the Blue Nagoya, but it was unquestionably much smaller than the MV Dali. The damage from the 1980 allision was reportedly:

It was built before the Tampa Sunshine Skyway disaster (1980). "Foreseeable" in retrospect. The Key bridge too was hit in 1980 (Blue Nagoya, at 6 knots) and what was in place for survivability was adequate at the time of design - there was limited damage and the bridge did not collapse - continuing in service for 43 more years. From here: "Shorting of main electrical control board; total loss of power and control." Sound familiar? Bridge not destroyed. This is a cogent article. You can make an argument for not retrofitting defenses after Sunshine Skyway but these could have been deprecated given it survived an allision around the same time - defenses in place functioned then. Much bigger ships today and no 'existence theorem' at time of construction. There are comparable examples of undefended piers in the UK.

Ian, are you a closet time traveller? The NCAA final was on April 8. (I can tell you who won.) 😉

Flavio, I don't comprehend your loathing for open-plan but that is your prerogative. The penthouse has an open-plan dining/living space - it is only the kitchen that is separate. The architect of the ground-floor unit does like rectilinear. That put me off. I would prefer the penthouse - but as Tony says, the lift cab be a 'single point of failure' for some, though the stairs look 'nice' as an option. I presume the 'front door' is at the bottom of the stairs? The lift also looks very small. Is there a larger service lift somewhere below? I don't see any "space" for it anywhere. Not 'your' problem, presuming you hire movers, but getting furniture (or later, replacement appliances if needed) up there might be tricky.

Oat milk is the "sustainability" preferred option. As you point out, almond milk is a sustainability nightmare.

A guess. And even if the infected container left a US port, it could just as easily have been earlier infected in any central American port before hand. It's not like those things get fumigated with each use.

Whitney Houston was a big influence in this.

6. Smug people

They're not "from" the USA. They were introduced into the US in 1940. They are native to the state of Mato Grosso in Brazil. The article even says so: They could have hitched a ride to Australia from any location between Brazil and the US.

Hope the procedure goes according to plan Jamie and recovery is swift.

They're offering this framed plaque for $250.00.

It's actually 0n30. "O" scale narrow gauge running on H0 track.

The Bradford Exchange is a privately held company with 500 employees and a revenue of $140m. For comparison, Hornby PLC revenues (2023) are £55.1 million // $68.7m. They sell many different railway-related toy trains sourced from the Kader Group (Bachmann) which you can find under their "Villages and trains" shop. Plenty of Bachmann H0 EMD-F1s and 0n30 Moguls dressed up as Budweiser or Coca-Cola / whatever. Also available for NFL teams, superheroes, Christmas, Halloween, and politicians. The Hornby Coca-Cola line is essentially a 'copy' of what the Bradford Exchange has been doing for years. Or Harry Potter. There are illuminated resin buildings as well. The QEII "model" is exactly the same as the silver dollar express. You'll note the Bachmann EZ track. If you really want an EMD-F1 unpowered "B" unit with KISS on the side, you can have that too.

Consensus is that prior estimates of up to perhaps Ca 13,000 years ago for the Clovis peoples are certainly not the "oldest". There is little consensus on actual "oldest", though Ca 23,000 years is a common conjecture. There are plenty of online sources to support this theory.

There's the physicist joke from The Big Bang Theory:

I have it too - but I'm not sure in my case it's related to electronics. My only long-term exposure was to the little fans in desktop and laptop computers - nothing 'loud'.

They did make it.

BLASPHEMER! HERESY! Pastafariansim is the true way. The divine Flying Spaghetti Monster (may you be touched by his noodly appendage) is the only al dente God. Thou shalt not have other pasta gods before him. Suggestions 1:1 (from the Loose Canon) Wear your colander proudly, and remember that global warming is caused by a paucity of pirates. Beer heaven awaits. Learn more here.