Are you a distracted driver? Probably. Here’s why .

A close look at the problem of cellphones distracting us while driving. 

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-are-you-a-distracted-driver-probably-heres-why/

Tesla Model 3 Cold Weather Tips And Tricks

Interesting tips about how to charge on a long winter journey - when you arrive while the batteries are warm, or overnight starting early am so the batteries are warm when you start driving. 

And good tip to prevent the mirrors from folding in so they don't get frozen stuck in the closed position. 

https://insideevs.com/features/385993/tesla-model-3-cold-weather-tips/

Nope, Aristotle Did Not Say, “It Is the Mark of an Educated Mind to Entertain a Thought Without Accepting It”

It's a "fake-istotle" apparently.

https://sententiaeantiquae.com/2018/09/22/nope-aristotle-did-not-say-it-is-the-mark-of-an-educated-mind-to-entertain-a-thought-without/

Attributed instead to Vittorio Alfieri
http://www.finestquotes.com/author_quotes-author-Vittorio+Alfieri-page-0.htm
http://www.maxioms.com/maxiom/59192/it-is-the-mark-of-an-educated-mind-to-be-able-to-entertain-a-thought
http://www.greatthoughtstreasury.com/author/vittorio-alfieri

How to find last-minute flight and hotel deals | The Seattle Times

https://www.seattletimes.com/life/travel/how-to-find-last-minute-flight-and-hotel-deals/

FareCompare.com's "Cheap GetAway Deals"

www.Voyij.com, lets you search for flights, hotels and packages anywhere and anytime from your home airport.

Judging a good wine:

Balance, length, intensity, complexity. 
https://www.onboardonline.com/industry-article-index/provisioning-and-galley/the-art-of-wine-tasting/
http://hyneswines.blogspot.com/2014/06/what-is-blic.html

Lucky coupon clipping frenzy buying pudding

"he managed to convert about 12,150 cups of Healthy Choice chocolate pudding into over a million Air Miles..."
"he’s the kind of guy who reads every inch of the small print on things..."
"for every 10 bar codes of their product a person sent in, they’d be awarded 500 Air Miles..."
"he found what he was looking for- a discount grocery chain that was selling individual chocolate pudding cups for 25 cents each. This meant that for a measly $2.50, he could get 1000 Air Miles..."
"his wife got blisters from peeling off hundreds of stickers and his kids and co-workers grew physically sick of the sheer amount of chocolate paste he was forcing on them..."
"David approached the local Salvation Army with an offer; if they gave him a bunch of volunteers to peel off all the bar codes on his pudding, he’d donate the pudding to them. But here’s the beautiful part, doing this counted as a considerable charitable donation, which let David claim just over $800 back in tax deductions at the end of they year..."
"he now officially had over a million miles in his frequent flyer accounts, which automatically gave him lifelong access to something called the “American Airlines AAdvantage Gold club”..."

https://gizmodo.com/how-an-engineer-earned-1-25-million-air-miles-by-buying-1339646546

VBT Bicycling & Walking Vacations - Discover Active Travel

https://www.vbt.com/

Al Barronian recommends - stay at same place as Backroads for a lot less. 

The Benefits of Starting an IRA for Your Child

"For 2019, the maximum your child can contribute to an IRA (either traditional or Roth) is the lesser of $6,000 or his or her taxable earnings for the year...Ideally, your child will receive a W-2 or Form 1099 for work performed...Many parents choose to "match" their child's earnings and make the IRA contribution themselves. For example, if your daughter earns $3,000 at a summer job, you can let her spend her money as she wishes and make the $3,000 IRA contribution with your own money...Remember to consider the IRS' gift tax rules. The contributions you make to a Roth IRA for your kid will count against the limit on tax-free gifts you can make to one person, which is $15,000 for 2019."

https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/110713/benefits-starting-ira-your-child.asp

Interesting Maps

Interesting maps - #8 Was missing when I received it.

1. This map shows the world divided into 7 sections (each with distinct color) --- each section containing 1 billion people.

2. This map shows (in white) where 98 percent of Australia 's entire population lives. 

3. It may not come as a surprise, but more people live inside the circle than outside it.

4. This map shows what is on the other side of the world from where you're standing.  For the most part, it's water.

5. Apparently you can't get Big Macs everywhere.  This map shows (in red) the countries that have McDonalds.

6. This map shows the countries (in blue) where people drive on the left side of the road.

7. This map shows countries (in white) that England has never invaded  There are only 22 (in the whole world)!

9. This map shows the countries that have "heavily restricted access" to the Internet in 2013.

10. This map shows (in red) countries that were all Communist at one point in time.

11. This map shows (in red) the countries that don't use the metric system.

12. This map shows (in blue) places where Google  street view is available.

13.This map shows (in green) all the landlocked countries of the world.

14. And this is what the world would look like --- if all the countries with coastlines sank.

15. This is a map of the all the rivers in the United States.

16. And these are all the rivers that feed into the Mississippi River

17.This is a map of the highest paid public employees in the US.  (It is quite telling as to where our 'priorities' lie.)

18. This map shows how much space the United States would occupy on the moon.

A dozen electric hydrofoils surfboards

https://plugboats.com/the-incredible-rise-of-the-electric-hydrofoils/

Lift $12000 and up
Jetfoiler TBD
Flite $13000 
VEFoil TBD
Cabratec E5990 = $6666
HoverStar Flight Technology TBD
Albatross pre-order TBD
Elevate Eco-Foil E2500 as add-on to existing board
Flying Rodeo Slovenia E9600 = $10642 
EldoRIDEdo $13990
e-takuma E7000 = $7760

Avante  $7000

e-surfer E13000

5 healthy meal-delivery services in Seattle taste-tested | The Seattle Times

https://www.seattletimes.com/life/wellness/5-healthy-meal-delivery-services-in-seattle-taste-tested/

Munchery, Kendal's Kitchen (closed), Maven Meals, Eat Local and Fresh and Ready Meals (closed) reviewed.

Donate used pills and medications

http://jokkosante.org/

medicine sharing organization from Senegal  emerging to tackle the dual problems of waste and unaffordability by redirecting medications to low-income communities.

https://givmed.org/

a Greek nonprofit that matches leftover medicines with people on low incomes.

https://www.sirum.org

eligible medications are:

• Sealed/Unopened
• 5+ months from expiration
• Non-refrigerated
• Non-controlled

Doug reminisces about baby-boomers

I am one of the 50 million Americans born from 1925-45, between the greatest generation and the worst and most coddled Baby Boomers. We are called the Silent Generation, a "still, small flame," and are characterized as non-whining, reserved, placid, modest, serene, marching to our own drumbeat, wishing to be left alone, and we are a generally quietly grateful lot...I don't whine, am exceptionally immune to the "tidal pull of popular opinion," and am quite grateful for my lot in life, especially my wife, kids, and grandkids. I fashion myself a (mostly) cheerful curmudgeon, preferring, as Democritus, to laugh at the world's ever-increasing folly, rather than weeping, as Heraclitus…though sometimes I do come close to tears. As W.C. Fields, I start every day off with a smile and get it over with.  I'm a man of the old school. In fact, if my "school" were any older I would be dead...We kept quiet (even I did) when growing up because children then were "seen, not heard." We are respectful of authority, preferring not to rock the boat. We believe hard work gets you ahead in life, no matter what your race or other defining characteristics. We are traditional and conventional and want to work within the system rather than topple it. We grow misty-eyed when we see generosity, decency, good manners. We take heart when we hear good music or see non-decadent movies, read great literature, enjoy a witty, intelligent conversation, or view traditional art. Again, we don't whine and are content to be ignored. We don't need approval to be proud. We are unlikely to boast about our achievements and are not much for chest-pounding or high-fiving, not least in athletic and other competitions.

   Early members of our generation survived the Great Depression and many fought in Korea (the forgotten war) and a few of the latecomers in the Vietnam war. We set the stage for an unprecedented explosion of creativity in the arts and technology--- otherwise known as the 1950s

Adventure Travel with Overseas Adventure Travel - The Leader in Small Group Travel and Small Ship Adventures.

Peter Hartwell recommended travel with outdoor adventure travel. How OAP's travel!

www.oattravel.com

Cleaning old LP records

https://youtu.be/_gyvipBs6Vs
A method of cleaning records. Short version you can watch from 2:22 for the special sound it makes as the glue comes off the record. And then plays noiselessly. I imagine, if you don't get the glue just right it could make a really sticky mess that ruins the record!

Package Thief Porch Pirate gets a Glitter Bomb

https://youtu.be/xoxhDk-hwuo

https://youtu.be/a_TSR_v07m0

Ahhh, the beauty of revenge. 

How granite countertops are made

https://youtu.be/NwduxdBsvLA

Some pretty heavy machinery and automation. 

Boyan Slat combats River pollution with The Interceptor

https://youtu.be/bMenLxORN6M
@1:10 - Just 1% of the world's rivers are responsible for 80% of plastic pollution entering the oceans. 

Most Popular Websites 1996 - 2019

https://youtu.be/2Uj1A9AguFs

I found this really intriguing to watch, probably because I lived through it all. 

Watch the meteoric rise and domination of 

1:07 eBay in 1999

1:43 Google in 2001

3:27 YouTube arrives 2006

3:32 Google takes the top spot and stays there, 2006

3:53 Facebook in 2007

6:02 Instagram 2013

Also, notice how numbers don't really decrease as they drop in ranking, they stay the same while the leaders rise exponentially. Yahoo goes from 5M at its peak down to just 3M at the end, while Google grows ten-fold. Also, I was surprised to see Amazon drop off the top ten websites in Jan 2017 @ 7:08. 

In a related video, this is how Google dominated email: simply by offering search capability, and free storage. They actually launched Gmail with no "delete email" capability to prove their point and change culture. 

https://youtu.be/6rTThO_eDiE

Extreme Physics Pushing Moore’s Law to the Next Level

https://youtu.be/f0gMdGrVteI

ASML, the essential company you've never heard of. 

@10:15 "The most technologically advanced machine of any kind, ever made"

Years of research and advances to achieve photolithography of silicon wafers with a much shorter wavelength of light shining through the reticle, or master copy, which allows much smaller resolution of the shapes in the final product, down to the level of the atom. 

Conrad Bora Bora Nui Hotel

https://www.hilton.com/en/book/reservation/rooms

-private island hotel in French Polynesia

Youngest Olympian

https://youtu.be/CKJ8aTp9-OY
Pretty inspirational kid. Sticktoitiveness

Detailed Voice Guidance Comes to Google Maps

https://youtu.be/7PEbPYy56XI

@2:02 "Having access to new experiences helps me feel more included." 

Art interpretation

https://youtu.be/X75Roe_davA

Funny little video that is trying to present both an interpretation of a classical painting, and a life lesson. The little animations are curiously hilarious, like the ones Monty Python used to do.

https://youtu.be/pLpK_Htw-F8

Creative use of mirrors and servo motors - it seems like it took a lot of years to perfect his design.





And an older video - 

Day trader jargon

https://tradingsim.com/blog/first-hour-trading/
"What I will cover would have saved me 20 months of headaches if someone had told me day one...
"The first hour of trading provides the liquidity you need to get in an and out of the market.  On average the market only trends all day less than 20% of the time...
"The one time of day which consistently delivers on sharp moves with volume is the morning..."
"Within the first 5-minutes you will see a number of spikes in both price and volume as stocks gap up or down from the previous day's close. This will often be driven by some sort of earnings announcement or pre-market news.  This first five minutes is arguably the most volatile time of day."
"In today's world, there are way too many automated systems and retail investors all clamoring over pennies, stocks no longer move in a linear fashion where you can sit back and place your trades on cruise control.
"Since I trade, I know there are some of you reading this thinking, "I can make money all day". This is a true statement [but] the majority of people do not. You will see that around 11:00 am the volume just dries up in the market. This is because the institutional investors and hedge funds realize that there is far more work and risk to be had during the middle of the day than potential profits. The resulting price action when the true stock operators are away from their desk is basically a lot of sideways action."
"...I came across this great video from SMB trading where Mike Bellafore describes how some of his traders fight the desire to trade during the slow midday period..."
"I try to avoid stocks that are printing a lot of 2% and 3% candlesticks. Reason being, the stock will likely trip my stop loss order before I am able to realize my profit target."
"The first hour tends to be the most volatile, providing the most opportunity. Although it sounds harsh, professional traders know that a lot of "dumb money" is flowing at this time.

Dumb money is the phenomenon of people making transactions based on what they read in the newspapers or saw on TV the night before. The information these people are acting upon is typically old news. Their trades can create sharp price movements in one direction. Then professional traders take advantage of the overly high or low price and push it back the other way."

https://www.thebalance.com/best-time-s-of-day-to-day-trade-the-stock-market-1031361
"Ideally, risk 1% or less of your capital on each trade. This is accomplished by picking an entry point and then setting a stop loss, which will get you out of the trade if starts going too much against you."
https://www.thebalance.com/day-trading-tips-for-beginners-on-getting-started-4047240

Waymo tells riders to get ready for fully driverless rides

"Waymo is continuing its excruciatingly gradual process* for launching fully driverless technology. Rather than introducing self-driving technology in a single high-profile launch, the company has taken a series of baby steps toward full autonomy over the last three years."

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/10/waymo-starts-offering-driverless-rides-to-ordinary-riders-in-phoenix/

*Waymo's rollout over the last 18 months has been methodical, excruciatingly gradual, and sometimes conducted in secret. It's a formula for minimizing media-driven hype.

Mesmerizing

I found both of these mesmerizing and beautiful to watch. 

https://youtu.be/bVx-PFkDf_E

https://youtu.be/woCdjbsjbPg

Incidentally, mesmerizing comes from the 19th century astronomer-physician Franz Mesmer. 

"Experts can't agree on whether Franz Anton Mesmer (1734-1815) was a quack or a genius, but all concede that the late 18th-century physician's name is the source of the word mesmerize. In his day, Mesmer was the toast of Paris, where he enjoyed the support of notables including Queen Marie Antoinette. He treated patients with a force he termed "animal magnetism." Many believe that what he actually used was what we now call "hypnotism." Mesmer's name was first applied to a technique for inducing hypnosis by one of his students in 1784."

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mesmerize

Medlar: The Best Fruit You’ve Never Heard Of - Medlars

"...they have to be picked early, then put aside for a few weeks to blet [ the decay that happens in overripe fruit.] Then, when they're finally bletted, they're have to be eaten immediately. There's not a huge window of edibility. This level of persnickety-ness just doesn't jive with our industrial food distribution system."

https://www.rootsimple.com/2010/12/medlar-the-best-fruit-youve-never-heard-of/

Hold On by Sarah McLachlan

https://play.google.com/music/m/Tkt7ksfssucqdn44ej4dxh47uou?t=Hold_On_-_Sarah_McLachlan

Sarah McLachlan introduced it with this explaination at VH1 Storytellers...

"This is a song, basically another one of those few and rare occasions where a song came out very quickly and easily. It was from pure emotion. I [was] watching a documentary called a 'Promise Kept,' made in Canada. It was about this woman who discovered her fiance was HIV positive and basically the story followed her and her husband. They got married, and he got progressively sicker and she took care of him right up until the end, and she was telling her story with just such, beautiful clarity and honesty and it just struck home in a way that I couldn't really describe... except by writing this song and I really feel like it's something that came out of me through her. This is called 'Hold On'."

https://songmeanings.com/m/songs/view/5768/

Hold on
Hold on to yourself
For this is gonna hurt like hell

Hold on
Hold on to yourself
You know that only time will tell

What is it in me that refuses to believe
This isn't easier than the real thing

My love
You know that you're my best friend
You know that I'd do anything for you
And my love
Let nothing come between us
My love for you is strong and true

Am I in heaven here or
Am I
At the crossroads I am standing

So now you're sleeping peaceful
I lie awake and pray
That you'll be strong tomorrow
And will see another day
And we will praise it
And love the light that brings a smile
Across your face

Oh God
If you're out there won't you hear me
I know we're never talked before

And oh God
The man I love is leaving
Won't you take him when he comes to your door

Am I in heaven here or
Am I in hell
At the crossroads I am standing

So now you're sleeping peaceful
I lie awake and pray
That you'll be strong tomorrow
And we will see another day
And we will praise it
And love the light that brings a smile

So now you're sleeping peaceful
I lie awake and pray
That you'll be strong tomorrow
And we will see another day
And we will praise it
And love the light that brings a smile
Across your face

Hold on
Hold on to yourself
For this is gonna hurt like hell

Why is everyone bad at driving? A Traffic Q&A investigation

https://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/traffic/article220282065.html

Ed Troyer gave the best answer. People take on a different personality when they drive, they feel empowered. They feel indignant when another car gets in front of them, though it adds mere seconds to their drive. 

I met Ed Troyer in person once, and he was the same gentle, calming, respectful person you see in this interview. 

Here's a technique showering how one driver can make a difference in traffic jams. 

https://youtu.be/MtwY9xKfaYo

And the low-quality video by the proponent of the above technique:

https://youtu.be/iGFqfTCL2fs

And here's someone's dashcam recordings of what I drive in every day. 

https://youtu.be/N1cmYMJ_SkA

Adjustable Manhole Frames Avoid Costly Problems

https://ucononline.com/magazine/2010/december-2010-vol-65-no-12/new-products/adjustable-manhole-frames-avoid-costly-problems

Why hasn't this idea taken off? How often do you drive over a manhole that's below road grade after the road was replaced, making a huge thud as your tires go over it. That's so destructive to the road surface, like having a thousand-pound rubber hammer striking it thousands of times a day. 

China is forcing the world to rethink recycling

https://youtu.be/8HROn34sDRk

China stopped accepting trash because of increased cancer rates where it was being processed. While plastic for recycling had been a convenient cargo to transport on otherwise empty return trips to China, the plastic waste has now been pushed onto China's Asian neighbors, particularly Malaysia. Localized illness outbreaks there are getting attributed to illegal burning of excess plastic waste there.

Schwab and Ameritrade Cut Fees to $0.

There's no such thing as a free lunch. Brokerages make their money from net interest margin, just like banks do. 

"...Schwab pays accountholders a little bit of interest on their cash balances (0.27 percent, on average, in 2018) and earns a lot more interest by lending those balances out (2.57 percent, again in 2018)."

"...They are able to offer "free" robo-advising because their robot will put a substantial fraction of your assets in lucrative-for-Schwab cash deposits, typically 6 to 10 percent but sometimes as much as 30 percent. If using this "free" robo-adviser will lead to you holding more cash (and giving up more yield) than you intended."

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/10/schwab-and-ameritrade-cut-fees-to-usd0-whats-the-catch.html

Creating Doubles

https://youtu.be/Mys8_k5PNPM
This is a great documentary...not worth it unless you devote the whole 25 minutes to it. It's painstakingly illustrated from dozens of films detailing how doubles effects were done across an entire century of moviemaking. It's surprising to recall how many movies split the same character into 2 or more people. 

Smile intensity in photographs -> less divorce, long life

"we posited that smiling behavior in photographs is potentially indicative of underlying emotional dispositions that have direct and indirect life consequences. In the first study...college yearbook photos and in [the second study] we examined a variety of participants’ photos from childhood through early adulthood. In both studies, divorce was predicted by the degree to which subjects smiled in their photos."
"causes one’s cheeks to raise as well as bagging around the eyes...causes the corners of the mouth to move upward forming a smile. The intensity of each action unit was scored utilizing a 5-point intensity scale..."
http://www.uvm.edu/pdodds/teaching/courses/2009-08UVM-300/docs/others/everything/hertenstein2009a.pdf

Baseball players who turned a high-wattage smile on the photographer were only half as likely to die during any given year as those who smiled only partially or not at all.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797610363775#

..."A warm smile says that person is probably engaged, interested in others, and in general feels warmly about life."
https://www.forbes.com/sites/melaniehaiken/2014/04/07/can-your-yearbook-photo-predict-happiness-divorce-death/#57cb054f56ea