Interesting Links for 05-05-2024

[andrewducker]

1. Delighted to see the Conservatives do badly in the local elections, and the Greens and Lib Dems do so well.

(tags:politics UK )

2. North Yorkshire Council to phase out apostrophe use on street signs

(tags:language English sign UK OhForFucksSake )

3. Liz Truss pushing up mortgage rates may have handed the election to Labour

(tags:conservatives mortgages economics labour )

4. Why do lorries hit bridges?

(tags:UK transport bridge accident )

5. New poll finds support for monarchy in Scotland falling rapidly (majority now support an elected head of state)

(tags:monarchy Scotland polls )

Comments

[simont]

#2: clicking through to the article, the reason appears to be something along the lines of "because it's easier than us actually learning how to properly quote our shell and SQL inputs". Arrgh!

[calimac]

2) Though it's irritating, I find this vastly less annoying than putting apostrophes in where they don't belong.

There used to be a candy bar called the "$100,000 Bar". But the name was changed to "100 Grand" not, as I'd presumed, because some shop clerk tried to charge $100,000 for one, but because computer systems couldn't take a name beginning with $. Bah.

Somewhere recently I read an article about some jurisdiction which refuses to accept diacritical marks in its citizens' names.

[foms]

Sort of re #4:
It is only days ago that I contemplated divesting myself of somewhere between two and three linear feet of folded maps. It has been over two decades since I worked in the transportation industry. For a while, I did rural residential delivery. It used to be that I stopped at the city hall or the police station in most towns that were new to me to get a local map because it was the only way to find many of the smaller roads.

I was never in a truck that hit a bridge -- a gate, once -- but I did have to pay a little bit of attention, once in a while. There are other considerations than straight height that the link doesn't talk about. The shape of the underside of the bridge is relatively obvious. The shape of the road (hill or camber) that passes beneath and the length of the truck wheel base can combine to make a significant difference and make it much harder to see the danger.

I'm also reminded of an incident that didn't involve the top of a truck but came relatively close to killing me. I was walking under the bridge, here, when a truck took the corner too tightly, above and brushed the railing, knocking one bar out of its mooring. The bar passed before my eyes and struck the walkway, vertically, a couple of feet in front of me and then toppled into the road. I cleared the bar from the way and then climbed the embankment to spot for the driver to disentangle and clear the path. It made me late for work.