I was on the side of the road for close to 4 hours. Big jeep, blown rear tire, had a spare but no jack. I had signs in the windows of the car, big signs that said NEED A JACK and offered money. No dice. Right as I am about to give up and just hitch out there a van pulls over and dude bounds out. He sizes the situation up and calls for his youngest daughter who speaks english. He conveys through her that he has a jack but it is too small for the Jeep so we will need to brace it. He produces a saw from the van and cuts a log out of a downed tree on the side of the road. We rolled it over, put his jack on top, and bam, in business. I start taking the wheel off and, if you can believe it, I broke his tire iron. It was one of those collapsible ones and I wasn't careful and I snapped the head I needed clean off. Fuck.

No worries, he runs to the van, gives it to his wife and she is gone in a flash, down the road to buy a tire iron. She is back in 15 minutes, we finish the job with a little sweat and cussing (stupid log was starting to give), and I am a very happy man. We are both filthy and sweaty. The wife produces a large water jug for us to wash our hands in. I tried to put a 20 in the man's hand but he wouldn't take it so I instead gave it to his wife as quietly as I could. I thanked them up one side and down the other. I asked the little girl where they lived, thinking maybe I could send them a gift for being so awesome. She says they live in Mexico. They are here so mommy and daddy can pick peaches for the next few weeks. After that they are going to pick cherries then go back home. She asks if I have had lunch and when I told her no she gave me a tamale from their cooler, the best fucking tamale I have ever had.

So, to clarify, a family that is undoubtedly poorer than you, me, and just about everyone else on that stretch of road, working on a seasonal basis where time is money, took an hour or two out of their day to help some strange dude on the side of the road when people in tow trucks were just passing me by. Wow...

But we aren't done yet. I thank them again and walk back to my car and open the foil on the tamale cause I am starving at this point and what do I find inside? My fucking $20 bill! I whirl around and run up to the van and the guy rolls his window down. He sees the $20 in my hand and just shaking his head no like he won't take it. All I can think to say is "Por Favor, Por Favor, Por Favor" with my hands out. Dude just smiles, shakes his head and, with what looked like great concentration, tried his hardest to speak to me in English:

"Today you.... tomorrow me."rhoner

Jaywalking is a portmanteau of jay and walking. Jay (archaic colloquial) itself means:

Applied to humans in sense of "impertinent chatterer, flashy dresser" from 1620s. […] Jay was slang for "fourth-rate, worthless" (1888) e.g. a jay town.

a fourth-rate, worthless walker.

Recently I learned that horseshoe crab blood is blue, not red, due to their use of hemocyanin in place of hemoglobin to transport oxygen (copper vs iron). It turns out I should have investigated further, because their blood is more than just different, it's actually useful.

Their blood also contains amebocytes, which are similar in function to white blood cells, but differ in their response to pathogens: in the presence of endotoxin, the blood clots vigorously. Endotoxin is a toxic bacterial component that sticks around after all the pathogens in a solution have been sterilized. It causes a fever, and it's pretty hard to detect. Rabbits were injected to test batches of drugs, since they react to endotoxin similarly to humans, and if they got sick, that lot was rejected.

But horseshoe crab blood can help, and we don't have to get them sick as part of testing! The link I got most of my information from starts reading like a brochure at this point, but the gist is that every year a whole lot of horseshoe crabs get collected, 30% of their blood is drawn, and they're returned to the wild, and they are generally not harmed in any way unless collection goes badly. Back in the water, blood volume rebounds in about a week, and cell count returns back to normal in about 3 months.

The blood isn't used as-is in the lab these days, it's processed into limulus amebocyte lysate, reconstituted with water, part is tested against control samples, and the rest used to test injectable drugs and related medical things that you don't want getting you sick.

There exist law school scam blogs focused on the topic of how a law degree is not worth the money. Important variables include a low percentage of graduates getting jobs in the industry, expensive tuition, and oppressive loans. A friend of ours (who was a lawyer, now in medicine) related that law salaries follow a bimodal distribution with peaks around $40k and $100k, the former of which commonly leaves students with a debt-to-income ratio of three.

This is especially problematic for students because bankruptcy doesn't clear student loan debt.

Shepard Tone

A tone composed of multiple sine waves at the right frequencies and alignments which, depending on the disposition of the base pitch, creates the auditory illusion of a tone whose pitch is constantly ascending or descending.

"It has been described as a 'sonic barber's pole'."

Reminds me of Deep Note (mp3), but with no resolution.

A little writeup about how GCD works, and how sometimes it can make your performance *worse*.

Movies about prison life invariably show the use of the cigarette as currency, their value presumably being derived from their cost, portability, and physical addiction. Betting, buying, and bribing, it's all done with cigarettes.

But something more interesting is going on in real prisons, the use of honey buns. At $1.08 each, packed with flavour not found in the mess halls, and 680 calories, 51 grams of sugar and 30 grams of fat, they sell better than anything else at the commissary.

According to the article, they've been used "as currency for trades, as bribes for favors, as relievers for stress and substitutes for addiction. They've become birthday cakes, hooch wines, last meals even ingredients in a massive tax fraud."

Neat!

Reading This Time Is Different has taught me a lot about economic history, but it's taken a while because it's written very much like a dry academic paper than most nonfiction. Good news: it also has pretty pictures.

This graph struck me as very telling of our age—while the 10-year average inflation rate is always positive, only in the last generation has it stopped dipping below 0 every so often, and all of the most recent local maxima are higher than any age before.

From the book (page 179):

Perhaps it may seem excessive to devote so much attention here to currency debasement when financial crises have long since moved on to grander and more extravagant schemes. Yet the experience of debasement illustrates many important points. Of course, it shows that inflation and default are nothing new; only the tools have changed. More important, the shift from metallic to paper currency provides an important example of the fact that technological innovation does not necessarily create entirely new kinds of financial crises but can exacerbate their effects, much as technology has constantly made warfare more deadly over the course of history.

That's one hell of an analogy. The book goes on to explain that inflation is a tool used by sovereigns to reduce the value of debt owed, but the occurrence of sovereign default hasn't changed commensurately over the course of the graph.

And in case you don't follow Three Panel Soul:

Last night I made two catnip toys out of an old pair of jeans, hoping the denim would prolong their life more than other fabrics. This morning the catnip had the desired effect on one of our cats, and we checked the internet to see if she could overdose.

It's pretty common knowledge that catnip is a "recreational substance" for cats—dilated eyes, euphoria, rubbing, rolling, drooling, and sleepiness are all common. Catnip actually refers to all species in the Nepeta genus, but especially N. cataria.

All of the species in Nepeta share some less-commonly-known properties as well:

• Catnip oil is a repellent against mosquitoes, cockroaches and termites—about ten times more effective than DEET.
• Catnip can be steeped as a tea and has a sedative effect on humans.
• Catnip has been used throughout history (sometimes usefully) as a medicine.

And according to one source:

According to The Herb Garden, "The root when chewed is said to make the most gentle person fierce and quarrelsome". In fact, there is a story about an executioner who would have to chew on the root of catnip so he could bring himself to do kill.

And in case you're still wondering, our cat will probably not overdose—they're pretty good at self-regulating their drug intake, unlike a lot of humans.

Variable Geometry Turbocharger

By changing the geometry of the turbine inlet, a turbo's effective range can be extended to the lower and upper ends of the engine's range, while eliminating the need for a wastegate.

Taking the adjustment capability a step further, the geometry can also be changed to purposefully increase exhaust backpressure to promote exhaust gas recirculation, reduce emissions, provide additional engine braking, and increase exhaust temperature for the purpose of regenerating a diesel particulate filter. While increased exhaust backpressure does not increase the efficiency or power of the engine, it can still be used beneficially during short periods (like when shifting).

The diesel particulate filter is also interesting: it captures microparticles and soot and regenerates (or cleans) itself via the application of high heat for a short period to burn away the particles. It can be functionally compared to the catalytic converter of a petrol-powered car (they can share the same structural materials) but instead of requiring oxygen to recharge the catalyst, it uses heat to clear the filter.