Hello. Is This Thing Working?
Welcome to the Weekend Gene Pool. This week is all about spleen venting**, by you and me both.
The other day I was attempting to do my civic duty, plus avoid a ticket, by paying a parking meter in downtown D.C. After I inserted a credit card I was defeated in my mission by an apparently unforeseeable act of God. God, at that very moment — evidently the vindictive Old Testament God — wrought upon Washington D.C. an intolerable pestilence just to thwart me. He made it a beautiful, sunny day. This proved an insuperable impediment to the city parking meter system. Who could possibly have anticipated such a thing?
If the sun is high in the sky and bright enough, it is simply impossible to read a display on most city meters. I could see nothing but a blinding reflection. Cupping my hand over it did not help. I could not tell 1) Whether the meter had accepted my card. 2) What I would owe, and how much time I’d earn for it. 3) When to remove my card. 4) Whether the display would tell a meter cop I had whatever time I had, whatever that happened to be. 5) Whether or not the meter was broken.
The Web confirms that this is a thing. The Web does not summon appropriate outrage, in my opinion, but it succinctly summarizes the situation:
It is difficult to read parking meters in bright sunlight primarily because the ambient sunlight is significantly brighter than the standard liquid crystal displays light produced by the screen. This effect is compounded by reflections and the type of technology used in the displays, which are designed to be backlit rather than reflective.
The glossy, protective glass or plastic cover on parking meters acts like a mirror in direct sunlight, reflecting the sky or the user’s face back at users instead of showing the screen’s content. image.
Do you not think that this is a problem that could have been foreseen and prevented? Why was it not? Why has it not been corrected or improved? I have a theory. It is the go fuck yourself theory of government and industry. I feel I need not elaborate.
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So, that is your challenge for the day. Tell us about some element of modern life — some technology or device or tool or system that seems to fail or to disappoint for no reason other than the incompetence / lassitude / stinginess / lack of foresight, etc. of human business or government.
As always, send your nominees here:
Here’s another one. Those accursed “induction seals” for bottle caps with tabs so small they cannot be pried open, so you have to bust into them with whatever is avaailable, such as a stiletto heel. You know, these:
Okay, that’s it, except for this important footnote:
** Why is having a shit-fit called “venting one’s spleen”? Back in medieval days, when medicine was essentially a belief in bodily “humors’ — which were not funny, by the way — the spleen was thought to promote and encourage rage and wrath. So “doctors” of the time tended to treat splenetic or bilious people — people who angered quickly — by draining them of blood thought to contain, um, spleen juice, a subset of bile. They did this via bloodletting, cauterizing, or inducing propulsive vomiting or firehose diarrhea.
You are welcome.
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Today’s Gene Pool Gene Poll:
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Today’s mailbag:
Q: Somebody needs to tell Trump he is threatening to commit war crimes. — Larry Carnahan
A: Well, the media has been saying that, but he doesn’t read / listen to any media other than Fox News. He does at least pretend to listen to certain close advisers, but they would never say such a thing to him because they are weak, etiolated, compromised, cowardly simps who want to keep their jobs more than they care about the country or human rights. And Trump himself doesn’t know because Trump himself knows nothing. Maybe, eventually, he will be informed of this by a tribunal in the Hague.
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