Back then they didn't understand, or didn't see a need, for merging lanes. Freeways were going to solve all traffic problems. They thought the high speeds and free-flow would mean there would always be huge gaps between vehicles with more than enough room to merge in easily.

There may also be a holdover component to the original "yield to the right" rule. That was the overriding rule for much of early motoring, hence the term "right of way." So highway traffic may well have been expected to yield or move over for entering onramp traffic, hence no need for merge lanes. We quickly discovered why that doesn't work, and "yield to the right" has been relegated to 4-way stop signs and pretty much nothing else.

A brand or trademark is a bit of a different animal (heh) but let's set that aside for now and talk just about the drawing/character/cartoon/work of art, etc. The social contract is that if you want copyright protections from the government, then when that protection term is over you release it into the public domain. Same for patents, if you want patent protection, then you must document your invention sufficiently such that after the patent expires anyone can reasonably replicate it. This how copyright and patent law "promote the progress of science and useful arts." It's not JUST protecting the creator's work so they can profit from it, it's ALSO limited in time (though that's been effed up with copyright due to lobbying) and requires releasing that work to the public later on. Give the creator/inventor their exclusive control so they're incentivized, limit the time so they have to create/invent more rather than resting on their laurels, and release it to the public so they can iterate and derive their own works from it and the cycle repeats.

There were a couple iterations of this PowerBook form factor, and the last one (Pismo), which I still have and still works, has two USB ports and two Firewire 400 ports in lieu of the old ADB and SCSI ports. The model prior to Pismo (Lombard) also had USB, but it was SCSI instead of Firewire. Both of those models had semi-transparent bronze keycaps. The prior Wall Street models with ADB and SCSI, and no USB or Firewire, had opaque black keycaps.

They don't have power either so they can't run the pumps.

Houston has all the trappings of zoning except the use-based restrictions. It still has all the building setbacks, lot coverage maximums, parking minimums, and height restrictions of every other city. They will also enforce private zoning-like deed restrictions as if they were city ordinances. So Houston really has something like 80% as much zoning as anywhere else.

But the manufacturer could just apply strict licensing and anti-tampering terms into their purchase contract, whether for the device itself or for any replacement parts. Then the hackers would be subjected to contract law violations rather than copyright law violations. Potayto potahto.

Agreed on confirmation bias. Also, a lot of kids go through a dinosaur, astronomy, or vehicle phase around that age. The thing is that the knowledge tends not to be retained, so by the time they reach middle school their knowledge on the subject is back to baseline.

If you have fancy/upgraded/automatic climate controls, you don't need to touch them. You just set the temperature you want and it will automatically max out the A/C in hot weather. You're doing it wrong constantly fiddling with it.

"Parental responsibility" doesn't include putting yourself at risk of disability or death, which is absolutely a risk in pregnancy. So maybe the government and busybody religions shouldn't be the one making decisions about that instead of the mother and her doctor. A baby that's born is one the mother consented to carrying to term. They can also keep it alive by giving it up for adoption. There's no violation of the mother's bodily autonomy in those cases.

Also, consent to sex is not consent to getting pregnant, and consent to getting pregnant is not consent to remaining pregnant. Just like you know there's a risk you could get into a car crash when you get behind the wheel, it doesn't mean you consent to crashing. Forcing someone to remain pregnant against their will turns pregnancy into a punishment. How righteous.

Consent can be withdrawn at any time, otherwise you could be forced to donate a kidney against your will, to give blood against your will, to have sex against your will, to have a limb amputated against your will, or to be injected with a drug against your will, because that could save another person's life. If a mother no longer consents to having a fetus inside her, then she can and should have the right to remove it. The fact the fetus may not survive is unfortunate, but the same goes for the person who didn't get the kidney, blood, or whatever.

A baby that's born is one the mother consented to carrying to term. They can also keep it alive by giving it up for adoption. There's no violation of the mother's bodily autonomy in those cases.

Consent to sex is not consent to getting pregnant, and consent to getting pregnant is not consent to remaining pregnant. Just like you know there's a risk you could get into a car crash when you get behind the wheel, it doesn't mean you consent to crashing. Forcing someone to remain pregnant against their will turns pregnancy into a punishment. How righteous.

Is that why the last couple times I did a search it ended up (mostly) repeating all the same results after a while? It was the equivalent of getting to page 3 but in fact it simply circled back to page 1 again.

Engineering and architecture are two terms that have been muddled by their use outside the original realm of construction. That's OK so long as the terms are used generically. Engineer can mean structural engineer, civil engineer, geotechnical engineer, as well as network engineer, process engineer, or software engineer, whether registered or not. It's only when you get into "registered professional engineer" (PE) that the credentials should matter to the old-school engineering boards. Only a PE can sign/stamp structural drawings for instance.

Architecture is a little different, and not in a good way. Architect means someone who designs buildings. But there's also landscape architects, network architects, database architects, and information architects. None of those are regulated by the American Institute of Architects (AIA), so it's a free-for-all. However, someone practicing (building) architecture who isn't a registered architect (RA), is not allowed to call themselves an architect, only the insulting "intern architect", "architectural associate" or "design professional", the latter two of which violate most state laws.

So in the engineering profession, engineer and professional engineer (PE) are two different things, the former being less specific and non-registered than the latter. In the architecture profession, architect and registered architect (RA) are the same thing. Except that really doesn't work because of all the aforementioned non-building-related fields that use the term.

Reminds me of my elementary school in the late 1980s. There were two janitors, and one was also the bus driver. Both of them were maintenance men, repairing broken windows, installing drop ceilings, building benches, maintaining playground equipment, waxing the floors, fixing broken toilets, mowing the grass, patching potholes in the parking lot, you name it. Round about 1990 when I moved on to middle school, they let them go and hired a cleaning service instead. Yeah they vacuumed the carpets and emptied the trash, and I'm sure they were a bit cheaper for that one particular job, but now all the other things also needed to be contracted out. Since those things are on an as-needed basis, they either didn't happen anymore, or their costs were moved to a different ledger, obfuscating all the profit-seeking masquerading as cost savings. Sure it's difficult to find someone with those kinds of skills who also wants to clean up kids barf and unclog toilets, but there's also value to having them on staff that isn't realized only on the financial ledger.

The solution to traffic is never "reduce density and spread out." That's the cause of traffic.