Now in one piece!

Last time I looked, the closest thing to a “manual” published by Linux Mint was mostly a manifesto about why they’re not using various bits of Ubuntu. Sure the good old man command is still in there but Cinnamon is supposed to speak for itself.

Mint’s a solid choice, I used Mint as a primary or only distro for 10 years, and I’ve still got it on my laptop. But don’t pigeonhole yourself trying to be not like the other girls. I’ve got Bazzite on my HTPC because Cinnamon is kind of ass at 10 feet, I’ve got Fedora KDE on my desktop for better Wayland support, and Fedora Gnome on a tablet because it’s the only thing that remotely works as a touch-first OS that I could get to actually run on that tablet.

In the US, an interstate is one of the kinds of highways we have. They’re part of the Dwight D. Eisenhower National System Of Interstate And Defense Highways of post-WWII. Interstates are controlled access divided freeways that, unless local terrain renders it impossible, have barriers, medians, breakdown lanes, on/off ramps, and no traffic lights. They’re designed for long distance, high speed travel. They are designed to be standardized across the nation in highway design, signage and markings, so that drivers will find them familiar and predictable no matter where they are in the union, under the assumption that predictable = safe. As the name suggests, most, but not all, interstates allow travel between the states, though there are interstate highways in Alaska, Hawaii and Puerto Rico, these being non-contiguous with most of the nation (two of them are islands) they don’t connect to the rest of the interstate system. Also, Interstate 45 begins and ends in Texas.

This is in contrast to the older Federal Highway System which by the 1950’s when they began construction of the interstates consisted of anything from dirt roads to divided freeways that already conformed to the Interstate system standards in all but name, or the state route systems which are their own can of 50 worms, the design of the signage varies per state.

Interstate highways are marked by red white and blue shield signs, and are numbered I-##. Federal highways are marked with black and white shield signs, and are numbered US-##. I am within an hour’s drive of where US-1 crosses I-40, south of Raleigh, North Carolina. It is common for the same corridor, the physical strip of asphalt, to carry several routes of both systems. For example, through much of North Carolina, US-15 and US-501 share a corridor, such that locals consider it one road they call “fifteen-five-oh-one.” There is a new major interstate under construction called I-73, and through most of North Carolina from its beginning in Rockingham to just outside of Greensboro it shares a corridor with US-220. Which is why signage such as this:

Makes immediate sense to Americans.

Eh, in practice it wouldn’t net you much. In cases where you have, say, 3 exits within a mile of each other, they’ll fudge it a bit and number them, for example, 15, 16 and 17 even if they’re really close to mile 16. At typical interstate speed limits, you’d have to encounter an exit every 30 seconds for 4 straight minutes for it to really be a problem.

Lettering exists like 42A and 42B are usually used for junctions between divided highways, that is, exits that take you different directions on the same route. Say you’re going northbound on I-55, and you’re approaching the junction with I-50. Exit 42A will be encountered first, before the overpass, and will take you on a ~90 degree curved path to merge onto I-50 East. Exit 42B will be next, after the overpass, and will take you on a ~270 degree spiral to merge onto I-50 West.

Compare this to exits that lead into city streets, in which case you’re exiting the interstate system entirely, these will usually just be numbered, and on interstates they’re usually not that many that close together; you don’t have an exit from an interstate every block through a city.

Note: There is no Interstate 50; if there was one it would cross I-55 in Southeastern Missouri. I-50 and I-60 were skipped because they’d be confusingly close to the pre-existing US-50 and US-60 highways.

I’m a flight instructor, have been for over a decade. Ask me how VORs work. In my world, highway numbering is not complicated.

If we lived in a decent society, we’d have thrown everyone involved in that commercial to lions.

Beat me to it.

“Men honestly don’t need much in the way of material goods to be happy.”

“And I took that personally.”

Flat pack furniture is manufactured trash.

I’m not putting up with that, I’m going to convert them all to pung files asap.

I know J.D. Power and Associates as the company that makes up a trophy to give to literally every truck ever made. I haven’t seen a truck commercial in my entire life that didn’t mention them.

Floppy disks were a human size. When we need removable media now, it’s either a microSD card, which are so tiny there’s no way to label them, and thumb drives, which…USB-A is irritating.

Is there a psychoactive substance available to bronze age people in the Middle East? Because a lot of that shit sounds like someone wrote down their bad trip.

Give Rayforge a try.

There are a lot of circuits in the US that power multiple duplex outlets around a room. You could plug in a solar panel into one outlet and a load into another and they would be connected by a length of Romex in the walls.

In the United States that would be UL Certification.

Thank you!

Butt joints with biscuits.

They’re maple plywood with a cherry nosepiece glued on, held on shelf pins set in 1/4" holes drilled in the side stiles. It’s actually a pretty simple little cabinet.