Life's great mysteries (things that make NO sense)

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In summary, the conversation discusses various things that make no sense, including touch screens in cars, personalized address labels in mail solicitations, and restaurants using QR codes for menus. The use of touch screens in cars is criticized for being less functional and potentially dangerous compared to traditional controls. The use of personalized address labels is questioned as most people rarely use snail mail anymore. And the use of QR codes for menus is seen as a cost-cutting measure that may have cost the restaurant a potential customer.
  • #71
jack action said:
Actually, that makes a lot of sense. That is the whole point of chain restaurants: a familiar feel you can rely on. It is scary for a lot of people to go into unknown territory and fewer people would travel if it weren't for these types of businesses. Not everyone is looking for an adventure.
How much of an adventure is eating in a restaurant you've never been to? Just look up online reviews to make sure it's not horrible.
 
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  • #72
gmax137 said:
+1 to that, @hutchphd is not kidding. I may never eat beef-a-roni again.
Incidentally the restaurant in question is no longer in operation. If memory serves the demise was not too long after the original publication of the vividly descriptive article.
I'm with you on the Beef-a-roni...oh, to have such a command of descriptive prose...
 
  • #73
WWGD said:
How much of an adventure is eating in a restaurant you've never been to? Just look up online reviews to make sure it's not horrible.
Spoken like someone with a GI tract that thinks it's still 18 years old and invulnerable. :wink:
 
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  • #74
DaveC426913 said:
Spoken like someone with a GI tract that thinks it's still 18 years old and invulnerable. :wink:
Yes, I admit I have been lucky digestion -wise. No major issues, tho I avoid spicy foods.
 
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  • #75
I never ate out, because I can come up with better meals than restaurants. For example, I was only about eight years old when I discovered melted cheese on crackers. Combined with a Tupperware of grapes, boom, that's a golden snack right there. Or the time I put a mini pizza in between two hamburger patties and had a pizza burger.
 
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  • #76
Mondayman said:
I never ate out, because I can come up with better meals than restaurants. For example, I was only about eight years old when I discovered melted cheese on crackers. Combined with a Tupperware of grapes, boom, that's a golden snack right there. Or the time I put a mini pizza in between two hamburger patties and had a pizza burger.
True. Melted cheese , like bacon, is one of the magical foods that makes just about everything better.
 
  • #77
WWGD said:
True. Melted cheese , like bacon, is one of the magical foods that makes just about everything better.

For me it's ketchup. Yes, I'm still 9 years old in some ways. Also tortillas. I'll put just about anything in one. Most people think my spaghetti burritos are weird but if they tried one I think they'd like it. It's not that outside the box, noodles in a wrap.

Of course there's usually some ketchup in there too.
 
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  • #78
JT Smith said:
For me it's ketchup. Yes, I'm still 9 years old in some ways. Also tortillas. I'll put just about anything in one. Most people think my spaghetti burritos are weird but if they tried one I think they'd like it. It's not that outside the box, noodles in a wrap.

Of course there's usually some ketchup in there too.
Whatever works for you. Why not?
 
  • #79
Biodegradable plastic garbage bags.

If it is going to the landfill, do we want it to degrade, producing CO2 and CH4, or just sit there for hundreds of years ("carbon sequestration")?
 
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  • #80
Keith_McClary said:
Biodegradable plastic garbage bags.

If it is going to the landfill, do we want it to degrade, producing CO2 and CH4, or just sit there for hundreds of years ("carbon sequestration")?
That only works if it makes it to landfill!

The one I absolutely do not get is people who will bring bags to pick up their dog doo, and then tie it in and fling it into the bushes. You made the decision to get a dog, take the responsibilities and either flick it into the bushes with a stick or pick it up and take it home with you!
 
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  • #81
berkeman said:
But please don't think that pumping the gunshot victim's blood out of their body with CPR will help their survival. Lordy.
I have nearly zero medical knowledge and would know better to not do this.
 
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  • #82
some bloke said:
The one I absolutely do not get is people who will bring bags to pick up their dog doo, and then tie it in and fling it into the bushes. You made the decision to get a dog, take the responsibilities and either flick it into the bushes with a stick or pick it up and take it home with you!
My wife and I have a nick-name for the unknown neighbor(s) who leave little tied-up green plastic bags with dog poo right next to the trash can: "Dead eye".

We normally pick up bags as we walk and deposit them when we pass trash cans. It is annoying to have to bend over and pick up a bag that is sitting right next to the receptacle.

It is also annoying to have to reach into or under a thorn bush to retrieve a bag that a more considerate litterbug could have simply dropped on the sidewalk.
 
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  • #83
some bloke said:
bring bags to pick up their dog doo, and then tie it in and fling it into the bushes.
They only pick up if someone's looking.
 
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  • #84
A few years ago, over the course of a summer, I had full poop bags flung over the fence into my pool. Happened about 6 times.

Never found out who it was; never had any known encounter (let alone beef) with any neighbor who owned a dog.
 
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  • #85
DaveC426913 said:
A few years ago, over the course of a summer, I had full poop bags flung over the fence into my pool. Happened about 6 times.

Never found out who it was; never had any known encounter (let alone beef) with any neighbor who owned a dog.

That's disgusting.
 
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  • #86
DaveC426913 said:
A few years ago, over the course of a summer, I had full poop bags flung over the fence into my pool. Happened about 6 times.
Two words: "Counter-battery fire"... :wink:
 
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  • #87
So I was doing some simple tasks on my laptop at home while the evening news was playing on TV in the background. I happened to glance up during an Entresto commercial (a drug to help folks with serious heart issues), saw an image of a highway interchange, and went back to typing on my laptop. Then about 10 seconds later I went "wait a minute, that makes no sense...".

I rewound the TV (the wonders of modern Internet cable TV boxes) to the image and stared at it for a solid minute trying to decode where it could possibly be in the world and what its purpose was (are they driving on the left or right? Are those carpool lane flyovers? WITW?).

I finally realized that it was a Photoshopped/Artist Rendering meant to be in the shape of a heart (a common theme for Entresto advertisements). Lordy, it looked so real that it had me going in circles for that minute! o0)

1623891988106.png
 
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  • #88
Two things i hear in drug ads belong on this list:

For birth control: "...do not take if you are planning on becoming pregnant...". Ya think?

For something else"...side effects include...heart failure...If these persist, call your doctor". If heart failure persists, a doctor isn't what you need. An undertaker is what you need.
 
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  • #89
DaveC426913 said:
Never found out who it was; never had any known encounter (let alone beef) with any neighbor who owned a dog
You better hope they have a dog!
Speaking of which I went into my back yard a few months ago and found, in my fenced yard, what looked like a single perfectly formed 12 cm long 2 cm diameter brown present. This was a perfectly formed deposit that I would have been proud to claim as my own. I wondered with some chagrin whether there was a sasquatch (or perhaps a wino) in the woods!
After a little online research I discovered this was very likely opossum scat. Apparently the single ridiculously large linear turd is their hallmark.. you'd think they would have to make a noise...I have since noted a few more, and I do like the possum.
 
  • #90
berkeman said:
So I was doing some simple tasks on my laptop at home while the evening news was playing on TV in the background. I happened to glance up during an Entresto commercial (a drug to help folks with serious heart issues), saw an image of a highway interchange, and went back to typing on my laptop. Then about 10 seconds later I went "wait a minute, that makes no sense...".

I rewound the TV (the wonders of modern Internet cable TV boxes) to the image and stared at it for a solid minute trying to decode where it could possibly be in the world and what its purpose was (are they driving on the left or right? Are those carpool lane flyovers? WITW?).

I finally realized that it was a Photoshopped/Artist Rendering meant to be in the shape of a heart (a common theme for Entresto advertisements). Lordy, it looked so real that it had me going in circles for that minute! o0)

View attachment 284574
OMG, I saw this the other day too, and rewound and paused it to see what cars were going the wrong way!
 
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  • #91
The "Watchman" ad, barefoot gallop along a dock/pier by an elderly gent barely missing rusty, badly driven crooked nail-heads.
 
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  • #92
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  • #93
Here's another, common one: Scissors which come in packaging which requires scissors to get them out!
 
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  • #94
Credit card numbers are always quoted in groups of four digits like this:

1234 5678 9012 3456​

So why do most websites reject a number if you include the spaces? Have programmers not worked out how to ignore spaces?
 
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  • #95
DrGreg said:
Credit card numbers are always quoted in groups of four digits like this:

1234 5678 9012 3456​

So why do most websites reject a number if you include the spaces? Have programmers not worked out how to ignore spaces?
Even more to the point why are date inputs SO touchy on many systems and so variable from system to system?

I mean, credit cards at least are a specific application but dates are used with lots of applications.
 
Last edited:
  • #96
DrGreg said:
Have programmers not worked out how to ignore spaces?
The ones who listen to their Usability Specialists have.
 
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  • #97
DaveC426913 said:
The ones who listen to their Usability Specialists have.
Which is to say, very few of them.
 
  • #98
DaveC426913 said:
The ones who listen to their Usability Specialists have.
Do they agree with the Security Specialists?

exploits_of_a_mom.png

xkcd
 
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  • #99
Yes, this is for real. A company in Kentucky.
Exit.jpg
 
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  • #100
jrmichler said:
Yes, this is for real. A company in Kentucky.
View attachment 284817
Alas I have no picture of it, but for several years where I used to work (presumably since fire escape signs were mandatory) they had a fire escape sign on a wall with no door. No arrow, just a sign indicating that there was a fire escape there. There was no bricked up door, there simply was never a door there to begin with!
 
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  • #101
jrmichler said:
Yes, this is for real. A company in Kentucky.
The exit is in superposition.
 
  • #102
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  • #103
I worked at a power plant in Maine for a while. There was a long walk from the contractor parking to the gate. There was a short cut through a patch of woods; with a sign that said "This path is not a walkway" Ha, I wish I had snapped a photo but this was pre-cell phone days.
 
  • #104
gmax137 said:
I worked at a power plant in Maine for a while. There was a long walk from the contractor parking to the gate. There was a short cut through a patch of woods; with a sign that said "This path is not a walkway" Ha, I wish I had snapped a photo but this was pre-cell phone days.
Reminds me of a story I read about the most intelligent walkway layout I've ever heard of. I forget the university, but back when it was founded there were several buildings and they couldn't decide where to put the walkways.

SO ... they didn't. They let it go for the first year and then looked to see where the students had beaten down paths in the grass. That's where they put the walkways.
 
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  • #105
That reminds me a bit of those stories (true or not?) about drivers who, when passing a deer crossing sign on the motorway, complain that the deer crossing should have been built elsewhere.
 
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