Urban Life

I saw a Jaguar. 🧐

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I saw a Jaguar. 🧐

I don’t think I’ve seen many of them around lately but maybe I hang without the wrong kind of people or maybe the status symbol of choice these days for liberals is Tesla or maybe they don’t make them anymore.

I just remember that day I was a Young Democrats event, and somebody rolled up in a Jaguar. Big time lobbyist, not sure if she ended up eventually going to prison or maybe that’s somebody else I’m thinking about. She popped her clutch without giving it enough gas and stalled her Jag. Turns out even fancy British cars stall if you don’t give them enough gas.

NPR

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Millions are using risky ways to try and buy an affordable home : NPR

Five years ago, Donald Strayer thought he'd bought a dream home for his extended family. It was on a pretty spot in Ohio's Appalachian mountain foothills, with room for him and his wife, his daughter's family, plus their horses and goats. And he could actually afford it.

Strayer had been turned down for a bank loan because of bad credit — he says it's because of hospital bills years ago. The 58-year-old former forklift driver has a chronic lung disease and lives off disability. Instead of a regular mortgage, he signed what's known as a land contract directly with the seller.

The price was $39,900. For a down payment he sold his childhood home, which he inherited when his dad died, "the only thing I had in the whole world."

For years he made monthly payments of $350 on his new home. And then "one day the sheriff just showed up," he says. "It was foreclosed and they wanted to take my property."

NPR

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Biden will allow summer sale of E15 gas : NPR

President Biden will announce Tuesday that his administration will temporarily allow E15 gasoline — gasoline that uses a 15% ethanol blend that is typically banned from sale from June to September — to be sold this summer, a measure intended to help ease gas prices on a day when inflation hit its highest monthly figure in 40 years.

This will be an interesting experiment in air pollution control. Will it make air pollution worse in major cities from additional volatile organic compounds being released in the air?
 
Or will the impact be muddled from everything else -- such as less driving due to high gas prices, plus all the smoke from wildfires? Only time will tell.

 

Ever wonder what causes traffic jams on expressways? Too many cars at any particular time. 🚘

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Ever wonder what causes traffic jams on expressways? Too many cars at any particular time. 🚘

An expressway can carry 67 cars per lane mile (or 78 feet per car), without delays, but after that traffic slows because there isn’t enough space between cars, and to maintain stopping distance, motorists must reduce speed.
 
So a 6-lane expressway can carry 200 cars per mile at any particular time in one direction, smoothly. Any more then that, and traffic slows to maintain distance between cars and crashes become much more likely. Crashes tend to take lanes completely out of service for several hundred feet, which cause cascading reductions in capacity.
 
At 185 cars per lane mile (28 feet per car, or 20 feet plus 8 foot buffer), traffic comes to a complete stand still, as no more cars can fit on the highway until some motorists are able to exit the highway or move to another mile point.