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My wiki edit for today:

"It should be noted that consuming any cocktail which has been infused with the radioactive byproducts commonly resulting from the detonation of a thermonuclear weapon may pose health risks which exceed those typically associated with the consumption of alcoholic beverages in general. [citation needed]"

I lol'd at [citation needed].

Hmmm. Shouldn't lol'd actually be l'dol?

Idea:

1: Download assembly instructions for Ikea product.

2: Call Ikea, telling them I bought the product and it's missing one part.

3: Receive part for free.

4: Repeat, for every single part in the complete product.

5: Have a complete Ikea thing without spending a penny or setting foot in an Ikea store.

So, similar to what Radar O'Reilly did in MASH sending a Jeep home. I have always wondered about that though. Don't you suppose someone would question when he tried to send, oh, the frame?

When Parcel Post was introduced on January 1, 1913, it was a great day for businesses based in the United States of America. On that date, the Post Office Department raised the weight limit for parcels to 11 pounds. According to the US Postal Services website, the following year, Sears, Roebuck and Company fulfilled five times as many orders as it had done the year before.

However, one individual in Vernal, Utah, had a unique idea for how to employ Parcel Post: he’d use it to finish off his bank by having the special bricks he needed sent through the mail.

The Parcel Post revolution

Up until 1913, parcels could only be sent through the post if they weighed up to four pounds. But when the weight limit was increased to 11 pounds, that opened up a whole new avenue for businesses. Around three hundred million packages were mailed under this new tariff in the first six months alone.

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Mailman Delivering Parcel Posts, USA, circa 1914. (Photo Credit: Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

People were eager to try out this new service and would send parcels just for the novelty of seeing what could be transported. Eggs were a popular choice, especially since special packaging had been created to ensure these delicate items could be transported without being damaged.

According to the Postal Museum website: “Six eggs were the first objects sent by Parcel Post from St. Louis. Mailed to Edwardsville, Illinois, from the main city post office at 12:05 a.m., the eggs came back to St. Louis in the form of a freshly baked cake, which was delivered at 7 p.m.”

The Parcel Post proved so popular that the weight limit was increased again in August that year to 20 pounds, then 50 pounds in 1914, and eventually to 70 pounds.

A lifeline for Vernal

While people in cities all across America were enjoying the novelty of the Parcel Post, those who lived in remote areas were finding it an absolute lifeline. Items such as food and medicine could now be sent through the post, and farmers were able to ship their fresh goods directly to consumers.

One such out-of-the-way town was Vernal in northeastern Utah. On a map, Vernal is only about 125 miles east of Salt Lake City, but the trip can be up to 400 miles long due to mountains and rough terrain.

By 1916, the post office in Vernal was handling around two tons of mail per day. The post office staff had to work up to 15 hours a day just to keep up.

In the summer of 1916, a new two-story bank was being built in Vernal at 3 West Main Street. While most of it was constructed from local stone, bank director William Horace Colthorp wanted pressed bricks for the façade as they were more durable.

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The Bank of Vernal, a historic building in Vernal, Utah, United States, is known as “the bank sent by mail” (Photo Credit: Ntsimp – Own work, Public Domain)

The nearest supplier of bricks was in Salt Lake City. However, it would cost a fortune to have the bricks brought to Vernal by a private carrier. According to John Baron, a history lecturer at Utah State University, the cost of freight wagons would have been “four times the cost of the brick to ship them. And parcel post rates were half that.”

So, Colthorp decided he would use the Post Office to get him his bricks.

A loophole for large parcels

As the popularity of Parcel Post took off, Postmaster General Albert Burleson made a rule in November 1914 that all Postmasters must check with the Second Assistant Postmaster General before they accept “a very large or unusual” number of parcels.

However, there was no definition of what constitute a “large or unusual” parcel, especially at a time when people were shipping everything from eggs to cement to children. Noble Warrum was the Postmaster of Salt Lake City and from 1915, he repeatedly asked the Department to provide a proper definition, but he received no answer. This left the way clear for Colthorp’s plan.

The bricks begin to arrive

Colthorp ordered his bricks from John B. Cahoon of the Salt Lake Pressed Brick Company. Each brick was individually wrapped in paper then placed in a wooden crate. Each crate held ten bricks, keeping it under the 50-pound weight limit in operation at the time.

In all, 1,500 crates were shipped, totaling 37.5 tons of bricks. While strictly allowable under the rules of the Post Office, the huge shipment had unintended consequences. One of the Uintah Railway Company’s trucks was destroyed after its brakes failed under the weight. The truck coasted backward before overturning and catching fire. Luckily, there were no fatalities.

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Zion Bank facade (Photo Credit: Unknown author or not provided – U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Public Domain)

According to Kevin Van Tassell of Zions Bank (which has occupied the Vernal Bank building since 1974), the bricks began to pile up around the Post Office, and the Vernal postmaster was forced to send a telegram to Washington: “And he said, ‘Some S.O.B. is trying to ship a whole building through the US mail,’ except it was a little more colorful than that.”

The Vernal Bank was completed in November 1916 and was nicknamed “the Parcel Post Bank” due to its unusual construction.

The loophole is closed

On November 7, 1916, Second Assistant Postmaster General Otto Praeger put in a note in the Postmaster Bulletin that read: “hereafter when more than 200 pounds of merchandise, other than perishable matter, are offered for mailing by one sender to one addressee on the same day, it shall be considered a large or unusual shipment.” In such a situation, Postmasters were to seek advice before accepting it.

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A plaque explaining historical facts is displayed on the red brick wall of the Parcel Post Bank in Vernal, Utah (Photo Credit: Unknown author or not provided – U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Public Domain)


https://www.thevintagenews.com/2022/...rough-the-mail

Looking back at this post which I made about four years ago, I was wrong:

Turns out that if you can't be light travel faster, you make the satellites be lower.

As is frequently the case, I was trapped by conventional thinking.

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In 2014, the Hawaiian state legislature introduced Senate Bill 2026, which would have outlawed the slaughter or trafficking of cats for human consumption,

It did not pass.

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I bought myself a new mini PC. The technology leap in the span of 8-10 years is amazing. New rig is smaller, quieter, faster, more powerful and even uses less energy.

Last week I posted the text only for this on M.NET thread "The top ten smartest animals in the world...... what do you think?"
in response to comment "Don’t see Homo “sapiens” on there. Makes sense."
and received an infraction notice.
The moderator did acknowledge that it was amusing but nudged the "no politics" rule a little too close - It DOESN'T even mention politics!

Geeze Lokiel, how many times have I told you not to offend the Yanks?! You know they have delicate sensibilities, you do that and they might not let us play in their wars any more.

Oh, wait ...

My wife's vagina smells like roses.

But Rose's is tighter...

Today I went to my local Ace HW store. It's been there for longer than I've been alive and used to be one of those mom-and-pop type places where they had a little of everything. Dad took me there as a kid, and I marveled at all the bins of various stuff you'd find there. Dad often chatted with the guy there. All the times I talked to him, or one of the others, they seemed to know what was what when it came to hardware.

Well, after browsing the web, I was in search of an item which I had found there in the past, and their website declared was in stock. Said item was not some esoteric part for an ancient machine long out of use, but simple key stock. 1/8" in this case.

Now, 6 months ago I was in this very same store, and they had a small bucket of 12" lengths of various sizes. I bought 3 pieces of 3/8", which I am in the process of turning into holders for carbide lathe tools, to be used on my wood lathe.

Today I showed up, and they have cleaned out the back room where the bulk HW was, and completely redone it. Aforementioned bucket was nowhere to be found. So, as logic would dictate, I asked an employee.

WHO DIDN"T KNOW WHAT KEY STOCK WAS!

Trying to explain what a key is, or where it was used was met with blank stares. I proceeded to ask 3 other employees, (only one of which knew what a key was), but no one knew where it was located. The least clueless of the three finally located Woodruff keys, but no square ones. As I am sure they just didn't toss out $100 worth of merchandise, it's hidden in some other corner of that store. Knowing the people I interacted with today, probably in with the gardening supplies.

I think a ton of Ace's have done remodeling over the last year or so. Both my local ones have re-arranged their stores in the past year. I wonder if corporate is coordinating it.

Not sure where this belongs….
 

Was thinking maybe Politics would be more appropriate, but…

There’s now going to be betting on the Special Olympics?

https://www.forbes.com/sites/zackjon...h=2c36578b7658

Sometimes when I'm high, I like to imagine arguments between archaeologists in the distant future about what *kind* of milk and eggs were in our recipes.

I hope that the man opposing factions are divided over whether the milk was from cats or dogs. Because "what other domesticated mammals were commonly found in a majority of households back then?"

You're a supercritical nuclear reactor. I'm a long, sleek, hard control rod made of indium, silver, and gadolinium.

I quickly insert myself into your hot, pulsating mass of fissioning uranium and plutonium, absorbing all of your neutrons, stopping your chain reaction faster than you can moan.

As your power exponentially decays, I thrust myself deeper and deeper into your core, as the coolant which immerses us both carries away your waste heat.

I have absolute control over you. You begin to turn from a hot, nasty, supercritical mess into a nice, submissive core with a k_eff < 1.

I was made for this job, and deep down inside you know that you want it.

The engineers and technicians all watch in stunned silence as the shift supervisor announces that the reactor SCRAM was a success.