Like the forest of No Entry/Wrong Way signs on offramps, where you find a lot of signs you find a place where lots of dumbasses previously ignored a smaller number of signs and did something dangerous and/or profoundly stupid.
The most disturbing sign I saw (a picture of) was at the end of a ramp onto I-95 in Connecticut: “Stop”.
To be fair, when I’m driving in the US, I’m often amazed at how many more signs you have, most of which are telling you what not to do. It always felt a bit overbearing for the “land of the free”.
Even Americans don’t want to be free to go the wrong way on a freeway exit. Bangy-bangy.
And it’s oddly full of references to hot dogs.
Yeah, that’s what we need: AI with physical hunger…
In another thread, I mentioned that I’ve been reading a lot of books lately from the first half of the 20th C. It’s amazing to me how bog standard, no big deal, ordinary the use of the n-word was. I’m not ignorant, but I was still mildly shocked. I thought it was a word so-called “polite society” wouldn’t use. Nope.
dupe.
I’m reading Unnatural Death, a Lord Peter Wimsey book. I was a bit surprised by the N-bomb that was dropped. Of course, it was an unsavory character who used it, but I was still surprised. I think she may have been referring to a south asian person. I’m not sure - we haven’t met him yet.
Okay, this is apropos of the signage topic currently being discussed.
When I moved into The Home nine months ago, I was concerned about my two cats who have always been inside-outside their whole lives and now are 100% inside 24/7. Below is a picture of my front door. Note that the floor mat as well as the sign both say “keep door closed.” On the INSIDE of the front door is another sign that says “keep door closed.”
Housekeeping was one of the perks of residence here.* I came home one day early on to find the housekeeper inside my apartment WITH THE DOOR PROPPED AND STANDING OPEN! The woman was cleaning in the bathroom, well away from the OPEN front door. I escorted her to the front door and with much irritation and exasperation pointed out the THREE SIGNS. She hadn’t noticed them. 
I was so beside myself I actually made her cry. Not sorry for that, BTW. If one of the cats had gotten out, I’d have been 10X madder.
The moral: People don’t read stuff. They just flat fucking don’t. So you have to tell them over and over in different ways and hope something gets through. And even then, it probably won’t.
* I had already declined housekeeping service, as I have my own cleaner who has been coming to me for 12 years, and she followed me here. So the staff housekeeper shouldn’t have been there at all. She was let go soon after this. I guess I wasn’t the only person who had problems.
Yes, we humans do have a tendency to ignore signs. Online, we even train ourselves to ignore them (well, ads, but: same idea).
So Tim Allen’s “brilliant takedown” of The Nanny State is just…dumb. (Surprise, surprise.)
(On the cats question–glad you don’t have to worry about that housekeeper anymore. Back in my cat-owning days I was always at least a tad anxious about my two getting out, as, for various reasons, they were declawed in front [this was many years ago]. The possibilities were so frightening.)
Haven’t read that particular book in a long while, but at the time in question it was a pretty common term for what Thomas Adkins (via Kipling) referred to as “all them blackfaced crew.”
Having heard Tim’s take on atheism you coulda shortened that to,
So Tim Allen is just…dumb. (Surprise, surprise.)
I’ve never seen this on I-95 in Connecticut, but the limited-access Merritt Parkway, which parallels I-95 in southwestern Connecticut used to have* a stop sign on virtually every entrance ramp. The Merritt was built in 1938 before there were modern highway standards like acceleration lanes. Driving in the right lane at highway speeds is downright terrifying because of the drivers directly entering the highway from a stop. They don’t want to widen the highway and improve the ramps because of the beautiful architecture of the overpass bridges (which are all unique). The only upside is the pleasant wooded surroundings and lack of trucks and semi-trailers (which are prohibited).
*ETA: They’ve reportedly been working on a plan in recent years to modernize the ramps and remove the stop signs without widening the highway.
Do you remember where? There were a bunch of those on the Merritt Parkway but I’m not sure if there are any left now.
Pretty much this.
There’s a sobering lesson every aspiring engineer learns - every “stupid” regulation and required safety precaution that people mock is the result of a death or serious injury.
Probably this. Though with his personal history of idiotic behavior, he doesn’t have any high ground from which to judge.
It was something like ten years or more ago. Someone pointed it out on street view. Seems to me it was on that short little stretch between Bridgeport and (Rye) – yeah, I know, that narrows it down (out here, that would be like 7 or 8 entrances). I suppose it could have been the Merrit Parkway, but I could have sworn it was 95.
Not much to add except to say that I had a similar experience about 20 years ago. I was in a random bookstore somewhere and I found copies of the first Tarzan book as well as a collection of Lovecraft short stories cheap. I had an inkling of their reputation going in of course, but when you’re actually sitting there reading the book it’s a different experience. I’ll admit I made it about 100 pages into Tarzan and had to stop. I never finished it.
In the Lovecraft collection I remember reading Dagon and Reanimator. I remember liking Dagon a lot but that’s essentially a a short story presented as a nightmare and it’s very abstract with it’s storytelling. Reanimator on the other hand is a fairly straightforward body horror type of story. And it has a lot of pseudo and junk racist science in it. I think I did read that whole story but I don’t remember much in the way of details.
And in a reversal of this, I do a double take every time I see a reference to a ships “black gang”, referring to the workers of the engine room who were liable to be covered in black dust and grime.
I used to wear a hat with a button on it that said “Doing my part to piss off the religious right”. I had plenty of comments on that button, all of them positive, and I was never afraid to wear it anywhere. Because the people who would be upset by it are precisely the people who don’t read.
And I’m a lot more shocked by old attitudes than by old vocabulary, in books. Like, of course Huck Finn uses the N-word, because everyone would have, in that time and place. But Jim is still a very sympathetic character, whom Huck admires and respects. On the other hand, I’ve read some modern authors who make it a point to pat themselves on the back and show off how enlightened they are, because they think that black people should only be isolated from polite society, rather than exterminated. They knew enough to use modern vocabulary, but they were still reprehensible.
I’m very familiar with the Merritt, having frequently taken it between Massachusetts and NJ. It’s pleasant enough and there are frequent rest stops. The gas prices are high compared to MA, and occasionally a truck doesn’t read the signs and blunders on. The REAL downside of the Merritt, though, is that an accident can block the two-lane road for MILES downstream, with no warning and few chances to get off.
Pepper Mill won’t take it any more. She prefers I-84 to I-684. Me, I like to go further, until I hit the Hudson, then go down the East side of the Hudson and cross at Bear Mountain, which is a very pretty ride.
In books and in life, too.
Most of my life the word “queer” was almost as bad as the n-word and absolutely not to be used. I remember the lecture I got from my father about it. It was insulting and demeaning to gay people. (We had a gay uncle in the family.) Lately the term seems to have been rehabilitated and come back into permissible use.
How about the word “gay” itself? It used to mean one thing then came to mean another.
There’s an Italian-ish deli in town and serves great sandwiches and has a salad they call the Dago Salad. My mother was from the East coast and to her that word was as bad as the n-word and never to be used. When I first went into that restaurant I couldn’t even bring myself to order the salad by name. I had to point to it on the menu. There is NOT a huge Italian population in San Antonio and I doubt if most people know how offensive that word is. I guess the owners thought it would be a bit of a joke-- don’t know what their reasoning was.
I don’t think it’s right that someone can get fired or have their career/life ruined because once upon a time they used a racial slur in their youth. Especially if the term was in common use at the time.