Omnibus Stupid MFers in the news thread (Part 2)

I think some people just only feel happy if they’re right close to another vehicle. Must Have Company, Don’t Want To Feel Alone Out Here??

I don’t understand it, either – I feel much happier on the road if there’s a whole lot of space around me – but it’s the only explanation I can come up with for some people’s behavior.

– I was once on a winding hilly country road when I came around a curve to see several deer running across the road right in front of me. I slammed on my brakes – to the accompaniment moments later of squealing brakes behind me as two cars much too close together swerved around the road as they tried, successfully, to avoid hitting either me or each other.

After which, they went right back to tailgating me (and each other). I pulled over on the shoulder, and they passed me – one of them rolling down his window to ask whether I was all right. I just waved him on, not thinking quite fast enough to say ‘I’ll be a whole lot better once you’re off my tail. This road might have more deer on it up ahead!’

Even if they hadn’t seen the deer – would you continue to tailgate a vehicle that had just slammed its brakes on right in front of you?

They’re drafting to save gas.

/s

Muscles that a bird uses a lot are dark meat. Muscles that a bird uses very little are light meat. Breasts and wings are flight muscles, and chickens and turkeys aren’t much of fliers, so those are light meat on the most commonly eaten fowl. But ducks, for instance, use their flight muscles a lot, so everything’s dark meat on a duck.

From what I can tell, in my area, driving is a social behavior. We have often referred to clusters of vehicles on the freeway as “wolfpacks”. If you are going a different speed from most everyone else (a little slower or a little faster), you will encounter wolfpacks and then fairly open spaces repeatedly on non-urban freeway stretches. I prefer to take the alternate routes when possible, because social/competitive driving is not my thing.

In high school, there was a class called Youth And The Law. (I think it was a required class.) It was taught by a retired deputy or something. Anyway, he talked about ‘packet drivers’, describing drivers’ habit of grouping together into ‘packets’ on the freeway. He noted that this is unsafe. For one thing, drivers on the left do not move over to allow faster drivers to pass – which just increases the size of the packets and the number of cars in close proximity to each other. Decades on, I still call them ‘packet drivers’

Yeah, I recognize that “packs of cars on the limited-access road” phenomenon. They’re usually going a bit faster than I am – maybe they’re hanging together partly because they think it reduces the risk of a ticket? because I’m already usually a bit over the limit on that sort of road.

I let them pass me, slowing down a bit while they’re doing it (often I have to slow down to keep anything remotely resembling safe distance, as some will usually cut in right in front of me); and then luxuriate in having space around me until the next pack comes along. In most of the areas I drive in it’ll be a while.

It occurs to me that they’ve sometimes got space between them which would be fine if they were going 25 MPH instead of 75 MPH. Maybe these are people who do most of their driving in city traffic, which often doesn’t even allow enough space for 25 because somebody will just pull in front of you if you try to keep it, and they’re so used to that spacing it doesn’t occur to them to leave more distance at higher speeds?

For me, they’re always going slower.

Maybe, but…

That’s a good hypothesis.

Reminds me of my favorite driving story told by an old coworker. It’s snowy and miserable, he’s tooling along on a fairly major multi lane road, going slow with the bad weather. A guy zips right past him, continues for a bit then loses it, the car spins a couple of times and stops right near a bridge abutment, not hitting anything, luckily. Coworker continues past and sees the guy white knuckle grip and scared to death in his car.

Two minutes later, the guy is zipping right past him again.

I see this camping as well. You could be the only campers in a campground and the next person to show up with inevitably take a spot next to you. WTF?!

They figure you musta got the best spot, so the one next to you must be the next best.

Or get over and then slow to the same speed. Get that 40 miles each way back and forth to work every day.

At KFC wings are Schrodinger’s meat, light or dark, depending. Long before Buffalo wings were a big deal, there I’d order a two-piece light meal and get a breast and a wing. Not liking the wing much (still don’t), the next time I ordered the two-piece dark meal, and got a thigh and a wing.

I’ve seen the same except that after the 2nd zip-past he wound up smacking both the front and rear of his car into the guardrail.

I’ve never had s-called boneless wings. Ever since I had my gallbladder out I can’t eat regular wings, so maybe these could be an adequate replacement?

If you can eat chicken nuggets you will probably be fine. As others said they’re usually just big chicken nuggets.

I’m curious why not having a gallbladder makes @Alessan unable to eat chicken wings but not other chicken parts.

More grease/fat in an actual wing vs something as processed as a chicken nugget?

That may be it.

I was also thinking that the wing meat has a tendency to be kind of stringy and chewy, while other pieces might be easier to digest.

But given the gallbladder’s role in breaking down fats, I assume you’re more correct.

Your gallbladder meters out the digestive enzymes for fat. Without it, your digestive tract has a drip directly from your liver. If you eat something fatty, there won’t be enough enzymes travelling with your meal and it will go through much faster.

On the up side, your body will adjust, but mine took more than a decade.

And, yes, the fat in a chicken is mostly just under the skin. Because the wings have a high skin to meat ratio, they’re fattier than other portions.