Just Saying -- the soapbox thread

[Govmnt_Lacky]

I don't know why anyone would ship domestically with UPS. They are absolutely horrible with services, prices, etc. I would much rather ship USPS because, unlike UPS, they will deliver a package even when it arrives early.
UPS will let a package sit at either the origin or the destination sorting facility until the very last day. Did you pick 5 day ground? Well, if it takes 3 days to get to your nearest sorting facility then it will sit there for 2 days before it is delivered. Conversely, sometimes it will sit at the origin facility and they bet the odds that they can get it to you on time. (This is not just pedal stuff either. I deal with shipping every day for work)
I don't know how many times I have called UPS and asked them "Why has my shipment been sitting in XXXXX facilility for 2 days?"
That is why I ALWAYS select USPS Flat Rate when it is available. ANYWHERE in CONUS within 3 working days (and Saturday) up to 70 lbs.

[alanp]

I've noticed that with nearly every courier or postal service I've used.

Although usually, they let it sit in customs until the last moment they can manage. Lazy gits.

[gordo]

I've noticed that USPS seems to be stepping up their game lately (well barring the whole international flat fiasco).

I've had good luck with UPS and Fedex being either on schedule or ahead of it, but then again I don't do this on a regular basis.  I HAVE had business deliveries that looked like they tied it to the bumper of the truck and dragged it cross country before backing over it and handing it to us.

[EBRAddict]

UPS will use any excuse to delay a package. I once had them delay a ground package from Mouser (between TX and Atlanta) because of predicted storms in New England--storms that had not even started. I'm sure there was a legitimate logistical reason (ex. clearing out the backlog before the storms by diverting resources to that area) but it seemed ludicrous.

[alanp]

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/may/31/you-cannot-be-well-read-without-reading-women

Well.

Someone doesn't read sci-fi, at all, then.

Who is one of the legends of scifi-fantasy? Last name is McCaffrey, first name... starts with an A...

Anne! Anne McCaffrey!

But the fact remains that many men continue to be put off by a female name on a book cover,

If a female name puts a male reader off, then they can't be much into dragons, then. Dragons are awesome, and so is Pern.

[Willybomb]

Or Elizabeth Moon. Probably not as popular, but just as prolific.

[somnif]

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/may/31/you-cannot-be-well-read-without-reading-women

Well.

Someone doesn't read sci-fi, at all, then.

Who is one of the legends of scifi-fantasy? Last name is McCaffrey, first name... starts with an A...

Anne! Anne McCaffrey!

But the fact remains that many men continue to be put off by a female name on a book cover,

If a female name puts a male reader off, then they can't be much into dragons, then. Dragons are awesome, and so is Pern.

I find myself falling into this trap occasionally. I'm fond of cheap, fluffy, pulpy scifi/fantasy. I read like I'm watching saturday morning cartoons. One genre I'm fond of is the so called "Urban fantasy" subgenre. Wizard, fae, mythical creatures, etc in a modern-ish urban environment.

And, as a trend, if I pick up a book by a female author in that section of the bookstore, it is probably a crappy romance novel.

This isn't always true, obviously. One of my faves in the genre is Seanan McGuire, so its not like I will never read a lady penned tome. But if I'm just wandering the shelves at the store looking for something random to read (something I do at least once a week on average), I find myself more likely to pick up a book with a male name on the spine. Its a statistical thing I suppose.

Unfortunate, but that has been my experience.

(And yes I love McCaffrey and LeGuin and many others. Blame it on market saturation by people trying to cash in on that Twilight money.) 

[alanp]

http://www.arcworld.org/news.asp?pageID=842

My sister tipped me off to this. Pretty cunning!

[alanp]

If heights make you feel a bit ill, then the end of this one will give you fits. Not a job I'd want to do -- I wonder what the mortality rate was?

I laughed at Fred's comment that you wanted an older man holding the bottom of the ladder, since a young man might get distracted by a young lady in a short skirt. You'd need a very strong OCD streak for this -- no safety line, at all!

I can't help but suspect that Occupational Health and Safety would, collectively, only let this happen over their cooling corpses, these days.

[juansolo]

Fred was a national treasure. Loves old engineering and did a few programmes on it. Also built a pit head in his back garden, the local authority took a bit of exception to this:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqYWKAnlVGJeUrQsJ3Dc42-VOyOil_TS6

[gordo]

That video nearly made me sick to my stomach.  Not sure how anyone with balls that big can put on a pair of pants.

I guess we're all wired different but at least in America there are so many safety rules and regs that I'm surprised the iron workers union hasn't packed it in.  Those guys are fearless freebs as well.  Around Chicago when I still worked open decks (I have a relatively cushy data center gig now) I was famous for NOT getting within 15' of the edge of a deck over 2 stories.

[Willybomb]

(And yes I love McCaffrey and LeGuin and many others. Blame it on market saturation by people trying to cash in on that Twilight money.)

Check out ELizabeth Moon's Sheepfarmer's Daughter (and the rest of her stuff).

[alanp]

The Thai class trapped in that cave is awful

I had heard long before this article, that cave diving is one of the most dangerous sports in the world. One of the guys who literally wrote the book on the sport, died in a cave dive. Even the people who go in to recover your corpse are at risk (if not more, since they have to work the cadaver, which may be in a bad state, through the maze and out.)

When they get them out and recovered, the teacher is going to be asked some very hard questions. I have heard that they went in as a good luck tradition, and a treat for the boys, but doing this when you know that it's the rainy season is utter stupidity.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/thai-cave-rescue-after-relief-comes-race-to-beat-the-monsoons-ghktgq2wl

[Muadzin]

Doing reckless things seems to be a time honored tradition in those countries. Ferries that set out to see with way too many cars and people on board, trains and busses that have people clinging on for dear life on the outside, cars whose only real working part seems to be the car horn, shoddy construction of housing and public buildings, preferably close areas prone to earthquakes and flooding, they all seem to be favorites. And when something inevitably goes wrong everybody gets mad, and then they do it all over again.

As for cave diving being dangerous, it's probably part of the appeal to the thrillseekers. Occasionally someone dies as Murphy cannot be ignored forever, and then they go 'it's a sad thing, bad luck, he or she was so thorough, their time was up, equipment failure', and then its business as usual. Because human beings consistently underestimate risk and consistently overestimate their own skills. Says the guy who does sports climbing/bouldering once a week and has seen several people injure themselves jumping off the wall and landing badly. And still keeps doing it.

[EBRAddict]

Doing reckless things seems to be a time honored tradition in those countries. Ferries that set out to see with way too many cars and people on board, trains and busses that have people clinging on for dear life on the outside, cars whose only real working part seems to be the car horn, shoddy construction of housing and public buildings, preferably close areas prone to earthquakes and flooding, they all seem to be favorites. And when something inevitably goes wrong everybody gets mad, and then they do it all over again.

I would not extrapolate too much from this one incident onto an entire culture. There are lots of reasons for substandard facilities and dangerous behavior: grinding poverty, disease, fatalism at a cultural level, government corruption, lack of education, a low value of human life and low self-worth. I don't think it's willful recklessness.