151–160 of 223 posts
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If you're wealthy enough $250 is just the price of smoking (especially for someone that can afford a 1st class seat). I wonder why they don't have escalating non-monetary punishments?
Jim Simons got so tired of paying these, he bought a private plane to save money. To say he was a prolific smoker is an understatement.
One interesting lesson from airships is about disruption and how people take old assumptions into new paradigms. Today we're used to being on plans for short periods of time. We get on, sit down, wait, and then arrive at our destination. Airships came about when long distance travel meant you were spending multiple days in a vehicle, either a train or boat. An airship was a place that was set up for you to spend a fe…
These places still exist, but you need to look for them. Here in Japan, some remote islands, you can travel overnight boat. I love those. There might be a speed boat or plane, but I love boarding the boat in the evening, everyone feels like having a party, sleeping in a bed and arriving fresh in the morning. (If you are in Tokyo, the nearest is Oshima Island). There is also slow rail travel, with pretty trains, sleep…
We live in France and often spend the summer visiting family in the north of England. For a family of four, it works out about the same price to take the Rotterdam to Hull night ferry (outside cabin, meals and all) as it would to go through Calais and spend the night in a hotel instead.
And then it’s 2 hours of driving instead of 8 at the end.
Even when plans take us south, we’ll often take a night ferry from Portsmouth instead of the tunnel, just because it’s a better experience for roughly the same price.
Truly a better time - today we worry about using Rust 'unsafe' too often. They had a smoking room on a hydrogen airship! /j
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Of course there were smoking and non-smoking sections on airplanes. The same air recirculated through the entire airplane, and the non-smoking section began the very next row after the smoking section.
Fun fact, the air quality on aeroplanes got worse after they banned smoking, because they could cut costs by re-circulating the same air for longer.
It’s really amazing just what extent people went to in order to smoke. Apparently people smoked on submarines for a while. And planes. And everywhere else. Smoking is just such a disease and it feels like only now are we kind of getting a handle on it.
One of the things that reminded me of how much a part of the culture it was, is when we visited the Computer History Museum. The SAGE system display had several operator consoles -- each with an ash tray and an automotive-type cigarette lighter in the panel.
When I was a kid, back eons ago, smoking was everywhere . People who didn't smoke had ashtrays for guests. Telling people to not smoke was simply not a thing. When I was about 16, some family friends put a small sign on their front door requesting people not smoke inside their house. I was shocked. I liked the idea, but I'd never seen that before, never even considered it. I recall wondering how many people would be…
Yeah, I'm just barely old enough to remember flying when you could smoke on planes. It was everywhere. The smell of stale cigarette smoke was in nearly every public space. This was in the 80s in the US, so smoking was already in decline, but the smell was still this constant background presence.
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Make it illegal. No rational person would through their life away just to smoke.
Feels like this may run into a no true scotsman but this is demonstrably false if you look at the number of marijuana smokers in countries where they impose severe penalties (up to life) on them
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Story time. Last summer I flew from ATL to SFO on a brand new Airbus. Pretty cool plane! Halfway across the count I had the obligatory restroom break. In the head, I noticed an ashtray. I was confused -- "smoking has been banned in planes doe decades. Why is there an ashtray here?" I flagged down a flight attendant and asked them. Their answer was that yes smoking is banned, and it's a $250 fine. But EVERY SINGLE TRI…
It's counterintuitive, but I've heard an explanation that the alternative - they decide to dispose their cigarette into the bin full of flammable paper waste - is much worse.
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I've lost count of the number of people who I've had to explain that, on long trips, you don't "stop to charge." You charge where you stop to poop.
I don’t dislike electric cars, but I don’t poop every 3 hours, and it doesn’t take 30 minutes to do so. When EVs can reliably (including charging infrastructure) do charging as fast as ICE refuels, with 300 miles/500 km between 20-80%, they will win with most people in the US and Canada. Otherwise, we just drive too far, too often. It’s not far off. But until then, it’s not truly a replacement for ICE. Yes, I really…
Clearly you don't eat enough fiber!
Catapult mail service
In the years immediately preceding Hindenburg (1928-1935), state of the art mail delivery service catapulted airplanes with mail while the ocean liner was still on sea.
Hindenburg made that unnecessary.