Sadly, that can happen, but fortunately, it seems to me, not often. I've been a mountain rescue volunteer for over 35 years and remember only two such incidents involving our team, both in the Columbia River Gorge.

The first was on the Washington side of the river. A young man was trying to get the right distance from his girl friend and another young woman. He was backing up, looking through the view finder and didn't notice that he was stepping into the air over a big drop. We were on our way when someone else got there and did the body recovery.

The second was above Multnomah Falls, a woman hiking noticed some nice camera gear on the trail and nobody around. Fortunately for us she was honest and rather than taking the gear checked and noticed a body below so she called it in and we did the body recovery. That was near a waterfall which almost certainly attracted the photographer to try to get a better view.

Rare at it appears, those incidents should provide a warning. No image is worth your life.

Air conditioning and television moved people indoors.

I'm sure the farmers and ranchers would object, gophers cause problems for them.

It is a common internet rumor that the AR-15 makes people unrecognizable. Almost never happens. I fired its military equivalent (M-16) many times in the army.

Soldiers need dog tags because if killed or incapacitated they may be found by someone who never met them before. Plus those dog tags have information like religion and, if I remember correctly, blood type.

Another use of dog tags in the Vietnam war, never went there but fellow soldiers told me that in one area where they worked with the Montagnards they better wear their dog tags all the time, especially at night in foxholes. And if they felt someone feeling their necks, freeze. Those people were great at night operations and would sneak up to a fox hole and feel for the dog tag chain. No chain they assumed the soldier was an enemy and cut his throat.

Where do you relocate them? I cannot think of anywhere that they would not be a problem. On the farm their burroughs would divert irrigation water and sometimes cause wash-outs.

Or a hazard to your hearing when someone (most likely female) screams so loudly that it damages your ears. :)

Back on the farm, the cats did a pretty good job of controlling the mice, but we'd supplement their help when we saw a gopher snake (bull snake) in the fields. We'd take that snake to the barn and it would eat its share of mice.

My mom didn't like mice, but for some reason she didn't want us to put snakes in the house.

I have to question that -95 claim. According to one site, the coldest temperature every recorded in the contiguous U.S. was -70, and the coldest in Alaska -80.

https://weather.com/safety/winter/news/2024-01-12-record-coldest-temperatures-in-united-states

My personal coldest was, as I remember, -35 back on the dairy farm in NW New Mexico. We would start the morning milking, then split the crew, half to the house to warm up and half to milk until we switched. Cold usually didn't much bother the cows but at that temperature hurt production. Usually we only went down to near zero but for some reason for a couple of years we got that kind of temperatures.

Yes, professional fund raisers can take an obscene cut. My search and rescue team used to use one but fired him and we are not doing quite well with some of our own fund raising.

[quote=Real Nikon Lover] the Red Cross would come to fires and charge the firefighters for refreshments and respit

That is not my experience with the Red Cross. As a search and rescue volunteer I've been on several missions where the RC showed up with refreshments. There was not even any way to pay or donate for the refreshments they provided us, much less a demand for payment.. Clearly the RC is not perfect, but I don't think they are as bad as you say.

Reminds me of the story of the farmer who, as hunting season approached, got some paint and wrote "cow" on his cows, "pig" on his hogs, etc. Made it through the season with none of his animals killed, but he did find 4 bullet holes in his John Deere tractor.

I was raised on the farm and remember the old "poppin' Johnny," the two cylinder engine where the sequence was cylinder one fire, cylinder two fire, cylinder one exhaust, cylinder two exhaust etc. without the greatest muffler. Two loud bangs followed by two not so loud bangs, BANG BANG bang bang. Drive one of those all day and you still heard it all night.

Of course I don't know about that particular SUV, but my Ram 1500 has a 12V outlet that remains hot all the time, no need to have the key on to charge something. I had a previous vehicle that offered that as an option which I selected by moving a fuse to a different site.

[quote=jerryc41]In the 1990s, they thought they could save money on paint. That didn't work out very well for customers. Lots of cars from that time period had their paint peel off.]

Reminds me of what co-worker told me about. A relative invented a great car wax back when they used enamel paint on cars. Unfortunately, about the time he got it on the market they switched to lacquer and his wax damaged lacquer. He bought a lot of paint jobs.

Back when I was in college I had a used pickup that developed a an intermittent starting problem. Mechanic said that the described starter ring (he called it a ring gear) had to be worn in one of the three places where it stopped. It kept damaging the gear on the starter and I got real good at replacing that gear. He ordered a new one which was much delayed in arrival because incompetence at the source. Then when the ring gear finally arrived, he tore into the vehicle and found that the existing ring gear was just fine. A previous owner had replaced the ring gear with one a bit smaller and compensated with a slightly larger starter gear. That worked for a while.

Till I got that fixed, I tried to park on a hill so I could coast and get the pickup started if necessary. I was glad to have a manual transmission.

Not really true with modern oil, especially if you can run full synthetic. It is amazing, much better than the old oils.

However I'm sure it is true that turning of the engine at stop lights will save gas. My wife's Subaru even does that automatically.