WTF-Beta

Cucumber

I remember them too.

Apple

@Daniel Not quite that bad.

No rule has actually been finalized. NHTSA reported to Congress in early 2026 that the system cannot currently measure blood alcohol content above 0.08%, the very thing it's meant to do, and NHTSA openly admitted there is no commercially available technology that can accurately and passively detect driver impairment.  
Even a 99.9%-accurate system would generate millions of false positives a year across the US fleet, which NHTSA flagged as a serious problem. 
Automakers typically get a multi-year compliance window once (if) a final rule is published, so even in the best case, "universal 2027" was never realistic. 
Consumer Reports directly addressed the viral version of this claim: "2027 model year cars are not going to have any mandatory technology that can determine if you're intoxicated, and there's no such thing as a government-controlled 'kill switch.'" 
It's also not a remote kill switch — the law doesn't authorize the government to shut your car down; any restriction would be decided entirely by the car's own onboard software, not a person flipping a switch somewhere. 
So: there's a real 2021 law aimed at this, but as of 2026 no finalized standard exists, the tech isn't ready, and no camera-plus-kill-switch mandate is landing on all model-year-2027 cars. Your friend's got the kernel of a real story wrapped in an exaggerated, socially-viral version of it.

@CHAS said:

A smoking section in a restaurant is much like a peeing section in a swimming pool.

Are you trying to tell us the whole restaurant is a smoking section??

@CHAS said:

When will the next one start? heh

Within 6 years. Maybe even this year. (Bond markets are already nervous)

But in 2032 or before Congress will have to change the law to cover social security shortfalls out of the general budget. If the dollar crash hasn’t happened by then it will certainly happen then.

Rate

I had something of a front row seat since at the time I was in charge of risk and valuation for the fixed income derivatives business at Credit Suisse. The single most memorial event that I can place myself is the run on Northern Rock since I saw it with my own eyes. People lined up in front of bank branches in the UK like it’s 1933 America.

In fact that was the first bank run in the UK since the 1860s.

The other major events I can’t tell you where I was when I experienced them. In many cases at work dealing with the aftermath.

Joint

Elbow

There’s a famous photo of Len Dawson smoking at halftime during Super Bowl 1 or 2. He was the fucking quarterback.

I remember those cheap pedestal ashtrays at our doctors office!

I also remember seeing audience members smoking on the Phil Donahue show in the 70s. This may have been before he went national (he started in Dayton and we lived in Ohio).

Sometimes a burst of exhaled smoke would go right in the way of the camera and they’d switch to another camera angle.

Robin

Cantor figures in my story as well. I visited them (actually their electronic trading subsidiary, eSpeed) on Wednesday 9/6. That’s how I knew the cell phone service didn’t work that high. The conference call I was to take at 11 involved them too, peripherally.

In one of those weird coincidences, I actually spoke to the guy about the 93 bombing of the building on that visit.

You see the twin towers were the only buildings I was aware of at that time that checked ID and printed out a temporary badge for you to use. It seemed really novel at the time. But since I wasn’t expecting it, it made me late to the meeting. (There was always a queue near the top of the hour)

The guy said he always expects a first time visitor to be late for that reason. That tight security got us talking about the 93 bombing. He said he was at Bankers Trust across the street and saw first responders jumping off helicopters onto the roof and thought (I can still hear him saying it) ‘whatever they’re paying those guys, it ain’t enough’.

Five days later he was dead from the next terrorist attack.

I was one of those people. The best was when you got upgraded. First class on domestic flights had three rows and the back one was smoking.

It’s so hard to imagine that now yet I lived through it.

Fun stuff.

I have a high school friend who’s been a flight attendant with United for 35 years or more. I’ll see her in October at our reunion.

I’ll repost what I posted on Facebook

Four of us from my firm - Christine McNulty, John Moran, Bill Cline, and myself- were registered at the Risk Waters Electronic Trading conference at Windows of the World that morning, the restaurant and event space on the top floor of the north tower. I had a last minute conference call scheduled at 11am with a prospective client. I considered doing the call from the Trade Center but I knew cell phone service was spotty up there, and I wasn’t sure how private the pay phones would be. So I decided to stay home until after the call. Bill was similarly saved by a schedule conflict. Christine and John, who had flown in from London for the event, arrived on time. They perished that day, as did every attendee who had arrived by 8:46.
We often hear the stories of people who worked in the trade center every day but were saved by some dentist appointment or a kid’s first day of kindergarten. When I hear these stories I think of Christine and John, who had the very opposite experience. They should have been thousands of miles away, but fate intervened the other way. Christine left behind a husband and a five year old daughter. John a wife and two small kids. May they rest in peace.

I think so. lol