2929: Good and Bad Ideas

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Good and Bad Ideas

Title text: While it seemed like a fun prank at the time, I realize my prank fire extinguishers full of leaded gasoline were a mistake.

Explanation

This is a scatter plot comparing how good an idea sounds to how good the idea is. For example, leaded gasoline sounded like a good idea due to its anti-knocking effects, but is a bad idea due to lead toxicity. Fake prank fire extinguishers both sound bad and are bad, as they can make a dangerous situation worse. Putting mold on infections sounds like a bad idea, but some molds, like ones containing penicillin, have helpful antibiotic effects.

The title text combines leaded gasoline and a fake prank fire extinguisher into something worse than either. The fire extinguisher is fake and releases flammable material onto the fire, and there is additional lead toxicity.

Table of the entries

Idea	What it means	How good it sounds	How good it actually is	Explanation
Leaded gasoline	Adding tetraethyl lead as an antiknocking agent to allow for increased performance	65%	-95%	Leaded gasoline was introduced in the early 1920s to allow higher pressures and temperatures in an engine without causing detonation (knocking), allowing for increased fuel efficiency and engine performance; it also works to prevent engine valve wear. In essence, it artificially raises the octane rating of the fuel, reducing the need for fuel refinement, thus reducing waste and/or expense. Lead, however, is both toxic and bioaccumulative, meaning that lead released into the air over decades built up to harmful levels in people (as well as other animals) and almost certainly contributed to a host of health issues. Some scientists even hypothesise that crime levels are influenced by lead exposure. (It should be noted that this only "[sounded] like a good idea" due to deliberate campaigns to obscure the known dangers).
Bloodletting	Releasing "bad blood" from the veins	-90%	-100%	You need (most of) your blood. Losing more than 15% of a person's total blood volume results in adverse effects. Bloodletting was performed as a medical procedure for at least 2000 years until the 19th century. The idea was to withdraw blood to balance the body's "humors". Despite this long history, the notion that bleeding someone is bad now seems like basic common sense, and it's now well-understood that blood-letting (outside of certain rare and specific cases) does no good, causes significant harm and quite certainly causes many deaths.
Asbestos	Mineral which does not burn, tolerates extremely high temperatures and forms small fibers. These qualities make it excellent for insulation and fire protection	90%	-80%	Asbestos was used extensively in ships and buildings throughout most of the 20th century. Unfortunately, the microscopic fibers that make up asbestos greatly increase the risk of lung disease and cancer when inhaled, causing its use to be banned in most countries.
Extension cords with prongs on both ends	allows easy connection between 2 female connectors	~0%	-80%	Prongs on both ends would make it easier to plug the extension cord in on either side. But once plugged into an outlet, the other end becomes a serious shock hazard, as seen in this Backyard Scientist video. Short circuits (both ends connected to outlets supplying power) would be much more likely, resulting in more sparks, fires and damage to wiring. Double-ended cords are also sometimes used as an especially dangerous way to feed power from a generator into an outlet, introducing a shock hazard to any utility workers attempting to restore power.
Stair kayaking	Riding down a flight of stairs in a kayak	-60%	-75%	Stair kayaking is a stunt where a person positions a kayak at the top of a flight of stairs and then, using their paddle to push off, rides the kayak down the stairs. This poses significant easily foreseeable risks of injury or death, as well as being very bad for the kayak, which is designed to ride on water, not stairs.[citation needed]
Fake prank fire extinguishers	Intentionally placing empty or otherwise non-functional fire extinguishers as a practical joke.	-100%	-85%	The idea of placing fake fire extinguishers as a prank, presumably so that a person who thinks they are grabbing a real fire extinguisher will instead find a decoy, sounds, and indeed would be, very dangerous and potentially life-threatening for many people. In the United States, (and presumably most countries), this would also be a felony in most, if not all, jurisdictions. This exact scenario was depicted in the 2001/Season 3 Christmas episode of Family Guy, where Brian failed to put out a fire because the fire extinguisher shot fake snakes instead, acting as further fuel to the fire. An example of a similar situation, although not intended as a prank, can be found here. The title text expands this idea by having the prank fire extinguishers filled with (leaded) gasoline. This is literally adding fuel to the fire.
Always saying what you think	...regardless of the feelings of others or other considerations	65%	-60%	Openness and honesty are seen as positive character traits in people. Taking it to the extreme of always telling people what you think has been espoused by some, but can lead to awkward, unpleasant or dangerous situations. It may harm your relationship with the other person if they don't like what you think, or they may reply without concern for your feelings or other considerations. Keeping negative thoughts to yourself or telling "white lies" can be considered a better alternative in some situations. Unrestrictively saying what you think to somebody in power (a boss, soldier, dictator, drunk) can negatively impact your earning potential, health or freedom, even if you have a point. Or else, on the offchance that your (first) thoughts are less correct, "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt."
Replying to spammers	Clicking on the "Reply" button from spam emails and writing (and sending) a reply (or worse, clicking on the links in these emails)	-50%	-50%	At best, you confirm your email address and identify yourself as someone likely to respond to such messages and so encourage the spammers to deluge you with more messages. At worst, the spammer may extract sensitive information about you, make you a victim of a scam or gain control of your computer.
Solar cars	Having solar panels on the car's surface (mostly hood and roof) for power generation	95%	-35%	Powering electric vehicles with solar panels seems like an excellent idea: it would provide power with no increased land use, and theoretically could allow a vehicle to operate indefinitely without being fueled or charged. However, such vehicles would require power storage (due to power requirements, weather conditions, shade from roadside features and nighttime driving), adding significant weight. Adding solar panels to a plug-in or hybrid vehicle would add cost, weight, manufacturing complexity and maintenance requirements. Solar panels on moving cars are less efficient than in stationary installations, where they can be aimed at the Sun, and subject to damage from both collisions and road debris; even without these problems, the size of automobiles relative to their power requirements would sharply limit the car's range (unless it was a normal electric vehicle with supplemental solar panels). Solar cars do exist (the World Solar Challenge is a competition for such cars), but as a practical form of transportation, the negatives likely outweigh the positives. See also 1924: Solar Panels.
Heelies	Heelys are shoes with an inline skate wheel built in the sole, at the heel.	25%	-40%	Heelys allow the wearer (usually children) to shift between normal walking and rolling like being on skates. This sounds like fun but has been suggested to be a potentially significant injury risk.
Prequels	A work of fiction (often a movie) telling the "story before the story" of another work.	75%	-15%	More of a good story sounds great on the surface, and audiences who are invested in a set of characters and/or a setting often love the idea of finding out what led up to certain events. But there are several pitfalls. Spin-offs of a popular property are often low-quality cash grabs. Prequels, specifically, are constrained by the fact that they have to lead to the story that's already been released, which can lead to contrived storytelling. There's less room for suspense, since the future of the storyline has already been established. There's a tendency to invent or fill in detailed backstories, which can undermine character arcs and/or destroy the mystery and nuance of certain characters. And, since they tend only to be made where the original is already well-received, regression to the mean tends to mean they are more likely than not to fail to live up to expectations. Prequels can be good, but there are a lot of ways they can go wrong.
Transitions® lenses	A brand name for photochromic lenses in glasses or contacts, which get darker (like sunglasses) in bright light.	30%	-20%	Photochromic lenses are clear lenses that darken when exposed to UV light, then turn clear again when the UV is removed. The advantage is that wearers of glasses don't need to have separate (prescription) sunglasses or contacts. However, the process is relatively slow (about a minute) so not so useful when there is a quick succession of shade and bright light, as in a forest or when driving. If used in a car, the windscreen filters out UV light to some degree, which prevents the glasses from darkening as required. Finally, the process is temperature dependent, so in hot weather the glasses don't become as dark, and in cold weather they might stay dark for too long. Additionally, the following should be considered. UV-conscious people protect their face against UV light, so the skin doesn't form wrinkles and ages slower. Sunscreen is difficult to apply around eyes without getting the substance on eyeballs (cosmetic substances should not get there[citation needed]). One of the reasons behind wearing sunglasses may be to protect skin around eyes from forming so called crow's feet. Under UV-filtering sunglasses, UV-activated transitions contact lenses will not darken defeating their purpose. At the same time transitions contacts are typically at least twice as expensive as the regular ones.
Cutting pizza in squares	Cutting (a presumably round) pizza in squares	-25%	-20%	Most people cut pizza into wedges and hold it by the crust. Cutting it into squares could allow for more pieces to be shared, if the resulting wedges would be too thin to be practical. However, pieces near the center will have no crust to hold it by, getting cheese and sauce all over your fingers. Cuts around the edge will probably leave smaller leftover scraps which are mostly crust. While hardly a disaster like the other items in its quadrant, square pizza pieces are just not very useful and rather inefficient. Cutting a rectangular pizza into squares might not suffer from the problems above, but, unless the pizza itself is square and cut only into four squares, some people will end up with a higher crust-to-topping ratio than others. Cutting a round pizza into squares is popular in Chicago and is sometimes called tavern-style or party-cut and some[who?] consider it the real Chicago style pizza rather than deep dish pizza.[dubious]
Project Orion	Study by the U.S. government looking into nuclear pulse propulsion for spacecraft.	-95%	-25%	Using repeated nuclear explosions to generate motion sounds bad for both the spacecraft and everything else, especially with a ground launch, but there are ways to address a lot of the concerns, so it isn't as bad as it sounds. Project Orion's theorized specific impulse and thrust would also be far higher than anything chemical rockets can accomplish. The efficiency of Project Orion is extremely low, however, and the ablation issues are extremely difficult to overcome. See also 2423: Project Orion.
Soup	Soup	~0%	~0%	Soup is probably one of the oldest foods created by prehistoric cooks. Many people enjoy it, though some consider many soups somewhat lacking as a meal on their own, or boring.
Combo washer dryers	A device that combines a washing machine and laundry dryer	80%	20%	Better at space efficiency, but worse at each task than separate devices and unable to do both tasks in parallel (useful when you have more than one batch of laundry).
Cutting sandwiches diagonally	Cutting sandwiches made with rectangular sliced bread diagonally	30%	20%	Generally regarded as the superior way to slice a sandwich, providing more aesthetically pleasing display of the contents, better support in the hand and fewer all-crust bites.
Diverging diamond interchanges	Road junction where the two (sets of) lanes cross over to switch sides (so if you normally drive on the right, now you drive on the left), then switch back to normal after the junction	-30%	15%	Highway engineers believe the shape improves safety and traffic flow through the interchange because switching to the other side facilitates merging to and from the other road in the junction. However, the shape appears to be insanity to an unfamiliar driver, who may assume that driver confusion would lead to increased accidents.
Toasting sandwiches	Making a sandwich first and then cooking it, as in a dedicated sandwich toaster, a toaster oven, frying pan or under a grill.	45%	50%	The grilled cheese sandwich is a familiar form to most people, and many other sandwiches are improved by toasting as a final step. Doing so makes the sandwich warm, while also making the bread crisp and crunchy, while often melting or softening the fillings, which provides contrasting textures that many find pleasing. Other sandwiches, such as the Western or club are prepared using toast. The Elvis is a specific case of a sandwich that normally wouldn't be toasted, but is improved by it - peanut butter, bacon, banana and jelly, with the assembly lightly fried.
Crumple zones	Areas of a car that are designed to deform in a controlled way in case of a crash.	-55%	55%	Most people's intuition would be that stronger cars are safer, and intending parts of a vehicle to collapse by design might seem crazy. But engineered crumple zones are designed to gradually absorb the kinetic energy in a vehicle collision and protect the passenger cabin. The result is that the occupants experience less intense deceleration and ideally without the damage significantly compressing the shell around them. This significantly reduces the danger of injury or death from higher speed crashes.
Sliced bread	Bread, sliced by the baker before packaging for sale	95%	65%	It's far more convenient for making sandwiches or toast, but unfortunately pre-sliced bread will go stale faster and some applications may be better off thicker or thinner than the slices provided. Sliced bread is often used as a comparator for how good something is, using the phrase 'the best thing since sliced bread'.
Pizza	Pizza - a dish made by arranging ingredients on thin dough and cooking it, usually cut radially	55%	75%	Pizza is a widely popular dish throughout much of the world, uncontroversial except certain toppings.
Eating citrus fruit while at sea	Having a supply of citrus fruit on long sea journeys, especially during the Age of Sail	~0%	75%	For a long time, scurvy was a danger to sailors, who generally subsisted on a monotonous diet of shelf-stable foods with low vitamin content while on long voyages. Most citrus fruits are rich in vitamin C, which prevents scurvy. Eating orange or lemons doesn't seem like a significant activity one way or the other, but it's an easy way to prevent a disease that causes serious ill-health and possibly a painful death.
Putting mold on infections	Seemingly a reference to the ancient practice of pressing moldy bread against infected wounds	-100%	+60%	While this sounds like a good way to get a fungal infection, with the correct mold this is a primitive way to obtain an antibiotic. Certain fungi naturally produce antibiotic substances, and this is where humans discovered penicillin.
Wheels on luggage	Some luggage bags have small wheels inset on their frame and a carrying handle.	100%	90%	A relatively simple fitting for rigid or semi-rigid luggage that substantially eases its transport over long distances on flat surfaces such as travel terminals.
Heat pumps	A technology that moves heat energy from a cold area to a warm area, most familiar as the technology that keeps a refrigerator cold. It can be used to heat a home interior in winter or cool it in summer.	55%	95%	Unlike traditional furnaces, heat pumps do not generate heat (beyond a small overhead). Instead, they move existing thermal energy from a coolable environment across to a warmable one. This allows a space to be heated with significantly less energy use than a furnace or resistance heater that generates heat directly from chemical or electrical energy. Because these units are usually operated by electricity, they can provide heating with renewable energy (potentially using thermal energy storage for load-shifting), reduce or eliminate the need for natural gas connections and prevent several risks that come with traditional furnaces (such a carbon monoxide leaks and fires). In addition, heat pumps can operate in the reverse direction as air conditioners, so a single unit can be designed to both heat and cool a building. It sounds like a good idea and works out better than expected in real life. According to MIT Technology review: Heat pumps today can reach 300% to 400% efficiency or even higher, meaning they’re putting out three to four times as much energy in the form of heat as they’re using in electricity. For a space heater, the theoretical maximum would be 100% efficiency, and the best models today reach around 95% efficiency. See also 2790: Heat Pump.
Laser eye surgery	Surgical techniques using lasers for precision cutting in the eyeball.	-60%	90%	In the popular imagination, lasers are often thought of as something used for destroying their target. Firing them into people's eyes, then, does not sound like a great idea. However. this technology has substantially improved the eyesight of millions of people worldwide by allowing the treatment of eye problems otherwise only corrected by lenses or entirely untreatable. Randall has previously commented on laser eye surgery, amongst other ideas both good and bad, in 1681: Laser Products.
Fecal transplants	Transfer of portions of the gut microbiome of a healthy person to the sterilized gut of an ill person.	-100%	95%	The gut microbiome is a collection of organisms that lives in our guts. It can influence our health. It is responsible for the last stages of digesting our food. It can also produce neurotransmitters that are carried by blood to our brain influencing our behavior, and play a role in disease immunity, among other systemic effects that are still not well understood. A healthy microbiome can be destroyed by bad eating habits, unhealthy lifestyles, infections or the use of antibiotics. Sometimes it may be beneficial to completely sterilize the gut and then take a sample of a healthy biome from another person. A sample is enough, as the organisms will multiply. As long as the patient eats correctly, the microbiome after transplant should develop correctly. It sounds bad because we tend to think of our feces as something gross, to be discarded, and other people's bacteria as infectious. It is called fecal transplant as our feces contain about 50% of gut bacteria, but nowadays the sample usually takes the form of a coated pill that is applied rectally.

Transcript

[Two axes with double arrows cross each other in the middle. At the end of each arrow, there are labels. Scattered over the chart are 28 entries. Below these entries are given for each of the four quadrants, plus three that are on the Y-axis. For each quadrant the entries are listed in reading order, top to bottom left to right.]

[X axis from left to right:]

Sounds like a good idea

Sounds like a bad idea

[Y axis from top to bottom:]

Actually a bad idea

Actually a good idea

[Top left quadrant (sounds like a good idea, actually a bad idea):]

Leaded gasoline

Asbestos

Always saying what you think

Solar cars

Heelies

Prequels

Transitions® lenses

[Top middle (actually a bad idea):]

Extension cords with prongs on both ends

[Top right quadrant (sounds like a bad idea, actually a bad idea):]

Bloodletting

Fake prank fire extinguishers

Stair kayaking

Replying to spammers

Cutting pizza in squares

Project Orion

[Center (neutral):]

Soup

[Bottom left quadrant (sounds like a good idea, actually a good idea):]

Combo washer dryers

Cutting sandwiches diagonally

Toasting sandwiches

Sliced bread

Pizza

Wheels on luggage

Heat pumps

[Bottom middle (actually a good idea):]

Eating citrus fruit while at sea

[Bottom right quadrant (sounds like a bad idea, actually a good idea):]

Diverging diamond interchanges

Crumple zones

Putting mold on infections

Laser eye surgery

Fecal transplants

Trivia

• A much leaner version of this comic appeared in the first "What If?" book, chapter "Weird (and Worrying) Questions from the What If? Inbox, #9".

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Discussion

Lots of bread/food in the "good" quadrant; I think Randall is hungry. 162.158.154.73 05:33, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

FYI bread -- all bread -- is actually toxic and harmful to us.... Currently, there are three ways this occurs:

- USDA organic standards permit the application of Round-Up (glyphosphate, an herbicide/weedkiller)

to 'organic' wheat -- after it has been harvested. Reason is so they can harvest while it is still green (rather than mature dried-out golden)... Then apply the weedkiller in order to kill & desiccate it... Which lets them faster turn-over, shorter crop cycles, more production per time.
. Unsurprisingly, things designed to kill life are bad for us. (causes cancer and nerve damage)

- secondly the manner of harvesting wheat and turning it into bread changed since the industrial revolution... I do not recall the specific detail but it is more inflammatory now.

- Third, alas heating a number of various foods above the boiling point of water leads to more drastic biochemical changes in the molecules... ... This includes nuts/seeds, meat, & grains. see california p65 re: bread. . causes cancer. . trivia: anthropologists & medical doctors several hundred years ago visiting the americas found that nomadic forager/gatherer tribes were usually in better health, lived longer, & had fewer incidents of tumors (post-mortem autopsies, even in those days) compared to nations or tribes with a history (even pre-euro-contact) of sedentary/agrarian/farming communities. guess this is due to less diversity in diet, incl greens, less exercise, but also the rise in cultivated grains or cereals like maize. still better than the hellhole we are in today... 172.71.151.96 20:10, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

Soup always seems like a very good idea to me. I guess I like soup. --172.69.79.182 07:15, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

I remember something like this in what if. SectorCorruptor 07:21, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

The title immediately reminded me on the Animaniacs shorts "Good Idea / Bad Idea" Elektrizikekswerk (talk) 07:33, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

Does anybody know why solar cars and transitions lenses are actually a bad idea? 172.70.160.173 09:11, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

Transitions lenses are misplaced. The only caveat is that if you like outdoor photography (landscapes, wildlife, etc.) you should get grey lenses rather than brown ones, because the brown ones make a blue sky seem overcast. Pjt33 (talk) 09:22, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

The precise opposite is true. Grey lenses make all things - blue sky included - look greyer, as is perhaps unsurprising. Brown tints involve a degree of orange, which means the overall impression is of a "warmer" colour pallette, rather than simply a duller one. There is a reason that "grey skies" and "overcast" mean exactly the same thing - an overcast sky is a grey tinted filter. Yorkshire Pudding (talk) 09:48, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

But perceived colour isn't the same as the actual colour hitting the retina: the brain corrects it. A blue sky filtered through a grey lens is still perceived as blue, but I find that a blue sky filtered through a brown lens appears grey. This is from personal experience: I switched from grey Transitions to brown ones because the frame that I liked was a brassy colour, and I regretted it when I next went out for bird photography. 188.114.111.152 09:22, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

I think the Transition lens issue is primarily that the bright light that can turn them dark need not be heading into the eye. With the Sun (say) off at an angle, it could be 'reacting' your lenses to dark needlesly, and reducing your ability to discern the things in front of you (which may be in shadow), working against the basic ability of the eye to adjust itself as per observed illumination.

Conversely, a small bright light would not sufficiently darken the lenses but be still damaging to the spot(s) it falls upon in your retina (or do the "whole lens go dark" thing and still be too bright even as you can't see anything else beyond it). This might also be combined with the general secondary problem of potentially all regular sunglasses/goggles, that aren't industrial-grade or specific solar-specs, in that it might make it look safe to stare at bright things/skies through them but you cannot tell how much UV/etc is also being filtered out (some brands do have notable UV protection, but you really have to trust their claims/certifications – unless you have your own testing kit and knowledge of how much is good/bad anyway).

I'd add that, but it needs a sharper explanation than I just gave. I'd like to make what's already there snappier, before that, plus correct the numerous typos and funny formatting (and lack of useful wikilinks), but will probably leave that to others with the time. 172.71.242.204 10:08, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

I already added it but someone removed it so I had to restore it. Feel free to rewrite it more concisely, but if I ever see anyone remove, I will find them and break their arm.

I personally tried wearing Transitions. They don't make much sense once you actually realize why people wear sunglasses these days. Significant number of people wear sunglasses not just because it's too bright outside, but to protect their skin from aging. They apply sunscreen on their face, neck, and head. However, the area around eyes is hard to apply the cosmetic products around without getting them on your eyeballs. And that's why some people wear these huge sunglasses: they don't want to get crow's feet in their 30's. Transitions activate only under direct sunlight with strong UV rays, so they will never activate if worn like that. Obviously they can't protect even your sclera.

Additionally, the effect isn't that pronounced. The fact that they activate gradually makes it entirely unnoticeable to your eyesight. I had to check in the mirror to see if they even work or not. Transitions cost at least twice as much as regular contacts. Add the fact that people don't go outside that often these days. So why bother paying more? Again, once you start using them, you quickly realize that Transitions aren't a gamechanger but a more expensive product with minor (if any) benefits.

Consider also that even the regular contacts have a side effect of UV rays protection. It's not intentional but a side effect. They don't darken under UV rays, it's just that the material acts like that.

Once I saw the comic, it strongly resonated with my own experience. Transitions sounded incredible when described as a product, and I stocked up on them. Once I started using them, I quickly realized the truth.--172.68.243.80 07:58, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

The reason why you want UV protection is still not relevant for explaining why it sounds better than it actually is. I removed it again. Elektrizikekswerk (talk) 08:48, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

Shove your opinion up your ass. --162.158.134.22 14:27, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

Just as a note while we're here: "fecal transplant" is one of the most spectacular branding failures in the history of medical science, in my opinion. I mean, don't put the word "fecal" in anything you want people to feel positively about. And "microbiome transplant" is sitting right there, ready to serve.108.162.242.37 10:44, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

Double plug cords are VERY MUCH a bad idea. Used mostly to plug generators into an outlet to power a house, it tends to harm people working on the power lines who were not expecting them to be charged when the power was out. The statement about them being hard to use, is quite the understatement. OSHA, written in blood. 172.70.115.103

How can soup be bland? There are bland soups, spicy soups, sweet soups, savory soups ... you can't call an entire very broad category of food "bland" like that. It makes no sense.Nitpicking (talk) 11:46, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

I think they may have meant bland as in boring, not tasteless. I'll tweak it. Barmar (talk) 16:20, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

Citation format needed. (heelies) 172.70.178.103 (talk) 12:57, 7 May 2024 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Summary: (I don't know how to format correctly.) - no, you don't...

For a link to an external URL, writting [the_url] will give you a "linked number", but a better format is using [the_url text to replace] (with a space betwixt the URL and the text that will link to it. e.g. a link to google from [https://google.com a link to google].

There are full on citation/reference methods, but mostly I wouldn't bother with <cite> and <ref> tags at all.

Internal links, with [[]]s, and template-based ones, with {{}}s (e.g. the nicely-linking shortcut to wikipedia pages), use a pipe (the "|") between the sections. But you should be able to work that out by looking at what is already in the edit-source.

If in doubt, Preview your intended change and see if it looks right. I'll let you correct your contribution. Or whoever else wants to shake up the whole article, as it has multiple problems from spelling mistakes to inconsistent style to repeating information and it needs a lot of rationalising that I can't even think of doing right now. 172.69.195.113 14:09, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

I didn't realize we actually have no citation templates. Quite a few pages have the actual citation needed template but not many of them ever get those citations. I think a lot of citations get put in just as external links. I probably should've done that but I was like oh I know how to do this from my small amount of Wikipedia editing, I'll just use the cite web template... oh we don't have that. So rather than just do an ad-hoc link I created the citation in my Wikipedia sandbox then manually recreated the formatting. But now it feels weird and out of character for this wiki so maybe someone should just change it to a link. idk, maybe being inconstant is exactly what is in-character for this wiki. Brycemw (talk) 15:10, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

I changed it to a link. I've seen the occasional citations section in this wiki, iirc, but we general just do links :) Elektrizikekswerk (talk) 07:02, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

As a Columbus native, I am HIGHLY offended by this anti–rectangular pizza slice speech. Rectangular pizza is by far the BEST shape that a pizza can be. (I'm not really offended, but I really do think rectangular pizza is superior.) 108.162.216.229 14:04, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

Sicilian pizza should be square and cut into square slices, Neapolitan pizza should be round and cut into sectors. The extra thickness of Sicilian means you don't eat it by holding the crust and folding, so the shape of the slices is less critical. But this does mean that the middle slices have no crust around the edges. Barmar (talk) 16:25, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

Crimes! --162.158.95.11 21:19, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

The pizzas at the Maryland USA-based Ledo Pizza chain are all square or rectangular, and cut into a grid of smaller squares. There is plenty of demand for non-round pizza to support their 125 locations in nine states and DC. These Are Not The Comments You Are Looking For (talk) 02:54, 12 May 2024 (UTC)

Leaded gasoline isn't to reduce *noise*. The noise is a symptom of detonation (aka knock), which is the real problem. Knock is caused by pressures and temperatures high enough and for long enough to detonate the fuel/air mixture (as opposed to the deflagration initiated by the spark plug at a set time), and can result in engine damage. Leaded gasoline (through complicated chemistry) increases the pressure/temperature required to get that detonation, and thus allows the engine to be designed to run at higher temperatures and compression ratios, which is where the efficiency improvements come from. 172.70.39.41 14:38, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

Maybe, cross-reference "Sliced bread" to 1065:_Shoes and 1885:_Ensemble_Model (with sliced bread in both comic and title-text).

I think that the phrase "best thing since a sliced bread" refers to sliced bread in general (as opposed to eating the bread directly or tearing pieces of it) and not specifically bread pre-sliced before buying.

Also, heat pumps, whole not DESIGNED to heat by itself, actually have a limit for how big difference in temperature they can operate in. Outside this limit, they work quite badly and only by heating by itself.

Finally, soup is GREAT idea. -- Hkmaly (talk) 18:49, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, why is soup in the middle? Psychoticpotato (talk) 20:45, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

Did some grammar editing. Nothing too drastic, just fixing some too-lengthy phrases and misspelled words. Psychoticpotato (talk) 20:59, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

Extension cords with prongs at both ends are actually a even worse than what's currently on this wiki. There's a list of other issues here, which I'm not sure how well I can sum up within a reasonable amount of space. Stuff like feeding power back into the electrical grid putting electricians working on the grid at risk, or dealing with the exhaust from the household generators the cables usually come with. There's all sorts of reasons why major stores refused to manufacture or sell these, but for some reason they've become shockingly common. NickNackGus (talk) 02:09, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

"...they've become shockingly common." Good pun. OR That would have been a good pun, had it been intended. 172.70.160.166 10:50, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

No Pun Intended (does that hotlink?) Edit: cool, it does. Psychoticpotato (talk) 12:37, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

Photochromic lenses are also bad for night vision: “...the optical transmission of the lenses was no more than 80% efficient and, taking into account all of the other known factors, was probably less at the time of the accident. This compares to 94.7% and 99.4% optical transmittance of ordinary uncoated and coated lenses, respectively.” – At least that was the conclusion of UK's Marine Accident Investigation Branch for a particular set of glasses worn by the bridge lookout. 162.158.95.9 12:52, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

You cannot get a fungal infection from mold. SDSpivey (talk) 13:59, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

Project Orion is also the production codename for an upcoming Cyberpunk 2077 sequel. For a moment there I was thinking "Randall really didn't like that game, huh?" 172.70.54.21 16:11, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

most other charts like this have each one labelled with percentages, not with this weird +- thing. I think that would be MUCH better 172.69.64.147 23:14, 8 May 2024 (UTC)Bumpf

When I would have the time, I had been planning to make it "wikitable sortable" (adding a reasonable numeric sort key in cell-meta, at least, which needs the work; and that is hard to do properly before I get back to desktop browsing myself), but not sure if that would be appreciated or not by the original table-compiler/editors. 172.70.160.172 04:29, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

meh... I have preferred the previous version with +/- over percentages. It's (imo) much harder to parse (for a human) now. It also makes implications about the scale of the chart. Elektrizikekswerk (talk) 10:02, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

As the "percentages for sorting purposes" editor, above and who then did that, I actually somewhat agree.

• I used percentages just as an output for my positional calculation, really doesn't 'read' well.
• I could have used raw pixel-distances, I suppose. There was also no reason to round to 5% bounds except that it was a choice similar to "how many decimal places to use" that I might otherwise have chosen.
• The editor who took my sort-value percentages and put them in the cell itself could have just removed the sort-value 'meta' to the cell (as it was, they made at least one transcription error, now corrected), and saved "override the sort of this percentage-themed text by this separate percentage value".
  • They maybe should have kept the explicit plus, as well as the minus. Although "X% (good/bad) would have been better.
• They give the midpoint of sometimes tall 'label boxes' and often wide ones, so huge error-bars (noting the ±5%ish ones where they probably are intended as centrally placed), so – though good for background sorting – I don't think they're really explanatory enough.
• If I'd have known they'd be used visually, I'd have rescaled to not have 105%, which is an artefact of the graph, and my choice to use the axial arrow-tips as 'standard' for 100% (because it was pretty consistent, pixels left/right and up/down from the crossing origin).

I could just convert the calculated values back into strings of +s/-s (or 0, neutral), more correct than what was originally there. But I'm wondering if maybe wording as "(Somewhat / / Very / Extremely) (Good / Bad)", plus some term for "Neutral" would be best. Loose and vague terms, but they're probably loosely and vaguely positioned. More for aesthetics than any hard and fast positioning, with no hint that they might (or should) overlap like subsets of 'true data' might. Keeping the sort-data meta-tagged, of course, because the 'proper' sorting is still a useful property (though I may give that the raw pixel offsets I must still have saved somewhere, chuck away the 'artificial' percentages altogether). 141.101.99.74 14:59, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

I personally would put "toasted sandwiches" WAY higher, way into the "bad idea" sector. I like SOFT bread, not scratch-my-mouth-up bread, :) But that's a matter of personal taste. Similar with soup, MUCH higher, I find as a liquid it completely fails as food, not satisfying hunger at all. Like if I have enough of it I might run out of room for more liquid, but be just as hungry. I always find it a waste of eating effort. :) And WHY is there an "actual citation needed" on club sandwiches needing diagonal cuts??? That can only be a gag "citation needed"! I've never even had a club sandwich (they seem to always have tomatoes and the blandest looking chicken I've ever seen, and I hate tomatoes), and I'm no chef, and even I know how you plate a club sandwich! Where would anyone even FIND a citation for this? It's just a part of how to make them! And funny, only other place I heard of "fecal transplant" was when I Googled an issue I was diagnosed with and found that was an actual treatment if my issue was way more severe! Sounded creepy, harvesting shit from one person then having a stranger's shit put inside me, LOL! But that was a virus going around the hospital where I was staying, nothing about bad eating habits. NiceGuy1 (talk) 05:31, 11 May 2024 (UTC)

I removed the club sandwich from that part of the table. The "actual citation needed" was for the "required as it's needed because" part. A club sandwich is a club sandwich regardless of how it's cut. Note that "soup" also includes stews, which can be really filling. Elektrizikekswerk (talk) 10:11, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

WRT Solar cars, There is also a power density problem. Solar radiation is about 1000 W/sq-meter, and "good" solar cells are about 20% efficient. That means that a typical car at about 4m*2m, covered with solar cells, would develop a maximum of about 1600W of power. Electric cars average about 320Wh per mile, so sitting 6H in full (ideal) sun would allow you to drive about 30 miles. (A typical home charger is about 7200W) 06:32, 11 May 2024

On Diverging Diamond Interchanges, I read a paper recently comparing the crash cost statistics of DDIs against roundabouts. The latter was identified to be better by 41%, showing roundabouts are more economical and suggesting that they are a safer junction type. This may be why DDIs are only + and not ++. I can't find the article as I'm on my phone right now, but hopefully I've included enough detail that someone with access to a Research Account can find and include if deemed appropriate. 172.71.178.94 18:16, 11 May 2024 (UTC)

Other than the obvious shock hazard, double-plug cords also give the ability to plug into two outlets that are not on the same phase/leg of the power supply (in North American 240V split-phase supply or any location supplied with 3-phase power), causing a short from phase to phase.172.70.80.77 15:52, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

Morbid fact: You can see some trend between leaded gasoline and crime on google trends, although it'll get better in a few years.162.158.159.12 21:20, 23 May 2024 (UTC)