Let's Play Date, Marry, Kill...with Roundabouts.

What are your thoughts as Indiana starts adopting these modern traffic control measures (Europe has been doing them since...forever)?

Most people I talk to either love or hate these intersections. For some reason, I can't find people who are indifferent to them very often.

According to the Carmel's city webpage: "Carmel is internationally known for its roundabout network. Since the late 1990’s Carmel has been building and replacing signalized intersections with roundabouts. Carmel now has more than 150 roundabouts, more than any other city in the United States."

"The number of injury accidents in Carmel have reduced by about 80 percent and the number of accidents overall by about 40 percent."

https://www.carmel.in.gov/government/departments-services/engineering/roundabouts#:~:text=Carmel%20is%20internationally%20known%20for,city%20in%20the%20United%20States.

General PROs / CONs

• Up to a 90 percent reduction in fatalities
• 76 percent reduction in injury crashes
• 30-40 percent reduction in pedestrian crashes
• Reduces the severity of crashes
• Keeps pedestrians safer
• Roundabouts reduce the number of potential accident points within an intersection, 75 percent fewer conflict points than four-way intersections
• No signal equipment to install and repair, savings estimated at an average of $5,000 per year in electricity and maintenance costs
• Service life of a roundabout is 25 years (vs. the 10-year service life of signal equipment)
• Reduces pollution and fuel use
• 30-50 percent increase in traffic capacity, improves traffic flow for intersections that handle a high number of left turns, reduces need for turn lanes
• While roundabouts can handle moderate to heavy traffic volumes more efficiently than traditional intersections, they may experience congestion and delays during periods of extremely high traffic volumes or if not designed properly for the anticipated traffic flow
• Pedestrians and cyclists may face challenges navigating roundabouts, particularly multi-lane roundabouts with higher traffic volumes. Proper design considerations, such as providing safe crossing points, adequate sight lines, and dedicated pedestrian/cyclist facilities, are crucial to ensure their safety.
• Drivers unfamiliar with roundabouts may initially experience confusion or hesitation when navigating them, potentially leading to increased risks or delays until they become accustomed to the traffic patterns.
• Roundabouts generally require a larger footprint and more land area

https://www.in.gov/indot/traffic-engineering/roundabouts/#:~:text=Up%20to%20a%2090%20percent,points%20than%20four%2Dway%20intersections (CONs came from general searching, LLM compilation)

Indianapolis and the surrounding suburbs are implementing them more frequently now, how about your city?

Did you know that traffic circles are different from roundabouts? PA has a little comparison chart that was interesting (If you're into that sort of thing): https://www.penndot.pa.gov/PennDOTWay/pages/Article.aspx?post=24

The actor, who just celebrated his 93rd birthday on March 22, shared his excitement about experiencing the once-in-a-lifetime event. When asked about what to expect from him during the celebration, he said “darkness” with laughter.

“The next one over Indiana will be like a hundred years from now," he said. "We’ll all be dead. I might not be, but you guys are going to be dead the next time. It’s an event, but when you ponder the mystery - if you ponder what’s taking place in the heavens - it’s gargantuan.”

...

William Shatner, known for his iconic role as Captain William T. Kirk in the classic television series "Star Trek," is headed to Bloomington to take part in Indiana University’s “Hoosier Cosmic Celebration.”

...

The pace of violations, recorded since the city restricted turns at 97 downtown intersections, amounts to an average of about seven tickets per month.

Two pedestrian advocates told Mirror Indy they would like to see more enforcement, but city officials said the number of tickets issued is only one metric — and not the most indicative of success when it comes to pedestrian safety measures.

“Their desired effect was not to increase (the) number of tickets issued by IMPD. It was to ensure the safety of pedestrians and bicyclists in the Mile Square,” Vop Osili, the Democratic president of Indianapolis City-County Council, said in an emailed statement to Mirror Indy.

...

The policy change followed a study from the Indianapolis Department of Public Works that looked at a five-year history of pedestrian-related crashes in the downtown area. It found that 57% of were the result of vehicles failing to yield to pedestrians at intersections with traffic signals.

Data also showed that downtown pedestrians were more than twice as likely to be involved in a crash compared to pedestrians in the rest of Marion County.

...

Freeman, who was a city-county councilor from 2010 to 2016, argued that the policy would “create confusion and congestion” and “won’t stop distracted, reckless or aggressive driving.”

INDIANAPOLIS — Senator and Indiana Gubernatorial candidate Mike Braun reportedly missed a spending package vote early Saturday morning.

Braun’s officials also reported that he had a seat on a 9:35 p.m. flight to Washington D.C. The team added that Braun decided to skip the flight and stay in Indiana because no votes were scheduled at the time.

I like this bean. It's smooth, and I usually like roasts with chocolate notes.

I'm also cheap. This is around .50 cents US per once.

Do you have a favorite bean that's medium/smooth, and also in the .50 range that can be ordered online?

My local roasters are all around a dollar per once and I haven't found anything that was so good, I couldn't go back to this for half the cost, so I do them as a special occasion.

Not sure if this was already posted.

The article describes the referenced court case, and the artist's views and intentions.

Personally, I both loved and hated the idea at first. The more I think about it, the more I find it valuable in some way.

Indiana just passed legislation to require schools to ban phones.

They permit them for health reasons, emergencies, when part of lesson, and when part of a formal plan.

I personally don't like the idea of schools requiring locking them up. What would you do in that emergency they mentioned?

Why should kids not be able to use them at lunch?

If you want to control your kid's phone time, there's already apps for that.

Edit: additional comment from a teacher: she said the phone restrictions aren't going to be as effective as one would think with all the kids having watches with data plans. Dude...

For anyone interested in compliance and hardening, here's some links to the DOD/US GOV standards for information systems. This information is available to the public.

Security Technical Implementation Guides (STIGs)

This is a document that has recommended settings, methods, etc to make a product the most secure it can reasonably be. STIGs break things or turn off features people might be accustomed to. You have to do testing and figure out how to either make something work with STIG settings applied, or do exceptions. These are similar to Internet Security (CIS) Benchmarks.

STIG Viewer

The STIG viewer is a Java app that basically makes the list into a checklist where you can track applying settings.

SCAP

Going farther with automation, Security Content Automation Protocol (SCAP) can be used to conduct automated checked against systems to determine compliance with a setting. Install the SCAP tool, load the automated checks into it, and then take the results from SCAP tool and import them into the STIG viewer. It will knock out anything that could be checked automatically. The remaining checks would be things that are manually checked.

Compare

Here's a good article that compares STIGs and CIS benchmarks: https://nira.com/stig-vs-cis/#:~:text=The%20Center%20for%20Internet%20Security%20offers%20a%20tool%20similar%20to,robust%20than%20the%20STIG%20tool.

Download STIGs for products: https://public.cyber.mil/stigs/downloads/

STIG Viewer: https://public.cyber.mil/stigs/srg-stig-tools/

Security Content Automation Protocol (SCAP) content: https://public.cyber.mil/stigs/scap/

https://public.cyber.mil/stigs/supplemental-automation-content/

For anyone who's interested in pen. testing, there's a business from MN that does a podcast where the host and business owner, Brian, talks about doing tests, tells stories, and is generally goofy.

Brian made a podcast intro song, kinda funny. He talks about testing successes, tips for security, personal things, and running the business. They do live streaming where they sometimes get into the weeds and teach some techniques.

(I am not affiliated with 7 Minute Security, just enjoy the podcast/learning)

Looks like Indiana is getting happy hour back.

Article says senators tried to kill carry out drink options.

Indiana allowed carry out drinks during COVID to help businesses during lockdown.

• Did you experience, or come across data that supports the claim that carry out will lead to increasing drunk driving?

• How do you feel about carry out?

• How do you feel about happy hour offerings and encouragement of more or just cheaper alcohol consumption?

For anyone who's interested in IDS, this is a product that's open source, with support.

It can be run as a single standalone, but it's meant to be run tiered, where you can deploy sensors doing packet capture, analysis, which gets sent to a central manager, and then can be retained in search nodes.

It's incredibly powerful, just have to be willing to learn how to tune it.

https://docs.securityonion.net/en/2.4/ https://blog.securityonion.net/

I am not affiliated with the product, just a user of it. I like it.

The article discusses business successes by entrepreneurs, and outlines the realities of obtaining financing for these businesses.

Black-owned businesses in the U.S. are major contributors to the economy, generating $206 billion in annual revenue and supporting 3.56 million U.S. jobs. Many of these businesses are federal contractors and many more are in a good position to become contractors.

Black entrepreneurs apply for business loans at a higher rate, yet we are receiving funding at a much lower rate compared to white entrepreneurs. Studies show that Black entrepreneurs are three times more likely than white entrepreneurs to report that access to financial capital negatively impacts their profits.

Discussion:

Businesses and government are making efforts to roll back DEI, which naturally leaves people imagining we might lose gains made for minorities and opportunity.

Large efforts have been over the years to legislate fairness by making discrimination illegal (effectiveness questionable since we felt like DEI was needed), then tried to legislate including people based on their gender/race/etc.

The DEI ideas were attacked asserting it shifts from qualifications to a person's physical properties.

• Why can't we eliminate gender and racial aspects of applications for things like education, financial support, employment, etc? (Yes, people's names convey some of this)

• What potential efforts could we make that isn't focused on meeting quotas that continues to put people into boxes based on their physical properties and assess true potential?