It’s good to know who to blame when these are all over MARTA

Introducing JAMBANZ.  50% slap bracelet, 50% Bluetooth speaker.  100% bullshit.  Made in Atlanta.

Dad here kind of misses the point of earbuds and headphones.  They exist so that people can privately listen to their music without disturbing other people.  And under the guise of safety and awareness, he basically creates something completely counterproductive to the idea of private audio enjoyment.

All the time, we hear about how bicycles are vehicles too, and they have the same rights to the road as people in cars do.  Well for people in cars, it’s technically illegal to have earbuds on while driving, so why shouldn’t the same apply to those riding bicycles, regardless of their age?  If Dad doesn’t want his daughter or her friend getting run over, perhaps they shouldn’t be wearing earbuds while riding their bicycles in the first place.

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Oh, Georgia #96

Long story short: Woman can’t parallel park near courthouse, asks complete stranger to parallel park for her.  Is surprised when complete stranger drives off in her car.  Woman’s sister was still in car when thief takes off.  Startles thief, who not only walks away scot-free, but also steals both the woman and her sister’s purses.  Bonus: woman’s car gets ticketed after being abandoned by thief.

You know what’s the most ironic thing about this whole thing?  The carjacker is probably the one party in this whole scenario that comes out looking the cleanest.  I mean sure, he’s still criminal scum and shouldn’t be on the streets, but he was pretty much gifted a free car.  Was he supposed to not slam down the alley-oop when lobbed one?

If you leave the door to your house open and tell the guy in a ski mask out front to not rob you, what do you think is going to happen?

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lol MARTA #212

Brief: MARTA rejects Clayton County’s offer to incorporate a 0.5¢ county-wide tax increase in order to bring MARTA buses down into Clayton County.

Translation: Despite the fact that MARTA is a sham of a transit authority and a company in the first place, even they don’t want to get themselves involved with Clayton County.

Man, as much as I rag on MARTA, in the end it must really suck to be Clayton County.

In the end, this has everything to do with money, because as it stands now, the other counties have a 1¢ tax in place to help fund having MARTA in the first place.  The speculation is that MARTA wants them to pay a full penny just like everyone else, and now the ball is back in Clayton County’s court to see if they’re willing to go along with it.

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City hiking at the Cascade Springs Nature Preserve

Over the weekend, I went on a little hike.  One of my closest friends has been going on hikes on almost a weekly basis for a while now, and it’s piqued my interest in wanting to do some hiking on my own, despite the drastic difference in quality of hiking trails between Georgia and Virginia.

After doing a little bit of searching, and finding a few comprehensive lists of hikes in the remote Atlanta/North Georgia region, I found a trail oddly-located within the city limits that seemed like a good idea to try, that wouldn’t eat up my entire day driving to get there, and keep my afternoon free for things I needed to do.

The Cascade Springs Nature Preserve is located almost in the middle of the city, leaning towards the Southwestern region of the Perimeter.  Typically, the words “Southwest Atlanta” is synonymous with crime and shootings on almost a daily basis, but it turns out that this chunk of land sits a little bit further out from those sketchy neighborhoods, and is apparently protected greenspace that continues to exist as this juxtaposed oasis of nature surrounded by sprawl.

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lol MARTA #188

Short story shorter: MARTA bus caught on video being completely engulfed in flames on the shoulder of I-85.  Nobody was hurt.

I don’t know why this amuses me so much.  I mean, I also had great amusement in all the chronicled stories of New York’s Fung Wah buses spontaneously combusting or being engulfed in flames in their own right, too.  I guess there’s something inherently entertaining to me about entities known for incompetence actually showing extreme displays of incompetence, like somehow managing to catch their vessels completely engulfed in flames on the highways.

Either way, I’m admittedly a little surprised when I probably shouldn’t be, that MARTA has devolved to a point of failure seemingly only capable of being reached by a hack-job racket like Fung Wah.  I mean, MARTA, for better or worse, is Atlanta’s equivalent to METRO, the T, the L, SEPTA and MTA; it’s a city-wide transport system meant to get people from point A to point B, somewhat reliably, if not always necessarily comfortably.  But then to go and act like a shady counterfeit transit authority like Fung Wah and catch your buses on fire?

How embarrassing.  gg, MARTA.

The Racial Map

Source: based on 2010 census data, an interactive map was created that displays a dot for every single person that participated, which is color-coded to what they entered as their ethnicity.  The result is what is being called the most comprehensive racial map ever created.

I have to say that this thing is really cool to tinker around with.  I don’t hide the fact that my interest is often piqued at the topic of race; some of it happens to do with the fact that despite my American upbringing, my Korean heritage technically makes me a minority, and then there’s the fact that I live in Atlanta, where in spite of the general perceived progression of the rest of the world, is a place where the topic of race and inequality is still a topic on almost a daily basis.  The race card is still flung around here like Gambit credit cards, in a far-fetched stretch to incorporate this analogy.

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The carnage continues!

Another day, another truck full of food overturns, crashes, and dumps its contents all over the place.  First, there were hams, then there were chickens, and then beer, and now we’ve got eggs.

I’m not sure why this fascinates me as much as it does, but I guess I think it’s hilarious to see the roads and surrounding area covered in food.  I know it’s horrible that so much food goes to waste, and that these incidents have tons of collateral victims from the drivers themselves, the GDOT people who have to investigate and clean things up, and the thousands of commuters who get slammed in traffic as a result, but the visuals amuse me regardless.

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