Ram23

Cranley may not be behind calling the police over the boxes, but I'd be surprised if he wasn't behind having those two "sources" contact the Enquirer about it. The bad press for Winburn helps Cranley. Cranley needs the Republican west-siders to vote for him in the primary to beat Simpson, and they won't if Winburn runs.

^ I don't know that they are okay with it, I think they are all trying (and struggling) to figure out how to tax online sales. Right now states put the onus on the consumer, which probably isn't working very well. Consumers in Ohio are required to list the amount of online purchases they made, that weren't taxed, on their state tax return, and pay the tax at that time. If you buy something on Amazon or some chain retailer that has stores in Ohio, you don't have to include it as it is taxed by the seller.

^^ I think many people understand it, they are just faced with the problem that the things that taste the best aren't the most healthy. Perhaps, in a few centuries time, we will evolve to a point where healthy foods start to taste better to us as a species (maybe as the people who prefer unhealthy foods get fat and die off at younger ages or have trouble finding mates). We are still in the first or second generation of people to have essentially complete and total access to as much food as we can possibly consume. In the grand scheme of things this development was incredibly quick, and our bodies simple aren't ready for it. On a somewhat related topic, I don’t remember where we were having the discussion about food stamps, but thought this article from the New York Times fit the topic of this thread: In the Shopping Cart of a Food Stamp Household: Lots of Soda https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/13/well/eat/food-stamp-snap-soda.html?_r=3 What do households on food stamps buy at the grocery store? The answer was largely a mystery until now. The United States Department of Agriculture, which oversees the $74 billion food stamp program called SNAP, has published a detailed report that provides a glimpse into the shopping cart of the typical household that receives food stamps. The findings show that the No. 1 purchases by SNAP households are soft drinks, which accounted for 5 percent of the dollars they spent on food. The category of ‘sweetened beverages,’ which includes soft drinks, fruit juices, energy drinks and sweetened teas, accounted for almost 10 percent of the dollars they spent on food. “In this sense, SNAP is a multibillion-dollar taxpayer subsidy of the soda industry,” said Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University. “It’s pretty shocking. Anecdotally, I’ve always thought this seemed like the case. 10% of anyone’s food budget seems like a lot to be spending on empty, sugary, drinkable calories.

I've heard that same thing. The drag race that starts at the White Castle is almost entirely due to the timing of the signals, and the fact that ~75% of the people getting off of I-71S know that timing. If you pull away from the stoplight at Taft and Reading, heading west, at a reasonable pace, you always get caught at the very next stoplight, and potentially subsequent stoplights. If you floor it as soon as the light turns green, you get all the way to at least Auburn and occasionally to or even past Vine. The fact that the timing has been this way for over a decade leaves me to believe these signals are programmed together in some capacity - otherwise they would have gone out of sync during various power outages.

^ I wonder if there's some deeper psychological explanation to this. Particularly on Calhoun, there's a bit of a funnel effect, as the street gets narrower, the buildings get taller, and the parked cars become more frequent. I've seen people get irrationally mad over something as subtle as a car in front of them parallel-parking - they'll pull around to pass them and speed off at 40MPH. This doesn't happen on streets like Clifton because there's almost always room to easily and calmly pass people when needed. Warner has some sightline issues because of the topography that might also be making people uncomfortable.

^ I'm guessing based upon that one picture, but it looks like that BMW hit those pedestrians at a pretty high speed given the damage to the windshield. It also looks like they might have been in that crosswalk that's in front of the Brass Tap (which is why charges would be pending). There's no stoplight there, just an overhead sign, and I see drivers speed through it on a regular basis without even checking for pedestrians - I've actually been honked at for stopping there when someone was crossing. It's usually hard to see pedestrians waiting to cross there because someone is illegally parked/stopped right at the crosswalk about 90% of the time... even in the Google Streetview there's a car idling there, blocking the view. In bigger/major cities this wouldn't be a problem at all. These two streets remind me a lot of places in Queens or Chicago. However, in Cincinnati (especially around UC) neither the drivers nor pedestrians are used to this.

^ "Body shaming" is the PC term I've heard thrown around. According to PC principles, if you body shame a woman it is also automatically sexist.

I don't go to many movies, and when I do I go to a small local theater (Esquire in Cincinnati) for the more artsy fartsy type movies so I don't come across any loudness there. I do, however, hate how loud some bands are when they play in small venues (I'm thinking MOTR). I bring or buy ear plugs there all the time.

It looks like former 5-star recruit Torrance Gibson is following Luke Fickell down to Cincinnati: http://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/18459122/former-buckeye-torrance-gibson-headed-cincinnati Seems like a great all around athlete. He is a great addition to UC's roster, and should be able to contribute immediately on the field next season. I didn't follow the story around his suspension, but from my very brief research it sounds like he was railroaded for some reason over a consensual relationship with a tutor, so I don't think behavior is a potential problem at all.

People are living longer and longer so if anything I think we'll gradually see an increase in the number of white hairs looking for things to throw their money at. Throughout history young people have grown up to be just like the old people they used to think were weird. Most of these young OTR hipsters will turn 60 some day and vote for people like Cranley, complain about crime downtown, use skybridges, and donate to the CSO. This is a cycle that has always repeated itself ever since people started to live to old ages.

I don't want to offend anyone because I appreciate the effort and think the cause is very noble - but I've always thought that the Keep Cincinnati beautiful painted plywood over windows looked worse than just plain plywood or white painted plywood. It's sort of like putting a really bad shade of lipstick on a pig. If you're going to put lipstick on a pig, at least use a natural or neutral color. The clearboard looks about 1000 times nicer than any plywood, but is more expensive. I don't know that it needs to be a state law, though. It seems like something that should be left to local authorities or property owners.

Here's an interesting follow up to that data. Biological male dominates women’s cycling event in historic first http://www.stickybottle.com/latest-news/biological-male-dominates-womens-cycling-event-in-historic-first/ A biological male who identifies as female has won a major women’s race in the US in what is believed to be a first for cycling. Jillian Bearden was born a male but identifies as a transgender woman and has not had sex reassignment surgery. However, while still a biological man she was able to take part in the event under new rules ushered in by an International Olympic Council decision. Bearden took victory in the 106-mile El Tour de Tucson in Arizona at the weekend in a time of 4hrs 36mins, some 25mins behind the men’s winner; Mexican Olympic cyclist Hugo Rangel.[/] This could be interesting in the coming years. What would happen if this starts to become the norm for female competitions? Would there ever be a shift back to splitting up competitions based purely on biological sex?

^ I wonder if some sort of predator spooks them and they end up fleeing as a herd, sort of like when some lions start heading towards an antelope. Maybe one of the famed NYC sewer alligators was nearby? Come to think of it, the only times in my life I've seen rats were when I lived in NYC, and 99% of the time it was in the subway. I've never seen one in Cincinnati.

I once saw at least a dozen, probably closer to 20 rats run up from the end of the platform, and under a door into some sort of closet or utility room in the 14th Street/Union Square N/W station. They went one at a time and it went on for a couple minutes.

We're barely into this and already a scandal brewing??? FBI took boxes from Winburn's office http://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/politics/2017/01/05/fbi-took-boxes-winburns-office/96196650/ Cincinnati Police say they called the FBI last week after learning a Winburn aide planned to remove about a half dozen boxes containing items from the councilman’s office. Winburn, who is mulling a run for mayor, said he doesn’t know anything about the boxes or why the FBI would be interested in them, though he suspects someone might want to hurt him politically. Winburn’s aide, Rosalind Fultz, said the brown cardboard boxes were filled mostly with old newspapers she wanted to take home to read.

I really think it's a big shame elections for county administration offices are partisan. These jobs should be held by professionals that should be hired based on their resumes, not their political affiliation. Crime has been slowly improving in Cincinnati since the post-riot peak, I really hope Aftab doesn't screw things up too badly by going lax at the courthouse and hiring inexperienced people because they align with his political views.

Winburn will make the primary very interesting. As I alluded to a few months ago in this thread – a popular Republican in the primary mixes it up completely. Republican turnout is much better for primary and off year elections (remember even Mallory only won the general election by just 6000 votes), and last time around pretty much all of those Republicans who showed up voted for Cranley. If they have an actual “R” to pick this time, they will, and Cranley will lose a ton of votes. Cranley’s entire tactic of moving to the center only works well when he’s facing off against another Democrat. It’s plausible that he places third in the primary, behind Winburn and Simpson.

No nothing big is under construction right now. I've been trying to guess where the next big project will be - there's the hotel tower at Vine and McMillan that has been in the works for awhile, but the southwest corner of Auburn and McMillan has been cleared for awhile and I haven't heard anything about it. It seems ripe - but I think a developer would want that massive Cinco drive-thru as well. I've never paid attention as to whether or not that even gets used - is there a big rush on it on pay day or something? Isn't everyone on direct deposit by now?

^ That's pretty huge embarrassment. It must mean that no one even proofreads the paper before it gets sent out to print, and whoever is actually putting together the layout in InDesign or whatever they use is just mindlessly copy-pasting content. They need to get some quality control processes in place, nothing in a newspaper should ever be printed and on news stands without having even been read by someone working for said paper.

I tried out DirecTV NOW, which is basically a cable subscription that you stream, because they threw in a free Amazon Fire stick with a one month subscription, and they have a special intro price of $35 per month for 100 channels. I haven't had cable for at least a decade. I completely forgot about how it is possible to have 100 channels and absolutely nothing worth watching on any of them. So far I've only really used it to watch UC Basketball games and a handful of good movies that come on IFC and Sundance (though I could have just gotten those at the library for free). It does come with Watch ESPN which is nice, and HBO/HBO Go is only a $5 add on. I'm probably going to get rid of it, though, because I simply don't watch enough TV. Overall, I ended up with a fire stick for $5 off and got to watch some TV for a month.

^ It would be interesting to see how Winburn does in a race like the mayoral primary. He consistently does very well in council elections, but voters get to pick 9 people there. I get the feeling he is not very many peoples first choice - I'd guess he is a whole lot of people's second or third or even lower choice. So he gets 28,000 votes but maybe 25,000 of those voters would pick someone else over him if they only got one selection.

^ I think closing Times Square to vehicular traffic is the perfect manifestation of the cultural shift you're describing. It doesn't even look like a real city now, it looks exactly like an amusement park, which is pretty much what it has become. Times Square is slowly starting to look like New York New York in Vegas. I won't be surprised if someone proposes a roller coaster at some point in our lifetimes.

^ A lot of those buildings are still back there behind the signs. An interesting tidbit about Times Square is that there's a zoning code special district in midtown Manhattan, and the part applicable to Times Square actually requires new construction to have a certain large percentage of the facade covered in giant neon signs.

They have always had the technical ability to put additional streetcars in service when needed but, when the system first opened, it was a question of who would pay for it. If you recall, there was a big debacle about who would pay for the "third and fourth streetcars" for Oktoberfest. Within the first month of operations, it seems that the city and TransDev came to some sort of gentlemen's agreement where they just said, "f*** it, we'll run extra streetcars when there's demand and worry about the costs later." It should all even out by year's end. The bigger problem is that if we're regularly running more streetcars than we originally planned, we're putting more wear and tear on the vehicles. Which means we need to buy more streetcars. I just wasn't aware there was any type of gentleman's agreement - I assumed putting the extra car into service would have had all sorts of red tape involved, purposely put into place by the administration. It's nice to see that the operators have the ability to quickly put a car into service when they feel its needed without having to go through some excessive approval process - especially on a holiday when it would have been next to impossible to get red tape cleared. I don't know exactly how long it took for someone to decide they wanted an extra car in service to actually having one running, but it seems like it was very quick. I remember that during Oktoberfest the additional cost of operating the extra car was more than offset by the fares, and I assume that will be the norm. I don't think it will become too regular, though. That 70 degree weather on a federal holiday in December was a pretty rare occurrence. If there are only 20 or 25 days a year they have to run 4 cars, the impact on service life wouldn't be all that significant.

The Streetcar Facebook page posted yesterday afternoon that a 4th car was put into service because of heavy ridership. So they apparently have the ability to do that when needed, maybe I missed the discussion about that. I think the record high temperature of 71F played a big role. Even though it was a holiday, I doubt that many people would have been out and about if it were 10 degrees. It'd be interesting to chart daily ridership against weather conditions, events, holidays, etc. and see just how big a role they all play.