Good evening. 🦆🪿🦢

14 May 2026

Tonight we’re in Oklahoma City, staying downtown. We spent most of the day on the road getting here, and we’re pretty worn out. I’d forgotten that Oklahoma’s highway speed limits climb up to 80 miles per hour, which shaved a little time off the trip. The downside, of course, is all the toll roads leading into Oklahoma City. They’re almost unavoidable, especially if you don’t know the area. But thanks to modern technology, you don’t have to stop anymore—they just snap a picture of your license plate and mail you the bill. It’s the same setup in the Houston area.

Funny thing: we Americans get all worked up about traffic cameras—“unfair,” “unconstitutional,” “Big Brother,” and so on—but when it comes to toll cameras? Eh, whatever.

Honestly, if I’m going to pay a toll, I’d rather not have to stop. I remember not that many years ago when my wife and I would get rolls of quarters before a trip just so we could feed the toll machines. Sometimes we had to stop five or six times just to throw quarters into a hopper. I always wondered what happened if someone ran out of money on those old toll roads. Maybe a bunch of gangsters popped out of the booth with tommy guns.

We walked about half a mile to a spaghetti restaurant tonight. What was the name? Spaghetti Palace? Spaghetti Kingdom? No—The Old Spaghetti Factory. And it was pretty good. I had spaghetti with white clam sauce, one of my old favorites. I used to make it with the canned white clam sauce you could buy at the store. I once made it for my daughter, who now tells the story insisting that I poured clam chowder over spaghetti noodles.

“Traveling—it leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller.” — Ibn Battuta

“Adventure is just bad planning.” — Roald Amundsen

“Humor is mankind’s greatest blessing.” — Mark Twain

#photo #photography #photographer #photographylovers #wildlife #nature #bird #birds #birding #birdwatching #birdphotography #morning #travel #dinner #tolls

The Frog for Whom the Bell Tolls

https://sethmlarson.dev/the-frog-for-whom-the-bell-tolls

#HackerNews #Frog #Bell #Tolls #Story #Tech #Innovation #Nature

Collecting tolls in the strait would violate a basic and enduring principle of international maritime trade: freedom of peaceful navigation. It’s an ancient idea that was codified by the United Nations’ Convention on the Law of the Sea, which took effect in 1994.

Iran’s proposal to collect tolls in the Strait of Hormuz violates trade norms

https://apnews.com/article/strait-of-hormuz-iran-tolls-oil-3ef5dcd907122922db714d318c35317e

https://substack.com/@nikolbouga/note/c-253790206

#ASubStack #StraitOfHormuz #Iran #oil #InternationalLaw #maritimeTrade #trade #tolls

#usa #israel #iran : #warofaggression / #escalation

„The ships that have been allowed to pass the strait (…) last month include vessels from #China, #Russia, #India, #Pakistan, #Iraq, #Bangladesh, #Thailand, the #Philippines, and #Malaysia, according to reports. It is not clear what kind of #tolls they are paying if any (…).
Iran has not allowed U.S.-Israeli partners and allies pass through the strait since Feb. 28; but now the U.S. would be blocking major allies too.“

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/hormuz-iran-trump/