The Denver Post reports
At first glance, Littleton, [Colorado,] looks like ground zero for Halloween pranksters this year--toilet paper is strewn across street after street and block after block.
The messy look prompted a few irritated inquiries from residents on the city's Facebook page this week, like this one from Madison Lucas: "This is UGLY!! All over Littleton!!" Or from Stephanie Gregory : "My kids and I thought it was vandalism."
But the TP'ing scheme is actually the work of the city itself. Littleton is using bathroom tissue as part of an effort to seal the myriad cracks that plague road surfaces in this city. It is tackling 120 streets with this bottoms-up tactic.
[...] The TP, applied with a paint roller, absorbs the oil from freshly laid tar as it dries, keeping it from sticking to people's shoes or car and bike tires. With the paper's protective abilities, asphalt isn't tracked all over the city or splattered on wheel wells. And the biodegradable paper breaks down and disappears in a matter of days.
[...] Kelli Narde, a spokeswoman for Littleton, said the real benefit of using toilet paper is that it allows traffic to retake the road right after a crack is filled.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 08 2016, @01:50PM
What a strange world where attempting to maintain objectivity is considered bias, and keeping any editorializing for the discussion instead of the presentation of the story itself.
Might as well scratch the "News" and change it to Soylent Opinion, where if I bother to find even the most half-assed "story" that reflects my bias, put forth a misleading title, it's a-okay in your book.
And if those stories originate from Stormfront, the Drudge Report, or Democratic Underground, it matters not, just as long as they are accepted like everyone else.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 08 2016, @03:28PM
You get what you pay for.
That's not a joke.
You can't expect the editors here to behave like editors at a real newspaper.
I mean, it would be great. But they've got lives and have to make a living.
I think the best we can expect is they do a simple google to verify the story isn't obviously fake.
Maybe if they were called submission herders instead of editors that might be more palatable.