When you work in graphic design or hang out with other media-cremating people and everyone’s laptop looks the same, a sticker identifies yours as yours. My job has a ThinkPad problem

That fire was raging

I thought it’d just be airlocking them

“the sheriff’s department doesn’t have evidence of the guy impersonating a cop any prior time”

Kinda surprised it wasn’t that one teenager who kept pulling people over in his ford fusion

Work horses are a lot closer than I expected. I saw them about 15 minutes from the downtown of a top 20 Mexican city. Hitched up like a western, pulling carts, or carrying a person and sack of produce.

I bet that guy plays a mean fiddle

Location on Earth will change timing for really precise events like occultations. Location on Earth will not affect any DSO’s visual “closeness” to the moon, especially not at the low zoom scale of binoculars. Hemisphere will only change which is on top. At 1/40th the distance to the moon, moving from pole to pole only changes the view the amount standing 1 foot to the left changes the view of an object 40ft away

Back when social media wasn’t so centralized on Facebook and especially any kind of local news, the odds were higher. Craigslist had a name for itself, although anything in the personals was overshadowed by prostitution.

I’m always surprised to go another day where I don’t hear anyone mention the risk of this mixup with Tushy, the anal porn site, and Hello Tushy, the bidet company.

People will buy the house for sale. The country made it clear that half of the population is happy with one of the sides. Reds want to move out of blue states all the same. So yes, a down payment and a moving rental are a magnitude of order apart, but relocating still introduces huge expenses. A 600 mile trip with a 15’ truck and car trailer is about $1,000 (it’s the mileage rate that gets you). Hotels if needed, road food, security down payments, and gas are the easy ones to point out. Then there’s the added stress and costs of scoping out your destination, finding a suitable place, not being employed during the transition, losing your current social networks, and pulling it off solo. My point is that “just move” isn’t feasible to many of the people most affected by the predicted changes.

If you’re talking about stress, sure, a renter can relocate more easily than a home owner. Stress isn’t worth dollars, though. A homeowner is still much more likely to have the financial ability to relocate. If renters had spare cash of a substantial amount, don’t you think they’d put it towards owning?

No, they want states to decide on issues they’re losing federally but still let the fed decide things if they’re winning. There is no consistency, just temporary workarounds.

From a categorization standpoint, sure. I guess what I was trying to get at was I’ll happily take a PHEV sale over yet another ICE

On a global scale, why wouldn’t it be reliable? China has the biggest EV boom and over 10% of the global population. It’s not unreasonable that a global tally skews results to the Chinese or Indian market.

Is a tired 1st gen Leaf an “EV with limited EV functionality” if the battery only has 50 miles of range now? Where do you draw the line?

It likely skews data in conservative states, but likely not by much. At least in 2020, mail-in voting was presented as the greatest boogeyman to ever threaten the GOP that week. That pushed conservative voters to vote in person in conservative states and make a big show about how much more reliable and traceable it was. Democrats already trusted the mail-in option. Conservatives in my blue area were not as polarized by this threat, in my observation, and still used the mail-in option. I imagine they knew they’d be overrun in the electoral vote so it didn’t matter if the popular vote was accurate or not.

This time around, I’m out of the Reddit loop and I’m not subjected to Fox News every day, so I’m not as in touch with the vibe.

I don’t know how I feel about the idea that conservative men create that much change by overwatching wives. I am not saying it doesn’t happen, but if these wives’ outspoken comments are believed to be true, then they’re indoctrinated before voting, not coerced in the booth. Reddit and Lemmy skews left and secular, so I feel they both underestimate the power of promising more Christianity, the power of making women beleive abortions are murder (but theirs can be repented or explained), that undocumented aliens are taking their tax money and all in murderous gangs, and that women can’t even lead. Ask their opinion of Hillary Clinton and they’ll tell you she’s a bitch. Then ask why. You might get something about Benghazi and not satisfying Bill, but that’s probably it. Her looks? Her voice? Nothing concrete.

That’s when OP realized that’s no 67-year-old woman, it’s the god damn 6,700-year-old Loch Ness monster

I don’t beleive my worst car is anywhere near as bad as some terrible cars I’ve driven/borrowed/rented. Background: I’ve been driving since 2008 and have owned 7 vehicles with 4 wheels between my y wife and I. And it is a diverse range of slow, small, unequipped, unreliable, and unattractive. But almost everything was bought for the purposes they exceed at so I don’t complain about informed decisions.

The only car I didn’t really choose was my first car, a 98 Taurus inherited from grandparents. I could call it the most boring, or the most mediocre when weighing all metrics, but not the worst I’ve used for at least an hour. I had it for 10 years before rust made it too risky for a long commute. The cheap leather seats were durable enough, the power was enough (faster duratec), the interior was roomy enough for 4, the trunk as normal, and the wind noise was low (slippery dickens aero design). The appearance was a distinct product of its time, out of place by time I owned it - they went TOO round. Parts supply wasn’t great on some key critical areas that did change over the years, such as coolant and transmission tubes. I could handle it now, but it’s long gone.

The one that would resemble OP’s situation remains my favorite, a Lincoln LS. Knowledge is what makes this one tolerable when it fails (by recognizing symptoms before catastrophic failure) and keep the memories net-positive. The handling is superb, as Ford/JLR sought to directly compete with BMW with this car and the Jaguar S-type (same chassis). Power was good for 2000 but didn’t inflate to stay good by 2006, but the good noises offset the actual performance for me. But these things are notorious for misfires (which get misdiagnosed), overheating (which gets misdiagnosed), transmission issues (which get them replaced when they can be maintained better and fixed easier), need more frequent suspension rebuilds like a real BMW, and have a slew of unique parts because this is closer to a Jaguar than a Town Car. But every time I drive it, there’s just something special about it.

A short version of what many consider terrible is a Geo Tracker and a 4cyl 90s Ranger. People call the Ranger way too slow. I’ll tell you what’s slow, a Geo Tracker. The Tracker works just fine, you just have to crank it out on on-ramps and hope no one jams your flow by merging at 20 under. But it’s tiny size (smaller footprint than a Miata) is a treat to maneuver, the 4x4 is realer than a common modern suv, the convertible top masks the mediocrity with summer thrills, and the heater is one of the strongest I’ve ever owned for the “cold winters in a soft top”. Meanwhile, the Ranger is a little quicker, happier to cruise on the highway, has more than enough power for a competent well-planning driver, and hauls bulky stuff the same as a bigger engine/pickup. I’ve had 800lbs of plywood and barely noticed a difference. I’ll take the improved MPGs.

So what’s the worst car I’ve driven for at least an hour in town, city, and highway? My dad’s 2011 Hyundai Sonata. I don’t know what went so wrong, but I just hated everything about it. I did my best to adapt and get comfortable, but it was just a terrible experience. It exceled at mediocrity. The interior materials were 20 shades of hard gray, the displays were uninformative, the doors closed with the sound of a door 30 years older, the buttons were unfriendly, the visibility was lacking, the front is hideous, the headlights are atrocious, it eats tail light bulbs, the arm rests are all wrong for me, the dash buttons and indicators all used deep blue LEDs for illumination which is atrocious to see at night (too much UV intrusion and blurring), and despite already being familiar with an 80hp Geo, this Sonar felt more underpowered with its vague automatic transmission and polite engine noise.

Was it a pre-96 boxy taurus? Those were excellent for the time and very reliable because they had to be to be competitive. 96 brought the doughy redesign that triggered a decline. It held the top sales figure a little longer, but mainly due to continued fleet sales. The transmission was a weak point, the fuel economy was lacking, and “Taurus” was kind of your father’s brand. The redeeming benefit was that the 2000 redesign only changed half the car, so they were quite repairable by having a 10 year run. The door skins are identical for the 3rd and 4th gens.

I can’t stand this line of thinking. Where do used cars come from? From handing down new cars. You can’t buy a new used car, so someone has to keep buying new cars to supply the used car market. I’m all for prolonging the life of cars and reducing buying new cars for something newer and shinier (my daily has been two smaller 1998s in a row), but buying used “for the environment” is greenwashing your hands of the fact that it was, in fact, a newly-manufactured car at one point. Paying for a used car incentivizes people to continue buying and selling their new cars. And yeah, the manufacturing pollution sucks for a new car, but so does the operational pollution of older vehicles. What’s the break-even for the manufacturing pollution of a 2020 car vs the continued operational emissions of a 2000 car? A decade? So by 2030, buying that new 2020 might be cleaner than continuing to prop up that 2000.

Yeah, I’m excited for a better used EV market. Saving pollution is a side effect of me needing them to be more affordable. I hope a used 2nd gen Leaf will be compatible with me in 2026. I love saving gas like it’s a competition. I hypermiled and aero-nodded a 97 Taurus. I wanted 4x4 and got a 98 Geo tracker in 2020. I needed a pickup and got a 98 4cyl Ranger in 2022. I commute half my days on a 60mpg motorcycle. I have never bought a new vehicle in 20 years of driving, but used cars aren’t manufactured as used.

If a German reads 24-richard-wilhelm-theodore to an English guy, he’d write down 24RVT if going by the sound, 24RWT if knowing German pronounces the W with a V sound. This is _exactly_why the NATO alphabet is standardized and swapping things around “in an emergency” isn’t permissible. There are so many variances in pronunciations between languages like this. Since you’re writing in English, watch what happens if you hear someone use Spanish and French words like “Javier Habanero Ennui Allo”. An English speaker might know the words, or might write down HOOO. And then there’s regional differences like Spain with some hard Cs or THs instead of soft C or Mexico with some indigenous Xs that sound like CH instead of H. Not to mention the typical English pronunciation of Uniform starts with a Y sound (some groups say oo-nee-form). And it’s not xylophone in every language, so why not write down a Z?

That’s why they developed one, singular group of words for the alphabet. It’s not perfect, but it’s the group that was picked.

P is for Pterodactyl. C as in Czar.