I drive 150 miles in a day about once a month when I drive the nicer gas car for pleasure. My commute is 40 miles round trip in shitty 1990s cars that I wouldn’t want to drive any further, probably akin to the QoL in this truck. My weekly travel total averages 200 miles.

If you actually write down your habits, the majority of people are much less affected by the short range than they think. If you’re hauling 2000lbs of gravel 400 miles a day, this is not, and is not supposed to be, the truck for you

I have an older Ranger. I don’t do much truck stuff. The bulk cargo area is the draw, not the weight capacity. The heaviest load I carried was 800lbs of plywood, which was 15 sheets or something. I have a 4x8 trailer that can also help haul bulky household goods for moves, a motorcycle, lumber, or furniture. While the trailer is rated for 1700lbs payload and weighs 300lbs itself, I have never put more than 500lbs on it, despite filling the 4x8 floor stackef 4ft high. I made the trailer before getting the Ranger, so now they’re redundant and never actually hauled together.

If you’re already towing, this probably isnt the truck for you. If you aren’t towing, it provides an option to tow something if you have to. The reason I chose the Ranger is because it’s cheap, gets good fuel economy, and has the capacity to grab full lumber sheet goods on my commute home. While I could find a 30mpg car for the same price, I’m still in the mid 20s. Maybe I could spend 30k on a new F150 V6 and get similar, but then it costs 10x what I paid. Bulk space and handling scratchy cargo is the main goal. I think of the Slate as being what the Ranger should’ve been now.

If it’s a US city you’ve heard of, racism probably won’t stop you from living there. You might find pockets, but larger cities should be ok overall. Often they’ll have pockets of people that might hate you for a myriad of reasons. Maybe their ethnicity already hates yours back home. Maybe you’re part of an immigration wave that happened at the same time as there’s, making the two hate each other to step on the other to lift their own (NY Italian and Irish in the early 1900s). Maybe they believe immigrants are consuming all the resources and you’re the reason they’re poor (general hate from whites across the country, but localized majorities do it too).

But, overall, cities will generally have less meaningful racism because, as it turns out, if you spend your life next to other races/ethnicities, you realize we’re all human living the same struggle. Urban/suburban metro areas surrounding them will be similar. Sometimes there’s simple cultural misunderstandings, but once you see the first generation children raised in the local area, you see it has nothing to do with race after all.

But this is not a guarantee it’ll be all dandy and magically happy. I don’t know your ethnicity and I don’t know where you want to go. Even if I did, I don’t know everything.

In my usage, ethnicity refers to somewhat socially-defined regional identities. Basically, what country/group is your ancestral origin. You might call this a nationality, but, to me, that implies I’m assuming you’re not a US national/citizen. This also gives a leeway to include ethnic groups not restricted to a particular country such as certain groups of Jews, nomadic groups like Romani, or sub-groups of countries like Sicilian.

But I really don’t ask often because it’s not really important and can easily be taken as an insult.

I can appreciate the personal part you added regarding losing faith. I left catholicism in my teens. Too many inconsistencies, too much abuse of power. It started by questioning how multiple christianities could have such different rules, followed by learning how most religion is abrahamic and even more diverse in interpretation, to finally saying fuck all this.

I got FC5 in 2020 and it became hard to stomach. It felt like a real potential reality of the US that year. Cults, vehement religious figures, gun fetish, and a classic Americana setting. The prior titles were all far away, imaginary lands offering even a small degree of dissociation. FC5 was just home. I’d relate it to Harry Potter villains in the sense that yeah, of course we know Voldemort is evil, but Umbridge is the most hated character. Not because she’s worse, but because we know a real-life Umbridge personally.

FC6 hit me kinda hard in a similar way. I got into it about a year ago, not long after the israel/Palestine conflict flared up. There’s a ton of genocidal themes there.

Just gotta have reading hormones. Everything smells better that way

Are there any batshit conapiracy theories yet or are we unlucky so far? How much of America actually follows the pope, not being a Catholic Nation? I forget which sects believe in him and which don’t. There’s gotta be something about the deep state and accepting gay people making him the false prophet though right?

I don’t take that to mean “no one actually knows what an astronaut actually is” because phrasing it like that floats in the sensationalism territory between click bait headlines and Trump ramblings. What I do take that to mean is that the term is evolving, both from a linguistics standpoint as well as a technological/societal standpoint.

What’s a phone? The average user here probably at least considers a device that makes telephone calls, but consider what’s actually sold as a phone today and what non-phone devices can communicate in phone-like fashion. The primary usage of my cellular smartphone is far from making phone calls - it’s a handheld computer with information, entertainment, and utility functions. If you argue that it can make phone calls and is therefore still a phone, then so is a modern car. If you expand to strictly internet channels such as FaceTime, zoom, or teams, then that’d include computers as phones. If someone says they’re going to buy a new phone tomorrow, we’re all picturing a smartphone.

There is no functional difference with the evolution of astronaut definitions. The accessibility is constantly improving. The purpose is expanding. The accessibility is still incredibly limited, on the global scale, so the original term still bears weight.

This is why Latin is used for sciences. The language is dead and no longer evolving. The rate of change is drastically slower, primarily driven by expanding definitions with discoveries rather than changing scientific properties entirely.

I wouldn’t call myself an astronaut after such a trip. I’d want to, I’d love to, I’d make jokes about being a spaceman, but I wouldn’t classify myself anywhere near the likes of anyone with a Shuttle or Apollo patch. I’d put it near U2 pilots and tourists

Why does a mirror flip north/south but not east/west then?

Intro to space travel and navigational queues: your up or my up?

3rd option: they don’t give a fuck. The most common answer I have around me about why they still have a Tesla is operating cost. They’re going to get a new car every 3-5 years regardless.

unless you want a battle with them

There’s a month left in the semester, probably. I agree, roll over to not risk some petty bullshit. OP may never have this professor again in their lives.

You could just use the blinker the way they worked for the 50 years prior and lock it on and click it off?

I have a keychain with a tritium vial. It was advertised as a tent zipper locator. I just put it on my car keys and like looking at the light when it’s hanging up in the dark

Life, uh, finds a way Life… Finds a way Life [checks notes] finds a way
Life, finds a way Life [deep breath] finds a way Life [lean away from the microphone to breathe in] finds a way Life [scratches head] finds a way?
Life [gestures vaguely to day care center] finds a way

They are performative modifiers to add visual context to text. Imagine you’re reading a script for a play. The author adds notes like some of the examples above, in a similar format, in order to better convey what they want the actors to do, by text alone, to better convey the author’s intent to the audience.

OK but the dictionary literally modified the definition to I clude “figuratively” because language is alive and unwell

[looks to audience]

Imagine being this concerned about typed memes

I have a 2nd gen Ford Fusion and was able to reprogram it via computer and software. 3 by default, now 4. Could do 1-7 IIRC

And riding motorcycles around these other cars feels like riding a motorcycle. If Smart can make a NA compliant car, there must be some kind of way to make a near-Kei car compliant.

Out of curiosity, I looked if Smart met Kei regulations with the ForTwo. The officiall Kei variant, the Smart K, only had 2 modifications and 1 restriction. The track width was narrowed and the fenders were slimmed in order to make it 1.5"(30mm) narrower and the only engine available was the 600cc.

And while Americans like to make assumptions about North American markets because they’re generally cross-compatible, they vary greatly. Mexico is full of compacts and ute chassis-mates such as Chevy Aveo/Montana, Fiata Strada/Ram 700, and VW Gol/Saveiro. Remember, the original VW Beetle (“Vocho”) was produced in Mexico until the 90s.

It’s not that direct if they die off before the fund starts running into the negatives. They’ll blame the most recent democratic president anyway.

It was one of the last things I rented from blockbuster. I probably bought a Vault (Mountain Dew?) energy soda. I kind of want to watch it again to see if it makes sense, but the reviews are not promising.