Gerard’s geriatric generator image format

If that’s your takeaway, sure. It’s more about the 1939 invasion of Poland, the French/British declaring war the same year, the 1940 Blitz bombing of England, and 1940 Battle of France.

“America is the best! Nobody could match our manufacturing!”

Well no, you were just the only hevay industrial country that wasn’t bombed in the 40s. America didn’t rocket ahead through the 60s, they just helped kneecap the competition.

And for the god damn 10th time, Mexico and China didn’t take the manufacturing. They didn’t raid the US and deport Ford to them. Ford walked it all over very politely.

Whenever I’ve seen that, it’s usually in response to America taking the credit for saving the war despite “barely being there”. On the other hand, you could say adding the American force weighed the odds into the allies’ favor, so the swift end wouldn’t have happened naturally . On the other foot, America wouldn’t have built up enough arsenal to have that much effect had they not waited. And on your neighbor’s hand, America seemed to sit idly as they watched nazis be nazis because no no, the guy has some valid points

Screen protectors are back in demand on these. I recently learned they’re it ended to be a wear item and are factory installed on the Samsung clam

Lincoln LS. Jaguar S-type chassis under a Lincoln-badged homework-copied E39 body. Not an M5 clone, more like a 540 knockoff. It wasn’t far off when it was introduced in 2000, but it didn’t improve nearly as much as it needed to over its 7 year run to stay competitive. At all. Common sedans were getting comparable in acceleration and luxury was an American translation of a base 3 series, but at least it has a sweet double wishbone suspension front and back. There’s a dozen stylistic differences over the model years and trims you won’t see because it’s not your car and you don’t look at it every day

I also don’t care about the hofmeister kink. It’s here or there. I like the little kick up you can see on the LS or 2010-2014 Mustang. It existed before Hofmeister did it to a BMW and is more of a BMW bro thing to mention than an absolute success in design. Audi doesn’t usually do it, looks just as mean.

Supercars are quite small. They have very low roofs and are often quite wide, so your sense of scale is thrown off.

2025 corolla: 182"L x 70"W x 56"H
2000 corolla: 174" x 67" x 55"
2025 camry: 194 x 72 x 57
2000 camry: 189 x 70 x 55
2004 murcielago: 180" x 80" x 44"
2006 gallardo: 169 x 75 x 46
2018 huracan: 176 x 76 x 46 2024 296 gtb: 180 x 77 x 47
2016 chiron: 179 x 80 x 47
1987 F40: 172 x 78 x 44
1995 F50: 176 x 78 x 44 Even the veyron, a sweaty potato on wheels: 176 x 79 x 47

Totally agree on the perception point. BMW looks nice because it looks like a BMW which is nice. They’ve carried a fairly consistent design language from year to year. Design overhaul in these brands are somewhat rare, but they’ll carry it across the lineup. Look at Jaguar when they phased from 80s drug lord to whatever the XF look is called. (edit: Ian Callum designs?)

The only thing I could say specifically to OP’s observation is it sounds like they’re always picking out the brands with squared bodies and condescending headlights. Mercedes might be pushing it with their jewel eyes, but there’s still a consistent air of importance around the bodies (please don’t mention the CLA). No nonsense, no happy eyes, defined body lines, chrome blended flat into the panels, stout wheels, and sportier rooflines (please don’t mention the 5 series GT).

Taste is subjective. I’m not a fan of how they rounded these out in this generation. I like them more when dressed up with sporty bits to add hard angles into this bloated design. But at least it’s not a Bengal 7? Still has his touch. Peak design was E39 for me. So much so, I own it’s American copycat that’s twice as reliable as an M5. But I’ll stick with the other person’s opinion: needlessly pretentious. You can describe all the lines that make it beautiful to you without being bringing such condescending tone about art degrees or classic BMW snobbery about a single car design being literally genius. You think it’s beautiful because you own it. It’s not the BMW I’d pick. But sure, yours looks better to me than whatever melted wax model they delivered in the latest design era.

Truck exhaust blows away. They can’t see it anymore. Contrails linger for a while. They can see that.

They can see planes. They can’t see inside planes. Therefore, they can imagine anything they want inside because they can’t verify it themselves.

The things they can’t see anymore are gone. The things they can’t see into contain the worst possible scenario.

And that litter box in schools things for the kid identifying as a cat? The story is ALWAYS about someone else’s schools. They can picture a different school. They can imagine the worst scenario in there.

This whole political ideology is an exercise in failed object permanence.

This is, unfortunately, the same observation I’ve made in all the chemtrail-beleiving people I know. I zig in discussion, they zag, I realize they’re taking small-scale cloud seeding operations as proof of both contrails being chemtrails and, often enough, humans fueling hurricanes for the leftist agenda. These people also tend to deny human ability to affect the planet’s climate. The underlying logical interpretation of these states’ bills is exactly why they’re upheld, meanwhile, their constituents are still thinking about contrails.

You know… I didn’t think about that because I don’t own it and haven’t touched it. Consider the topic fathomed. Seems like some people do just fine without the protector, but I was blinded with our hard glass designs. Thank you

Interesting. I did get some very mild scratches from keys on my pixel 7 early on. I didn’t think harder glass would come with less scratch resistance. Sure you don’t mean greater tensile strength?

I don’t have any stat points left to git gud :( automotive has fallen from beloved hobby to strictly necessity

I swear, most fucked up screens I see are actually temperate glass screen protectors. The cracked protector is proof to them the protector works. I take it as proof a thin piece of glass barely adhered to a flexible chassis is way more prone to failure than the actual screen. I had film protectors until I my pixel 3a. Surprise, screen glass is hard as… Glass.

(edit: see comment below saying it’s a wear item. Unedited comment still here:) I cannot fathom why my coworker continually replaces the soft protector on his Samsung flip due to failure at the hinge. . The folding phone. The one that only ever goes in his phone folded.

Pixel 7 here as well. I tried going ceaseless for the first time since I had a Casio Gz’One and dear dog, it’s too damn slippery with the glass back. Regrettably, despite having a case, I managed to crack the screen anyway. It fell face down onto a pointy rock. My first broken screen, ever.

Small screws, unsure c-clip nuts, plastic/plastic panels that flex away, mystery grime, and too many screws. I’d have no qualms if the nuts were rigid in the body and used machine threads.

I did at least eventually have an epiphany and realize that it’s not a 5.5mm hex on my strictly-metric Fords, but rather a 7/32in or some bullshit.

You make good points. Truthfully, I only got back into doing it myself within the last 2 years. I haven’t done any vehicle more than twice. Somehow I always think I’m too good for the gloves and today will be the day I do it cleanly - only to use the same value in paper towels. Unfortunately, I know at least 3 filters are bottom-mount vertical. They have oil sitting in the galleys above it and spill more as they wobble off. I’ll have to check the drain plug sizes and see. I’m sure there’s repeat sizes, all being metric. I do use brake clean for the final spray since I’m not aware of any other nogrinse degreasers (also haven’t looked)

I do kind of enjoy my 300cc motorcycle. The drain plug is on the kickstand side (good with the lean) and the filter is a cartridge type that lives high on the block and on the not-kickstand side. Basically all the drip is from playing operation with the cartridge on the way out. And it only takes 1.4qt.

My driveway is uphill to the garage. I point up hill, use ramps, chock the rear tires, and only slide in from the front.

But I do hate doing oil changes. Oil gets everywhere on the tools, everywhere on my hand when I get the filter, everywhere on the ground when it splashes, and everywhere on the outside of the containers. Then it lightly oils everything between my garage on the disposal site. But, once I stopped getting $45 employee pricing on dealership synth blend changes and started getting $120+ normie pricing, I got fed up. I liked having a professional, trusted mechanic have eyes under a lifted car rather than my casual eyes laying under ramps, but shit, prices are absurd. Hello Kirkland oil.

I also hate splash shields. They’re mildly infuriating. I got the harbor freight Maddox oil filter socket set and now can generally avoid removing splash shields on my fleet

A combination of increasing size and reducing capability. I’m not saying we can’t have pocket-sized phones, but 2 decades puts us at about the Motorola Razor and Palm Pilot

I always had the impression that the advanced tech takes a large amount of resources not readily available everywhere. The rebels are scrounging for resources from any place that defects or will trade with them, while the empire is free to demand, raid, and liberate whatever supplies they needed. Part interchange is going to be more important to rebels strapped for material, so they use all similar, basic, reliable stuff. We see lots of shinier, smoother equipment in the cities where luxury is accessible and full of variation. Meanwhile, the vast shiny imperial hangars are comfortably stocked with lots of clean ships for all different roles.

The shitty robots never feel that far off from the US military. There’s all kinds of should-be-obsolete equipment that sticks around just because it fills a role (usually one role) and it still works. Regarding the low quality of their performance and capabilities, I’d imagine microprocessor manufacturing is still hard without perfect conditions. Clean rooms, electron microscopes, and general precision well beyond human visual capability. In our world now, if China were to try to take Taiwan by force and the chip manufacturers really do blow up the facilities, we’re screwed. Globally. It’ll set us back decades because that’ll reset chip size and density. Even if we magically restart facilities that used to be around, they’ll be on the older, larger architectures we can’t fit in ourr pockets

So, basically, what we’ve seen coming from most of the wartime interactions the US has had with most of the receiving countries. HMMV vs Hilux. 15 different standard guns vs AK-47. Unstoppable convoys vs IEDs. Satellite comms vs horseback messengers. And then the USA still roots for Luke & crew…