Pair of hook earbuds. Cheap no-name presumably Chinese brand, but they sound great and don’t fall out of my earholes.

Doing something political for years and then NOT doing something political is not “politically neutral,” you’re actively decided to make a politically motivated decision instead of simply continue with existing behavior.

small annoyances like it shifting up when you know you need to slow down in a second to take a corner, and then it’s in the wrong gear and it has to shift down again when you need to accelerate out of the corner

I mean, no modern automatic acts like this. It shifts up when you’re accelerating, shifts down when you’re decelerating. I guess if you’re a lead foot, it would make more difference. Or if you’re driving a race car. Not your typical road driving.

I kind of wonder what Chenoweth, a they/them in a LGBTQ relationship, thinks about Stonewall?

That’s because every version of Windows since XP has been kind of dogshit

Oh I have literally thought of this too. Maybe a bit more like Cops or if The Office was a real paper company office… but at a software company. So many fires to put out, so many blockers, so much drama between design / pm / dev / qa / execs, etc. Launch date blockers. Post-release hotfix nightmares. It could work

automatic transmissions are still more expensive than manual ones

Is it still though? I dare say it is becoming increasingly common (in the US) that in order to get a manual transmission you have to make a special order.

Try this: stand up, walk to the other side of the room and back

I mean, I have spondylitic arthritis, but okay. (Luckily I got on the good meds again.)

which steak do you think will turn out the most delicious?

Ah but the question wasn’t quality, it was convenience.

Even if you argue that after a while the less convenient becomes familiar, that doesn’t really mean it was more convenient, it was just not inconvenient for you. But I have to say even if you’re a seasoned manual driver, not having to shift every 25mph is arguably more convenient than having to, even if you’ve gotten used to it.

People got used to climbing stairs, doesn’t mean we stopped using elevators.

We need the actual “it was actually done” versus “the circumstances were created such that it could have been done”

I would ask her to correlate them with existence of violent movements alongside.

The MLK-Malcolm X dichotomy

In short, the presence of a militant option alongside your nonviolent option is quite useful in compelling the opposition to your side because the other option is the militant one.

You mean blaming leftists?

Is that your general experience with people doing dumb things? That they only do it once?

I think the best outcome would be that it might uncover deliberate malfeasance that might prompt some folks in congress to do what is needed. I wouldn’t be optimistic though.

Slightly more likely is that such discovery would drive the public towards a congressional swing away from his enablers at the next congressional election next year, assuming we have it. I’m moderately more optimistic on that, apparently such a swing is already forming, but to what extent isn’t clear.

We can’t undo the election results, the congressional count done on jan 6 is definitive.

I remember asking a few weeks after the election if anyone at all was talking about it being rigged. It seemed at the time everyone just accepted the result. Only in the past month or so have I started seeing talk of it.

I honestly don’t know how this is even possible. Doesn’t the withholding go directly to the IRS? The issue of federal income tax is between the federal government and the taxpayer.

Regen has been on trains for a long time, fwiw.

It’s weird to me that y’all don’t appreciate the convenience of advancing technology.

It’s like going “only mentally disabled folks use microwaves, the rest of us light the wood stove and let it simmer for a half hour”

Especially when Europe is known for its electric kettles, which are only recently becoming common in the US, who have traditionally used range-heated kettles.

Shit… are you also all still on Nokia 3310s and connecting to the internet with SLIP/PPP too?

At some point in time it was argued that manual allowed finer control of engine efficiency to automatic which simply shifted at certain speeds or rpms that weren’t always ideal. So properly driving a manual meant you saved gas.

I dare say in the decades since that argument began, automatic transmissions have gotten way better and reasonably as efficient as the average manual driver.

Also, when manuals were more generally common, they were generally cheaper than automatics. I don’t know if that’s true anymore, but I think the average person will have a hard time finding a manual new (consumer grade) vehicle in any given dealership in the US these days – you’d have to get it ordered.

I will say when I rented a car in Wales in the mid 2010s they had like literally 2 automatics and they were double the rate. It wasn’t at all common there then.

I am VERY disappointed in you MELVIN

But I’m more a fan of the Lou Diamond Phillips scenes honestly