Normally no. However, I do own a 1968 Chrysler station wagon that I’ve taken to calling “the Duchess of Rustess”. No, it doesn’t even rhyme, but it does makes me smile.

I’ll try to keep these both short.

Magic the Gathering - the “Power Nine”

There’s 9 cards from the first few printings that were simply deemed too powerful. Once they were out in the real world, the folks in charge realized they weren’t fun to play against, and resulted in wildly uneven games. In extreme cases, the opponent could lose without even getting a single turn. They’ve been banned from every format*, and have never been reprinted*. *Except of course when they are. https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Power_Nine

Model railroading (O-gauge). Lionel 770e Hudson

For O gauge size, the train everyone wishes they had in their collection is the 1937-1941 Lionel 770E. This was a super-unusual toy for its day, pretty much everything else had been aimed at younger children and a lower price point. Lionel decided to take a gamble and build a hyper realistic scale model that was aimed at young adults. It was honestly not a great seller in its day due to the high price point and the looming threat of WW2. But it was, and still is, considered one of the highpoints of the industry. You could argue that the current Lionel company is founded on this concept, as their VisionLine products are focused on ultra-realistic toys for grown ups (which will always be funny, as yes, our track has 3 rails). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOdDw0-Tflg

Obviously we don’t learn about unions at all. But the one that strikes me the most is the omission of the Battle of Blair Mountain, where the US government sent the army after the coal miners. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain

The Wilmington 1989 coup: After the Civil War, Wilmington North Carolina had a mostly black government. That didn’t sit right with the whites, so they staged and successfully completed a Coup & overthrew the government. Only officially successful Coup to occur in the USA. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/when-white-supremacists-overthrew-government/

9/11 - The much lesser known 9/11 occurs in Chili in on 9/11/1973. During a US sponsored coup, the revolutionaries smash an airplane into the capitol building. My not-so-conspiracy theory is there’s a reason the US event happened on 9/11 as well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_Chilean_coup_d’état

I subscribe to a bunch of email newsletters. Read them during breakfast until I finish eating, which means I usually end up deleting about half of 'em. I think Tangle might be the best bet, as it tries to be middle ground and tries to provide context behind what both sides are saying. I’m also kinda a fan of “WhatTheFuckHappenedToday”, mainly because it’s brief & direct.

https://www.readtangle.com/

https://whatthefuckjusthappenedtoday.com/

Perhaps not oddly, I struggle to find free Conservative news sources. All the ‘good’ ones requires a paid subscription. How conservative of them! =D If someone has some suggestions, I’m down to just Fox at this point, and it’s like they put the interns in & aren’t bothering to chaperone them anymore.

Yo

I like to support the Electronics Frontier Foundation. They’re generally pretty great about protecting our freedoms online. They constantly show up as the good guy in my feeds, whether it’s explaining how to protest safely, or how to internet without leaving footprints, or just generally how to interact in today’s online world. I think the only criticism I’ve ever heard against them is they don’t stand up to Google quite as much as they maybe ‘ought’ to.

https://www.eff.org/

If you care about abortion rights, Planned Parenthood is as good a place to help as any. Although I’ve never contributed, the current administration seems to really be targeting them. Okay, they’re targeting LOTS of minorities really.

https://www.plannedparenthood.org/

Speaking of which, the American Civil Liberties Union is one of the loudest voices trying to protect minorities from being illegally deported and stand up for birthright citizenship. Another good cause to support.

https://www.aclu.org/

Be aware that most window A/C units are power hogs. Expect to see a significant rise in your power bill. It might be cheaper to have your home A/C unit serviced instead. Could it be low on freon? Would it benefit from having the coils cleaned?

There’s already plenty of good advice here. The one that I think is missing is that the clutch pedal probably has like 10 inches of travel, but it only cares about 1 inch of it. All the rest is just slop. You need to figure out where that zone is, and get good at hitting the start of that spot quickly.

Once you can get to the start of that zone reliably, then you can start working on how fast you release the clutch through that zone. The more power you’re applying with the throttle pedal, the faster you can release the clutch through this zone.

Not really no. I make a point to game online a bit with my nephews on Friday nights. But the rest of the week - no, there’s just too much that needs doing. In addition to working full time, cooking, and maintaining the home, now that I’m older I have also added making a point to get enough sleep and get my workouts in. That’s it, that’s all the time there is.

I purposely booked a week of vacation for my birthday this year where I intend to finally play Breath of the Wild. And that’s it, that’s the whole week. Looking forward to it.

A large part of it is choice. I choose to be happy, and my dumb monkey brain says ‘ok, I guess we’re going to be happy today’. There’s a real truth to ‘fake it til you make it’, except it should be ‘fake it until it becomes real’. There was a post yesterday about people being locked into their customer service personality even after they get home from work. Sort of like that. You can lock yourself into your happy person.

Of course, that’s not enough. You also need to figure out what really makes you tick - what do you truly enjoy? For me, I enjoy being creative and applying that to fixing shit. Is that dumb, probably. But man, I’ll be on a high for a month after I save a car that should have gone to the junkyard.

Honorable mention for my truck. 1997 F-150. Turns 28 this year, just put a rebuilt motor in it, hoping for another 20 years.

A pair of toe-nail clippers my grandfather gifted me. I’m guessing late 1940s. As far as I can tell, it was something he bought from the on-base military store as things were winding down after WW2. It’s rugged in a way you wouldn’t expect - it was clearly built to last, well, indefinitely. Has this excellent leather carrying case in military olive green that is also wildly over-designed. Not flashy, just built to last.

It really makes me appreciate - we used to know how to make things here (USA). And we were so good at it, even the dumb little things could be built to last.

I always wanted to see if I could ‘fix’ the Berkley Pit mine. It’s a superfund site with some of the most acidic water in the world. It was a cooper mine for decade that went bust. When the owners walked away, it started filling up with rain water. But, because of the way mines work, that water became VERY acidic. So now there’s this lake of acid out in Montana that no one wants to deal with.

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_Pit

Inter-mountain Histories: https://www.intermountainhistories.org/items/show/376

ChemAnalyst News - Pit might have rare earth minerals: https://www.chemanalyst.com/NewsAndDeals/NewsDetails/montana-toxic-legacy-could-become-america-rare-earth-savior-36626

As a dude who loves Transport Fever 2, you better believe I get this wrong a lot.

I also see ‘meeting’ abbreviated as MTG. Which, is now what I call it when I send texts to my friends to play Magic. “Hey, got time for a MTG MTG?”

Jesus fucking Christ why didn’t you do this back when the Democrats were in power Bernie? Stop fucking virtue signaling. You could have proposed this 4 years ago and it would have had a good chance of actually passing. And that’s exactly why you waited until now, isn’t it?

It saddens me that Bernie is the least broken politician we have, and he still sucks.

SomethingInGERMAN!!!

Okay, little backstory here. When I was growing up, there was this fighting game called Karnov’s Revenge, and it was the 90s, so the characters said little 2 second phrases that more or less sounded like words. My friends and I were fascinated by it, ended up adding many of those phrases to our vocabulary. One of those characters was a giant German wrestler named Marstorius - and some of his phrases were just incomprehensible. So we ended up just yelling “SomethingInGERMAN” when he would pull of his big wresting move. No, not a translation, no actual German words were injured. And boyo did that stick, still say it to this day.

https://www.arcadequartermaster.com/kr_characters.html

Go back in time and buy another 1997 F-150. The thing is an amazing example of do it simple & do it right, and it will last. But, it’s also close to 30 years old, nearly every system on it is showing the tell-tale signs of age. I would love to have an actual new one, it would last me the rest of my days. (On a happy note, I just finished putting a rebuilt motor in mine. So, here’s hoping for another 25+ years).

It saddens me that even if I could afford a new car at today’s prices, I don’t want what they’re making.

For a few brief years, there’s was a men’s alternative to Valentines day. “Steak & Blowjobs day” was held exactly one month later, on March 14.

I have never seen such a surge in love for mathematics since then. Women around the world who barely know what Pi represents were suddenly very aware that March 14 was Pi day.

It’d be cool to walk about Mars for an afternoon. Maybe find that rover (Opportunity?) that ran out of power & give it a fresh battery & clean off its solar panels, see if it’ll fire back up again.

I was just thinking this morning that it’s kinda odd that there’s no cell phone that also doubles as a multi-meter for measuring electronic current. I guess it’s because in theory you’d need to also carry around a set of probes with you?