cpwright

My daughter got one of these. The school bus was pulled over on the side of the road; not in a travel lane. The bus driver opened the door as she was passing the back of the bus and closed it before she got to the front of the bus. She got a $250 fine. I pled not guilty (because it is my car). This was last summer, and we still do not have a court date.

Plenty of these tickets are BS that most actual cops would not write. The only saving grace is there is video instead of just someone's description of what happened.

The bed is only 4.5' long. The 5.5' short bed available on an F150 Lightning is too short for me, the ICE F150 with a 6.5' bed at least lets you have flat sheet goods with the tail gate down.

Yes. They are bad in very different ways.

Trump has no moral compass; and the only thing that matters is his ego.

Harris had domestic policy that I almost universally disagree with.

I did vote in the primary, but it didn't matter at that point because the only other option was Haley. I would have been enthusiastic about any other Republican primary candidate.

I think that the median US voter likely did not want this.

With two candidates and a variety of issues, you are very likely going to have to compromise on something. You can support Trump's immigration policy, DOGE efforts, and more; without thinking that the US should help Putin restore the Soviet Union.

Personally, I could not bring myself to vote for either of the presidential candidates. I only voted on the down ballot races.

I've not bought an origin, but think it definitely has a niche. You can do almost everything you can do with a Shaper Origin with a regular router, but you'll need a template or jig to do it.

For example: - It can do dovetails, etc. instead of purchasing a Leigh jig and using a standard router. - You can do hinge mortises for various hardware. - Cutouts in hardwood floors for various registers, without having to make a template for just that thing.

When you get into curves instead of just straight lines it can be easier to work with the Shaper than a template/jig. You can also use the Shaper to build a template that a standard bearing guided bit will follow.

You can do all of that with another tool, but the Shaper origin does it with less setup. The trade-off is if you have the setup then a regular router is probably going to be much faster to batch things out.

There was a Roomba equivalent company out there, which would have wheels that drive the motor around, but they never shipped. Maslow moves itself by pulling on belts on fixed anchor points.

The Shaper Origin has you move the machine, and it makes corrections using machine vision to track its position. It will give you more accuracy than a Maslow; but at a much greater cost and more attention.

A jig saw does not make as clean cuts as a router, and you need to have the workpiece suspend so the blade can go through the work. With a router, you can just have a spoilboard underneath.

I don't actually care about battery backup for my house. I have an $800 generator for that which is not tied to my truck being parked in front of the house.

I do want my pickup truck to be a good pickup truck, and the impression I get is that the Lightning is really an F150 and does a good job at that.

I ordered my ICE F150 in late 2022 (delivered in 2023), so don't plan to buy a new truck for another 7-9 years.

When I was ordering, the Lightnings were just not available. Even if they were, however, you can only get the Lightning in the crew cab short bed configuration with a 145" wheel base.

I wanted a 6.5' bed, so the Lightning doesn't offer that. For a classic F150, you can get 2 wheel base options with 3 different cab/bed combinations.

The frunk with lockable storage is actually a really attractive feature though in terms of carrying tools or other things you want secure and out of the weather.

I've heard my wife say it that way because it is a plural in her native language.

My snowblower is 283lbs with a 10hp engine. It takes about 30-45 minutes to do my 3000sf driveway for a normal snow. Adding the weight and expense of batteries is something I'm not at all interested in.

Not all manufacturers have big batteries for power tools, but the ones that do like the MX fuel that is used to run concrete tools have prices that are >$500.

You can't just recharge the battery overnight like you can in your car if it run out; you need to have the machine running to get out of the house - and filling it up with gas is just a couple minutes charging is going to take much longer.

Even the smaller machine that I had before was 8hp (but had wheels instead of tracks) and weighed 150lbs.

I don't find the Medtronic solution to be that off. But the closed loop solution can't raise your blood sugar, it can only lower it. It only has insulin which it can dial back or increase. The real danger would be if it detected you very high and then tried to rapidly decrease it.

The FDA approved systems do have safeties in there that alarm persistent highs or on any lows. They also won't provide more basal than a multiple of the pre-configured setting you have.

The biggest thing for me was the 780G alarms less than 680G when there is nothing that I actually want to do to change it. Waking up all the damn time is no fun.

One thing that I would object to is this characterization from the article:

There are people who take insulin pumps (which provide insulin in very small very frequent doses and are ~permanently injected into your body, but are otherwise dumb as a brick) and combine them with continuous glucose monitors, and make the glucose measurements inform and control the pump. This is called “closed loop” or “artificial pancreas”, and getting one officially is very hard or impossible: not FDA approved yet / you need to be part of an university study to get one / … It’s one of those things that “will be here in 5 years”, they say every year for the past 30 years.

I've had a Medtronic CGM and pump for 6 years now (680G, now 780G). It is an FDA approved system with feedback from the CGM to the pump. The only thing I needed to get insurance approval was a blood test showing that I was T1 and not T2.

The auto mode has been greatly improved in the 780G pump vs. the 680G pump. I only need to stick my finger a couple times a week, and my control has improved. Without the pump and MDI it was quite a bit higher. It's nowhere near as good as an actual pancreas, but it is definitely not vaporware by any stretch of the imagination.

The Medtronic support is (mostly good), and I have a pretty high degree of confidence that it will keep me alive. I do have Kwikpens as backup in case of malfunctions - which do happen. The biggest things for me are as simple as ripping your infusion set out while away from home, or the thing has an intractable Bluetooth communications problem or other kind of hardware error.

The author is pretty much 100% right about "vibes" though, even with a pump.

You might not actually care about any particular brand or model. When I bought a new car in September 2023 (probably one of the worst times to do it), I was pretty much content with any AWD sedan or small SUV new or used that was not too old or too high mileage and had Carplay. I would have liked a power driver seat, but ended up compromising on that. Even reminding yourself of the list of features you want at each point.

There is a lot to think of with a car transaction that goes beyond mechnical function. The basic four boxes of finance or leasing/trade-in/price/"extras" are a lot to keep in your head all at once when you only rarely buy a car. I ended up going to about 6 or 7 dealerships to get what I wanted at a good enough price taking into consideration the trade value on my truck and what they had in stock.

I have a Sawstop for my main cabinet saw in my shop at home, but also a regular job site saw for working elsewhere.

The table saw is a great tool, and the safety feature makes sense. Especially for the cabinet saw where the incremental price for a comparable too is not so much - but there are plenty of other power tools that will hurt you just as badly. A router or jointer won't amputate a finger, it will just turn it to hamburger.

No matter the tool, you need to respect it and learn the safety rules.

As an American, American soldiers are not fighting. The Ukrainians are not asking them to either. We are paying taxes, and those taxes are being used to send weapons to Ukraine. I'm pro-Ukraine as long as they collectively want to fight themselves - whether that means we send them advanced weapon systems or provide training and support for an insurgency.

The university and a Kangaroo court should not be involved in either of these cases, we have real police and courts for that.

Salt water entering the pipeline can damage more than just the single length of pipe that has the hole in it, so fixing it is can be uneconomical.

I had an active nuclear plant in my neighborhood (Indian Point Energy Center) until the NY government made it untenable to continue the relicensing process. I would be perfectly fine with the plant continuing to run and continuing to have onsite storage of the waste. It provided 25% of the power for our county and NYC, employed 1500 people directly, and paid for roughly 1/3 of our children's schools. Shutting it down was a mistake, nuclear is so upfront capital cost intensive that it is a waste to stop a functional plant.

The lousy towing performance probably doesn't matter. 75% of truck owners tow one time a year or less. I've had my F-150 for 8 years 45,000 miles, and it's seen a trailer 3 times for a total of less than 400 miles. I'm close to being in the market for a new truck, and the biggest deal breaker for me with the lightning is the 5.5' box instead of the 6.5' box. Weighing over 6,000 lbs also means you can't register it as a passenger vehicle in NYS without capping it - meaning you can't drive on the parkways.

https://www.thedrive.com/news/26907/you-dont-need-a-full-siz...

With a car it is even more complicated, because the sales tax is based on the county you register it in - not the county that the dealership is in.

I might not hold up the new Tappan Zee Bridge as a beacon of meeting design goals.

https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/mario-cuomo-bridge-s...

Dewalt is one of Stanley Black and Decker's brands. But I don' think they offer many power tools under the Stanley brand (though now SBD is using Dewalt for hand tools like tape measures, etc.).

Except in NY, where before the SAFE act they did. Westchester county responded to a FOIA request. Putnam county told the Journal News to pound sand.

https://www.rcfp.org/journals/wake-journal-news-publishin/

Anecdotally we have about 1/3 of our roof with a vaulted ceiling and the other 2/3 with an attic. The side with an attic is the side that would be suitable for solar panels (more sun at the right angle) or adjacent to the vaulted ceilings. The leaks that came up were all on the insulated vaulted ceiling side; starting about 25 years old, and we had another every couple years for about five years until replacing the roof. The attic parts never had any problems.

If you're worried about gas usage, the stove seems to be the wrong place to care as well. We use propane for our stove, which comes to somewhere in the neighborhood of $100/year (<30 gallons). Our space heating is oil, and that is over $2000 a year and is more energy dense (~1000 gallons).

If you want to have the most effect on usage, you'll worry about space heating not cooking. As long as your home is warm, you don't care. My wife specifically wanted gas for the stove instead of electric when we redid the kitchen, so we went through the effort to get propane.

We need something similar and conspicuous for mortgages. Let people really see/feel the interest.

The disclosures you get from the lender are already required to contain a a "FINANCE CHARGE" which is the total interest you will pay on the loan, "The dollar amount the credit will cost you". They also have "TOTAL PAYMENTS", the "The amount you will have paid after you have made all payments as scheduled."

The forms are formatted clearly. If you want to know what the number is, it is right there with an explanation.

In my NY suburb, you do the inspection before the contract is signed. No money has yet changed hands, and it can be a point of negotiation or just walking away.

It isn't the Realtor accepting the price, it is the owner. At least in my state they are obligated to present every offer. Price is not the only dimension to factor in either. Just off the top of my head: (1) inspection contingency (2) mortgage contingency (or how much to make up for the appraisal) (3) timing for closing (4) lease back option

Can all affect what you would select, not just the price.

At the local community college where I grew up ago they had open enrollment 25 years ago. Anyone in the county could attend. That doesn't mean they didn't have standards for you to pass the courses necessary to graduate.

I'm not sure why you would assume that the average school bus buyer can't do a spreadsheet. Our local suburban NY school district is fairly run-of-the mill, and has a budget of $84 million with several million dollars of that being for transportation. We have our own busses and drivers, and they spend about a quarter million dollars a year on diesel fuel.

The Superintendent for business affairs that has an MBA from Columbia and earns $231,000, and should clearly be able to handle a spreadsheet and then making the yearly powerpoint presentations.

A law that singles out a person or group of people is called a bill of attainder, and violates the constitution. So instead, the legislature will write some criteria that they claim is generic but in fact know only applies to a single institution/company.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_of_attainder