@LuFins-Dad said in Nissan on the ropes: I’d try a transmission that isn’t crap. Honda makes the best CVT on the market.

I drive in both of the worst two states pretty much every day. I wish I could say I disagreed with findings, although to be fair Rhode Island isn’t that bad once you get away from Providence, which if anything is worse than Boston

It could save money because there is price competition in these markets. But now it’s on fake prices.

Whoever posted it, it still speaks to the tyranny of the minority that has been fed over the last 3 decades.

Holy shit.

https://x.com/robbystarbuck/status/1869488223799701649?s=46

Always good to see new posters. I think it is @Doctor-Phibes who always greets them with, "So, tell us a bit about yourself."

@Jolly said in Good Ash, Bad Ash: Human and firewood ash doesn't look the same. I have this vision of Jolly at Jon's house, and calls Jon over. "I dont know what you are trying to pull here, but anybody can see that these ashes in the urn labeled Mom are clearly from a Red Maple! Probably one from northern Louisiana that was about 50 years old."

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2024/12/17/hydroxychloroquine-study-covid-19-retracted-trump/77051671007/

And we only had 14 days til the world as we knew it would come to an end.

Enjoy the gushing. Link to video

Simmons is always fun to watch. An actor's actor, and always working.

@LuFins-Dad said in Politifact's Lie of the Year: Cue the montage of the parade of Dems extolling Biden’s mental acuity from January to July, and completely hiding from the public that the President of the United States has the memory of a goldfish. Begging your pardon, but I made that allusion in my original post.

Magnifico!

@LuFins-Dad said in What’s in a name?: Back at our old address (or maybe even the one before) @Aqua-Letifer and I went off on the evils of “The Silver Diner”, a chain of supposed diners that had been taken over by some foodie chef and had gone off the rails. The argument that I made was that a real diner gives you a 50/50 chance that the cook’s cigarette ashes are in your eggs, and would never describe in detail on the menu it’s “delightful Garlic Aioli”… Last weekend, I had the fortune/misfortune of going back… They have now removed the jukeboxes from the table, and the restaurant has a full blown cocktail bar. They don’t even pretend to be a diner at this point The menu items only has a handful of “diner” items, and is instead surrounded by Thai Cauliflower Quinoa Pasta and Braised Boneless Short Rib. On our visit, Karla had flatiron steak medallions (that rivaled anything from the top end chophouses), Luke had lump meat crab pasta, and I had Buffalo Chili Huevos Rancheros… Karla washed down her Flatiron with a mojito, Lucas had an Old Fashioned, and I had a local craft beer. Finley had the most Diner-like meal with silver dollar pancakes and hot chocolate… So here’s my conundrum… The food was as good as can be… I will gladly eat more… But I am also terribly offended by them continuing this farce of being a diner. A diner is a very real and wonderful place, and this place isn’t that. So, do I stand by my morals, or go get another plate of those awesome Buffalo Chili Huevos Rancheros? DO NOT SLANDER CHEF YPE.

I mean... sort of. Bukowski's a lot like Tom Waits in that a lot of it is him, and a lot of it is a detailed persona. He chose loserdom as a kind of hat to put on. Interesting that a person who is familiar with survivorship bias has a harder time discerning between reality and archetype. Not that Bukowski's bullshit, but that he wrote from a perspective that was very much deliberate.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2024/12/trump-should-make-tiktok-american/ Trump has said he wants to save the app. The way for him to do that — the only defensible way — is to facilitate a sale to one of multiple potential buyers, including Steve Mnuchin and Activision’s Bobby Kotick. A forced divestiture is the outcome that’s most consistent with Trump’s stated ambitions on China policy, and with both his first-term stance against TikTok’s Chinese ownership and his campaign-trail pledges this year. TikTok is a tool of the Chinese state, and the U.S. should recognize it as such. China’s leaders have long mistreated American companies and blocked U.S. social media networks — including Truth Social — from operating in their country. They have stolen American technology from firms that opened up shop in China and mandated that they set up internal CCP committees. Wresting TikTok from Beijing’s control would send Xi Jinping a signal about America’s resolve to counter China’s long-running history of outrageous behavior. It would be a small but prominent step toward reciprocity. It would honor the broad bipartisan consensus that produced the divestiture law. And it would place Trump in a position of strength as he begins the most consequential set of negotiations of his career.