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Joined 10 months ago
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Cake day: August 23rd, 2023

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  • I don’t really think that’s a bad thing when you really think about it. Teaching kids “No matter how confident someone is about what they tell you, it’s a good idea to double check the facts” doesn’t seem like the worst thing to teach them.




  • Also remember that those trucks are both heavier and less aerodynamic than your Bel-Air. A well-equipped Tundra or Silverado is pretty close to the weight of your Bel-Air and Z3, combined.

    I guarantee that your 70s motor isn’t really all that eco-friendly. Once all the emissions stuff is warmed up, those trucks are honestly pretty “clean” in regards to tail pipe emissions compared to even a car 20 years ago. Remember that CO2 and water aren’t the only things emitted, and while they’re worse on the CO2 front, anything without a catalytic converter is going to emit some pretty nasty stuff in addition to all all the CO2.



  • This just makes it even dumber. Some of these at least have some interesting ties to the state’s history. Eugene Stoner isn’t even from Michigan, and ArmaLite was based in California and now in Arizona.

    If people REALLY gave a shit and just couldn’t stand for not having a state firearm, I’d argue the M1 Carbine would be a far better choice given the historical ties to our automotive manufacturing base and its transition to wartime manufacturing, with General Motors being the single largest producer during WWII.

    Alternatively, Hi-Point has some manufacting here, so I’d be willing to consider making the Yeet Cannon the official state firearm.

    It pretty clearly has nothing to do with any sort of ties to manufacturers or state history though, and is 100% a “tRiGgEr tHe LiBs” move, which makes it incredibly frustrating as someone who is actually interested in firearms for their history and engineering, instead of as an inadequacy compensator.




  • The problem is the laws regulating automatics are absolutely idiotic, and automatic weapons are 100% legal to own, just kind of expensive. Not like “need to be a multi-millionaire” expensive, but “can afford to pay cash for a late-model used car”.

    Like most of our half-assed regulations, it doesn’t actually do anything other than making it pay to play. We don’t actually want to do anything that might prevent cops and their buddies from having a monopoly on force, so basically every gun law is moot for them anyway, even if they’re buying them as private citizens.

    That’s one of the biggest concerns I have with the way we regulate firearms (among many other things) in the US, because they clearly aren’t made with a mindset of “X thing is bad for society as a whole, we need to do something about it”, it’s "X thing is totally fine if you’re in our special club, but the plebs are not allowed to have it.






  • And since the 12v cabin battery is kept constantly tended and never used for cranking, it also lasts many years longer.

    Ehh, this isn’t necessarily true for most EVs at this point, at least from my experience. Since they don’t have to put up with cranking loads, they tend to be far smaller than one in an ICE. This means that all the “idle” stuff that’s running when the HV contactors aren’t closed and the DC-DC charging circuit isn’t active drains the battery much more quickly, and draining them below ~70% is what starts to degrade them rapidly.

    I’ve personally never had an 12v battery in an EV last more than about 5 years, while I’ve had batteries in my ICE cars do double that before they showed any signs of trouble.

    One other slight issue I’ve noticed is that a marginal 12v battery makes the car absolutely lose its shit. I can’t even tell you the number of people I’ve seen on forums who think their car completely shit the bed due to the number of faults and such it’ll report, even though it’s still driving somewhat normally.


  • Yes, it very much is. I’ve owned 2 EVs for 6 years at this point, they absolutely go through tires faster than my ICE vehicles, even on the factory tires. Go to any EV owner forum, and you’re almost guaranteed to see complaints about tire wear. It’s very, very much a thing.

    Now, it’s not necessarily inherent to EVs, because it’s down to weight and torque output, so a big heavy truck with lots of torque can also burn through tires plenty quick. But still, EVs are much heavier than an equivalent ICE.

    Take a look at 2 vehicles from Kia that are dimensionally almost identical, the Telluride and EV9. The Telluride weighs 4,522lbs in its maxed out AWD trim, while the base FWD trim of the EV9 weighs 5093lbs, and the AWD version is over 1200lbs heavier than the equivalent Telluride at 5,732lbs.

    If you’ve got a pretty typical midsized modern vehicle around 3000lbs, go ahead and drive the next set of tires with 700-800lbs of sandbags in your car and see how your tires hold up.

    Not to mention there are already a number of studies showing that total PM emissions from EVs are only marginally better than ICE cars, if at all, despite having zero tailpipe and reduced PM from braking due to regen. Now, try and guess where all that additional particulate is coming from…