I find it kind of ridiculous that, to charge a DC laptop from a DC car battery (with pretty similar voltages), we need to convert DC—>AC using this inverter, then AC—>DC using the transformer on the charger. There’s got to be a better way.

I ran the numbers a while ago but lost that spreadsheet. The reduction in your chance of dying from a COVID infection with/without being vaccinated were pretty much *exactly* that of dying from a car crash with/without being belted in. Exact numbers are probably different now, but the concept is the same.

I work in the Federal government and if you don’t spend your entire appropriation down by the end of the fiscal year then Treasury takes it back. I don’t know what happens to those funds after they are swept, but that is generally how it works. Just a bit of typical political grandstanding and mischaracterization of…

Caffeine is actually an effective performance enhancing drug at allowed dosages but pot does not improve performance and is banned. Their rules are funny.

Funny you mention that. Agreed that it’s not the same and being unvaccinated puts others at risk while being unbelted does not, but a while ago I ran the numbers (I can’t find the spreadsheet and am too lazy to redo it) and found that the reduction in your odds of dying in a crash caused by wearing a seatbelt were *ext…

I thought that was Denny’s that had lots of prior incidents. And Cracker Barrel of course, but what do you expect with that name? This is the first one I’ve seen involving Waffle House and it surprises me a bit, since 25-75% of the employees at the ones I’ve been to have been Black. But that was Atlanta and…

Not sure about now or buying, but I leased an Integra instead of a Civic back around 2002 because when you took into account the (much) higher insurance costs of the Civic and the higher resale value of the Integra the lease cost only ~$20 more per month. That was a no brainer for me.

He’s probably been reading Jalopnik which recently told him it works the other way around-

These algorithms assign probabilities to recognition (see image in comment above where the traffic signals were 87.9-99.7% certain). I’m pretty sure that in this case the camera would classify the moon as a low-probability traffic signal and it would be overruled by the high-probability “nothing is there” from the…

Perhaps, but it can be done. Maybe they just need better LIDAR sensors and algorithms.

You know what would help with that? LIDAR. Oh wait...

Good suggestions, but I’d add HOV to the toll prices. I live in the DC area where HOV lanes can make a huge difference, but they switch directions, can be enforced differently and in different directions at certain times of day, and have different rules for how many people count as HOV (2 or 3). If you could just…

Maybe not as cool as a fridge, but the HVAC system in our current house used to be a ‘73 Chrysler before we replaced it.

Fucking boogaloo assholes ruined Hawaiian shirts. I used to love wearing them but now I just can’t.

This is a great comment. Autonomous cars are treating traffic laws as inviolable constraints when they should really be weighted optimization criteria. But who determines those weights and what are the best ones to use? This leads to the actual biggest problem with autonomous cars: lawyers. When some guy runs over a…

Lumber is crashing? I’ve heard that but certainly haven’t seen it. The $40 plywood sheets I need were over $60 when I started looking (and held off on the project). They peaked at over $80 and are now only back down to $60. When are they supposed to get back down to normal?

But then to me a mole wrench sounds to me like something you would use to open a jar of tasty Mexican sauce.

Not so much a snack, but a roadtrip-only drink:
Gas station coffee is highly caffeinated, foul tasting sludge.
The “cappuccino” drinks are lightly caffeinated, and overly-sweet.
So I fill up with 50-60% regular coffee and the rest “cappuccino” for a tasty yet sufficiently caffeinated beverage to keep me going and awake.

South Florida has lots of iguanas too, but all those do is fall out of the trees when it drops below freezing. I’m sure Planktron was talking about these guys. So harmless kids catch them and wear them as earrings.

I don’t know- I think part of the problem with satire nowadays is that reality has caught up to it. Not enough difference to tell which is which anymore. Five or six years ago people would have thought our current actual news headlines to be satire.