I think the most noteworthy thing in your entire anecdote is that you’re going to all this trouble, but even in your extreme case, assuming it’s true, you’re still just eking out like 2-3 more mpg than the CVT in drive mode. Assuming that you’re not carrying out this driving under tightly-controlled, scientific study…

Okay. I mean, I don’t know what I’m supposed to say to that. I guess these companies aren’t putting CVTs in cars to boost gas mileage, then. They’re just putting them in to piss off Jalopnik commenters, who are all unequivocally better at manually squeezing out every bit of value from their gas tanks than CVT-equipped…

Manual fetishism is really strange. There are so few places where driving a manual transmission is very enjoyable anymore. Traffic sucks anywhere close to civilization, and driving a manual in traffic sucks. I have a CVT in my Subaru, and it’s the best transmission I’ve ever owned, and I’ve had manual, auto,…

But you know what? The CVT does its job just fine and life goes on. Do I wish I could have a fun weekend car with a manual? Sure... but it’s not happening right now.

Main reason I like manuals is because whenever I drive an auto or CVT, there’s that little voice in my head that says “I could’ve handled that better than the stupid computer.”

Why? Just because it’s “real gears”? I don’t get it. CVTs aren’t horrible these days. I almost—almost—get the nostalgia for manuals. But the way people are increasingly nostalgic for automatics just boggles the mind, and pretty well demonstrates that the aversion for CVTs (which has displaced the older aversion for…

How is Steam a monopoly? If they are, it isn’t because of anything they’ve done. Valve has always been happy for devs to release their games anywhere they like (and yes, there are other platforms). Epic, on the other hand, is putting cash in devs’ hands in order to get them to release exclusively on their platform. It…

So, like, you shouldn’t own a dog if you live in northern MN and literally can’t spend two 30-minute dog-walking sessions outdoors without dying during the winter?

The problem is that the owner of the bar was probably motivated by asshats on their Facebook, or whatever, and now the frontline employees have to do their jobs while enforcing a deliberately provocative rule that will almost certainly draw problems that didn’t even exist before. If the owner was going to be solely…

The most hilarious thing ever is watching people who irrationally hate CVTs wax nostalgic about traditional automatics.

I’ve never bought a brand new car in my life, but if they stuck a 6 speed in a Legacy, that might change.

It was a huge tabloid story back in the ‘90s.

What’s there going to be to discover?

Thursday: “That Nancy Pelosi is a fucking centrist and a sellout for not immediately buying into AOC’s agenda. We don’t want people like that on our side.”

There is still one big downside, and it includes perhaps the three most dreaded letters in all of car-dom: “Every 2020 Legacy features a Lineartronic® Continuously Variable Transmission (CVT),” according to Subaru.

You’re not getting the point. Yes, these programs help people. Yes, these programs are good. That doesn’t mean that we, as a society, are geared toward socialism. There are countries where social programs that don’t directly/primarily benefit capital are nevertheless regarded as bulletproof, a sort of birthright, and…

Orientation is a matter of how we conceive of social programs, and of what (if anything) ensures their survival moving forward. Take education as an example. On the surface, it’s a totally egalitarian, non-means-tested system. But at its core, it’s tied to property taxes, which means people can fundamentally fuck with…

That’s a different issue. I’m not saying the social programs we’ve got are bad because we aren’t oriented, as a society, toward socialism. I’m just saying that the way we approach our particular programs is what demonstrates the fact that we’re not oriented toward socialism. Obviously, to the extent that we’ve got any…

Triggered?

Great, but we’re not oriented toward socialism. Having social programs does not equate to being a socialist country. That’s not how it works.