Around here, you find sidewalks like that in areas where everyone has a golf cart. It’s a big thing with the Cryptkeepers here in God’s Waiting Room, FL.

Nope, not at all related to weight, balance, or thrust per se. ALL airplanes with underslung engines pitch up under power - that is simple geometry and Newtonian physics. More power=more pitch up. The “problem” with the Max that MCAS was originally meant to fix is that due to the SIZE and forward position of those big…

Camrys feel like shit to drive when they are new. I have rented so damned many of them in the past 25 years... From super base rental car spec to high-zoot XLE V6s. Awful across the board. Corollas are even worse.

If you can afford to buy one new, you can easily afford to fix it if it breaks. Depreciation is a far larger expense than maintenance and repairs.

Bluntly, so what if they do? Fix the damn thing and keep enjoying the drive.

And they drive like shit the whole time. No thanks.

Modern BMWs ARE far more reliable than those of the olden days, including the “good old days”. I have all the service records for the extremely basic 528e that my stepfather bought new in 1983 that he and then my mother drove for 20+ years and 150K. It looks like the NY phone book. In contrast, my ‘11 328i had a…

Thankfully, there are fewer of them with every generation. Unfortunately, it tends to be the dumb ones that stay in the cults. Idiocracy, here we come!

He doesn’t run a CAR company. He runs a software/AI company. He sez so himself. Trump isn’t tariffing software.

To be fair, including Mexico in NAFTA was exporting jobs to Mexico, full stop, do not pass go, do not collect $200. It was very much done to make business execs happy because they could move production down there and save big money on formerly well-paying and mostly union factory jobs. And you can be quite sure the…

They will make more from the fees than they will lose in customers. They are quite literally the only airline that doesn’t do it, and just like the other majors you can BET that they will make free seat selection a perk for frequent fliers - which will incentivize the people who fly them a lot to stay with them. I…

It really doesn’t matter how you load the self-loading human cargo. Because even the way the majors do it, the humans are loaded faster than the bags, cargo, fuel, catering, and paperwork. And today, ATC generally will NOT let you leave the gate more than a couple minutes early.

What I think has happened is they have finally decided to replace their ancient ticket management software. You can bet THAT is driving this change. And if they are doing THAT, why give up the MANY millions in seat selection fee income that they have been giving up all these years since that became the norm? Literally…

They don’t do that for two reasons. Historically those travel agencies, and that is what those websites are, took a commission from the airline for selling the seats. And secondly because they don’t want their fares so easily cross-shopped with other airlines. And because of that, MANY SWA fliers don’t even look at…

While I personally LOVE open seating, I am astounded it took them this long. The money they are losing in seat selection fees must have finally outweighed the money they are saving with their archaic computer systems.

I hope that was the person allegedly taking money from them. Enterprising!

Why should the government pay for it? If you can’t afford the class on how to properly raise a kid, you can’t afford to have one in the first place. Raising kids should require a license even more than driving.

But to the average punter, BMW=racecar.

If you took a ride through the parking lot of my wealthy suburban alma mater you would be AMAZED at what people give their kids to drive these days. Including my best friend who gave his kid a Mercedes GL550 to drive back and forth to that school school - his wife insisted, because it’s “safe”.

Indeed - by modern standards that BMW is rather slow. But I can assure you I did JUST as stupid things in my even slower ‘82 Subaru when I was 17 - I just had the dumb luck not to crash it hard enough to hurt anybody. I hit those speeds with some regularity - it just took longer. I did crash it several times.