TBF, roads closed to car traffic can often be safely navigated by bike. I actually ask first though.

That’s just dumb. I could understand it happening 50 years ago or whatever but now you should have people in charge who have seen this dumbassery first hand. Mary Barra is an engineer, for example. You’d think she might have seem some of this dumb sh*t coming up through the ranks and could do something about it.

You are much more practical than I.  I just dive in, eyes closed.  “How bad could it be?”

In your example, that alternator has some expected failure rate, even under warranty. When it fails on platform 4, the extra labor comes out of the manufacturer’s pocket.  Do you think anyone actually does the math of pay now vs pay later?

It DOES come with an AARP car. :)

How did HD sales compare to 2019? Ducati announced big growth too but only compared to 2020. Only slightly up on ‘19 IIRC.

The new Pan America adventure bike got rave reviews. Not my thing any more than their other bikes but definitely not a bike for their historic customers.

In my experience: resist the urge to get something too fancy. My Rheem with a variable speed brushless blower motor uses some proprietary bullshit protocol to talk between the thermostat and the control board rather than the old 4 wires and a couple relays that worked for 100 years. Every so often, it loses…

And they had to go to great lengths for the privilege!  There was some kind of scoring of their driving habits.  A friend’s brother-in-law told me he went out, got the required score, then parked the car until the Beta was released.

Alanis Morrissette ruined the word ‘ironic’.

IMHO, the changes you’re describing might happen in the short term but the siren song of saving $$$ will be too strong to ignore long term. 5 years down the road: “Can’t we save 3% getting this from China?”  “Yes, but we’re paying a little extra to reduce risk of a supply chain disruption.” “The pandemic was FIVE…

I think I’d prefer real grass to still submerges, just because it seems so ridiculous.

Touch entry with WiFi for the house is ridiculously awesome. Everyone gets a unique code that I can cancel if they don’t need it anymore. The cleaners are on a schedule so if someone gets their code, they’re going to have to rob me in broad daylight on a weekday.

After the salesman at the local dealer lied to me about Panigale V2 availability (hoping to sell me the overpriced used 959 they had, I guess, or maybe they just can’t help lying?), my desire to put any money directly into their pockets vanished. I guess I’m not a “Ducati Unica” kind of person.

That’s pretty awesome.  As I understand it, you can do similar things on VWs but sometimes you have to rely on a helpful dealer to convince the ECU that your changes (new/different) modules are OK.

I expect a State Farm commercial to come of this.

Thermal protection costs more. “We’ll fix it in software!”

Yeah, ‘brand prestige’ gave me a double take. I guess some people really do think like that.

There was an on-going thread on a local forum about the total garbage (and, occasionally, really sweet old-school stuff) bikes people were bringing into the shops for repairs. Normally, the response would be ‘don’t even bother’ but in mid 2020, that was the only choice IF you could find the parts. Nothing was…

Such a shame. I built up my wife’s tiny 1994ish Mongoose Rockadile SX (?) for my daughter in early COVID times. It was pretty cheaply configured BUT everything was standard, just heavy. I threw my last nice 26er wheelset at it and a few other bits, switched to 1X and took 4lbs off it.