Yeah, but then I won’t be able to hide my disdain later, when I am manning a bake sale booth next to that particular parent.

Although I think that was never fully the case - it was always Fit, as far as I know - which is transliterated as fitto (フィット) in Japanese. That may have been the reason people reported “Fitta” being the name, and it is close enough to make Swedish school kids giggle.

My kid is in school in Queens; this is absolutely 100% the parents’ fault. There is rarely any need to drive your kids in the first place: https://steinhardt.nyu.edu/research-alliance/research/spotlight-nyc-schools/how-far-do-nyc-students-travel-get-school

I paid a deposit of 30 Euros for this guy who makes small series of handbuilt 1/87 scale cars (Makette), he is planning to build a 300-example run of the Maserati Quattroporte II but it seems like it will be cancelled as he only has 33 orders right now. I also pre-paid 110 Euros for some Italian guy to build me a…

Fart means speed in Swedish.

You’ll like how the French pronounce MR2 - Toyota sold it as the MR Coupé there, IIRC.

On the other hand, he had $1,800 in his pocket - he could easily have gotten a beater; $300 a month would have covered all sorts of potential repairs and uber rides. He could’ve gotten himself a scooter as a backup after a year or two.

It’s a quick lesson in how interest works:

Same - but I couldn’t think of a way to ask without seeming like a websnark, so I just stayed quiet. I think you did good, but only the OP can tell us how you made them feel.

How do we know they still build them? I think they have three years’ worth of stock on hand and are selling them off at a trickle.

Well, a couple making $160K a year probably deosn’t have a lot of padding, but someone making $500K would theoretically have an extra $340K of spending money. Except this dude likely had pretty high baseline expenses. Sounds like the kind of person paying $10K a month in rent.

Or he could have bought a 60s Maserati 3500 or Sebring, and a lightly used Lexus LS, and have no debt and two nice cars.

Yeah - trading it in for a Corvette is much, much sadder than trading it for a Mirage. Don’t try to fake it.

I haven’t seen Blade Runner, but I think I should see it just so that I can know how far off base Musk is. (I’m told it’s a great movie, but two kids means few chances to watch things they can’t also see)

My four-year-old was running around the yard with his pals, chanting “fight for death” - I think he has as much sense of what he is saying as Elon does.

Seconding the ketamine comment. While not advocating for recreational or psychotropic drug use, a bit of an acid overdose in my twenties seemed to have rewired my brains. As in six months later I had mostly new friends and was back in school and had a new, less dead-end job. I was able to have romantic relationships,…

“Human shield” is 100% in the eyes of the beholder.

These things seem big enough that you could shoot them down a little later, not above someone’s house. Or at least track them.

The only car I have ever seen catch fire was an Alaska-plated Ferrari F40 being hooned at Montauk Airport by an obviously extremely wealthy Frenchman. He let me get near enough with my camera to get some shots but then his temper rose (he said “Rrrogntudjuuuu”) and it was requested that I leave.