Planes, Trains, and Automobiles is a great movie, and one we watch every year. I don’t quite understand it’s connection to a screwed up family though. From all of the information we have it appears that Steve Martin’s family is happy and functional. John Candy has a tragic backstory, but I also failed to see the…

I was recently at the doctor for a routine physical. I overheard a woman tell the receptionist she was there for a covid test. The woman then proceeded to sit down next to me with her mask under her nose. I got up, moved across the room, and stood there for the rest of my wait as there were no available seats. I put…

This makes me think of almost every cookbook I own. The kitchen counter is a dangerous place for books. 

Interesting fact about the splash-less bleach in the photo: It should not be used to disinfect. I learned this in a moment where I had never wanted bleach more in my life. A few years ago we had an unfortunate rat problem. A trap in a bathroom had maimed, but not killed one of the rats, and there was blood everywhere.…

I’ve been an analyst in the auto industry for 15 years. For my entire career the Chinese have been ready to enter the US market “within the next two years”. They’ve had strong showing at major auto shows, but the product never actually comes. While I would never say never, paint me skeptical. The real way the Chinese…

My wife and I do the opposite of what you say, and are too reluctant to go the ER. There have been two occasions where I took my son to urgent care and they sent me to the ER instead. One was when he was 5 and had a cut that required stitches. I called Urgent Care and they assured me they could handle it, only to fret…

If you read my post I said I’m unlikely to own a cat again for that very reason. I think my point stands though that some people won’t own a cat if they can’t have it declawed, and some cats would never be adopted if declawing wasn’t an option. 

I fully understand why declawing is bad for a cat. That said, it’s the only way I would own a cat. Our last cat has since passed, but when we decided to adopt a cat we only considered cats who had been declawed. Some of us like cats but aren’t willing to let them destroy our furniture. We clearly aren’t alone, and for…

That thought did occur to me, but it doesn’t seem to lineup with my personal experience when flying. 

Good idea on the surface, but in reality that is a regressive tax that disproportionately impacts low-income people.

Neither are anywhere near the average weights of adults in the US. I’d have to imagine this calculation accounts for children being on the plane as well. That’s the only explanation that makes sense to me. Even so, it doesn’t seem like there would be enough children on the average flight to offset that much. 

The Office hasn’t been on Netflix for quite some time, you need to head over to Peacock to stream it.

I learned to drive a stick in my dad’s F-250 diesel. I didn’t realize how impossible to stall it was until I started driving other sticks and realized that I greatly overestimated my abilities driving a manual. 

I love the form of a coupe, but I always hated them as a passenger, and not because of the inconvenience of climbing into the backseat. From the time I was a child I was always paranoid when I rode in the backseat of a coupe. Whenever I was in the backseat of a two door car I worried about being in an accident and…

Why not just quit Twitter without replacing it? The short history of social media shows us that all platforms eventually become horrible hellholes. 

This is one reason I’m looking into adding solar panels to my house. I would love to use all of the electricity I want guilt-free. My AC would probably never stop running in the summer if I weren’t worried about wasting my coal-generated electricity. 

Tesla will not benefit as much as you might think because they are too expensive. There is a price cap of $55k on cars and $80k on trucks and SUVs. I work in the industry, and transaction data for Tesla is unfortunately not available like it is for most OEMs. That said, a high percentage of Model 3s and Model Ys…

Right? I didn’t realize there were people who don’t heat the shells. 

That’s not a bad idea on the surface, but the fee would have to be much greater than what the professor suggests. I’m actually an auto industry analyst by trade. I don’t know if you ever heard the term price elasticity in school, but the long and short of it is that when applied to large expensive vehicles, $500 isn’t…

Isn’t this just a regressive tax that will punish the “have-nots”? Folks shelling out huge sums for these vehicles when they are brand new probably won’t balk too much at a $500 registration fee. It’s the second and third owners who will be punished.