Since I guess someone’s got to say this: The photo caption says Smith at the airport in “Crimean Peninsula, Russia,” when at the time, it would have been in the Ukrainian SSR. The area today is disputed - Russia claims its theirs after a very shady “vote,” but most of the world (including the US and almost all of…

You also haven’t mentioned paint, which is at least $2k and probably more like $5k+ on a car like this (and where you can’t get the same results unless you’re a professional shop).

Part of the appeal of multiple monitors vs. ultrawide is you can get them for different purposes. I’ve got a calibrated QHD monitor that does 100% AdobeRGB, a 4k that’s just factory calibrated (DCI-P3) for anything where I want resolution (even type looks great when the pixels are that small), and a 1080p sRGB.

Part of the appeal of multiple monitors vs. ultrawide is you can get them for different purposes. I’ve got a…

You know, I actually like multiple monitors for coding, depending on what you’re doing: One display for my code, one for notes/to-dos/reference, and one for previews (if I’m doing something web-related).

You know, I actually like multiple monitors for coding, depending on what you’re doing: One display for my code, one…

There’s a program called DisplayFusion that can really help, letting you use keyboard shortcuts or buttons on top of the window to control. Here’s an example:

There’s a program called DisplayFusion that can really help, letting you use keyboard shortcuts or buttons on top of…

The real issue with medical costs being ridiculous is that nothing ever costs what it costs. Hospitals don’t make ridiculous profits on the whole, but instead, they make huge profits on some things (like a hospital that charges $500 for 2 ibuprofen for inpatients) and lose money on others (people who get services but…

It’s hard to say the “average American,” but about 12% of Americans don’t have health insurance. Hospital costs in the US are much higher than they are in other countries, so even a relatively minor incident can be very expensive - one night in a hospital alone is frequently over $10,000, and so something requiring an…

Yeah, I’d been hoping they’d release a Fourfour EV  - with the right options in it, they could have made it almost an i3 competitor, but without that I can’t see them sticking around.  Around me (in Chicago), the one Smart service center has a total of 15 cars on the lot to sell, and while they’re not exactly…

5th Gear: I’m not sure how they count sales exactly, but the fact that MB’s Smart managed to sell exactly 100 units makes me think that their wholly owned Car2Go “by the minute” car rental service “bought” all of those from Smart.

Well... a used 3 series is cheaper, but not “free,” so...

Honestly, it’s always been kind of a dodgy policy. It helped kickstart EV production (and charging infrastructure), but let’s not kid ourselves: It’s largely a handout to the upper-middle class.

Neutral: When you decide to stop making a half dozen models built on multiple platforms at once, it’s clearly a recognition that you’ve been making a series of bad decisions.

You’re thinking of the Congressional Research Service. The CBO looks at the effects of laws on revenue/expenses.

I know you wrote a 2 sentence comment, but what’s your angle? Do you think we don’t need any trade with the outside world? Or that there shouldn’t be rules about that trade?

Sure, they’ve got reasons, but the whole point of being an adult is that you realize that your choices have consequences, like increased budget deficits or limited policy choices to get things done that you want.

Mind if I ask what you actually ended up paying? I’m not sure how to really do that math given the variation in pricing for various models + the incentives that some states have for them.

My first thought was that Washington (and states) (and has for a long time) has done spectacularly little to encourage people to buy new cars.

Yes - no one really talks about global overcapacity for cars. You used to need a new car when the old one went bad - now most new cars just don’t go bad, and there’s pretty predictable maintenance for a lot of vehicles up past 250k miles.

I think you’re largely right - but I’d say it’s part of a longer trend of Americans (and others in the developed world) just not needing as many cars as they used to.

Oh, don’t kid yourself, we’ll probably end up bailing them out either way. On one hand, GM does something thousands of corporations across America have been doing because they’re high-visibility; on the flip side, GM execs have known for a decade that they’re “too big to fail,” and can put Congress (and the states and…