I would far rather load the bed of the 1998 Silverado on the left than the modern one on the right. Loading a lifted truck (they are basically all lifted nowadays) is so much harder. I get why people love and hold onto those 1990s trucks, they were a lot more practical.

Taxing vehicles by gross vehicle weight and miles traveled is probably a good strategy, as more vehicles are BEV and the meager gas taxes in North America fall farther behind compared to escalating road maintenance costs.

I forgot about Heroic, I’m checking it out now, thanks!

That seems like a good plan. You can also just get a “beater” MTB bike for winter if you go that route, which you won’t have to worry about as much with salt, ice, corrosion, etc. as your good road bike.

Upvotes for both bird and bike!

A lot if people, myself included mainly care about price and drm. So Steam is not something I care about, just price or GOG.

I’m with you. Although if the game is only on Windows, I’d rather be on Steam to make the Linux compatibility automagic.

Booming Music for local storage, with some Bandcamp streaming and occasional YouTube playlists via NewPipe.

Duopoly, then.

I love that you provided the reference. That really was a legendary advert.

This makes some sense to me, particularly with second-hand retailers like Poshmark, etc.

Ooh, Mythmatch sounds delightful, I’m downloading the demo to check it out!

Kissinger shit right here

It seems like the interesting parts of country music got kicked out by gate-keeping corporate assholes. Americana seems to have collected a lot of the exiles, i.e. Brandi Carlile, John Prine, Emmylou Harris, Jason Isbell, Allison Russell, Gillian Welch, Maren Morris, etc.

I guess Chris Stapleton hasn’t been kicked out of country yet, and he’s pretty good. I thought “White Horse” was an absolute jam.

I always liked the AMC Gremlin, my friend had one in high school and it was fun-ugly.

This article doesn’t mention the limitations of remote access for Jellyfin, which requires some tricks like reverse proxy or Tailscale. I think Jellyfin is a great option if you only watch/listen on your home network, but if anyone wants to replicate the remote access capabilities of Plex, I typically warn them they are going to have to roll their sleeves up.

Both those Arkady Martine books were great, I rather hope the author returns to that universe at some point!

I never heard that about Scientologists, but I definitely heard that about Mormons. Those foreign languages come in handy in the foreign service, FBI, etc.

I remember Blindsight being really out there, but also kinda grounded in logic. (>!Except for the vampire part, there was a vampire in that book, right?!<)

I’m having a so-so year of sci-fi reading, nothing bad, but nothing set my brain on fire either. I read John Scalzi’s Interdependency trilogy, and thought it was fine. I finished, after a long gap, Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother series, and thought it was only okay. I started Red Rising and finished the first book but didn’t care for it enough to read any more of the series. I read Station Eleven, and thought it was just fine. So yeah, nothing enraptured me much this year.

Oh, I did finish Jo Walton’s Thessaly trilogy (The Just City, The Philosopher Kings, Necessity) and I was surprised how much more firmly the series ended in sci-fi after starting more in fantasy. I wouldn’t say that series rocked my socks either, but given the big narratives swings the books took, I was impressed by how well the series stuck the landing for a satisfying conclusion.

Honorable mention is his Dogs of War series, also amazing

I just read that book, and I thought it was fine. I didn’t know there were other books, how do you think they compare?