Just hazarding a guess, but Iowa grows a metric boatload of corn. It would make sense for ethanol fuel manufacturing to be built there, close to the ethanol source, making it easily available for gas pumps in the area. If it’s rural, maybe there are also enough 30+ year old cars that can’t take ethanol still on the road to justify ethanol-free unleaded?

Man, what a frustrating comment to read. I was so on board until the snootiness of the last two sentences. You don’t make that kind of money? You obviously do if you’re dropping 30k+ on a vehicle.

For comparison’s sake, the 2014 Altima I got 9 years ago gets 30 mpg. At the rate of $4.10/gallon I paid last week that’s $0.14 a mile, which is a hefty 3x your number. But then consider that I rent a couple rooms in a house, so I’m not installing a fast charging station at home to fully take advantage of the cheap $0.17kw/hr you are, and at the apartment I lived in previously level 1 charging wouldn’t be available at all. That leaves commercial charging stations which around me are closer to $0.30kw/hr. That would still make your EV (whatever model it is) about half the cost per mile, which is great, although not as great as my first impression felt when I saw your $0.04 number.

But why would you assume that everyone can drop tens of thousands of dollars upfront to switch to an EV? I want to think you’re just joking, but that didn’t come through from text alone, and your other comment that it is a choice to use an ICE vehicle tells me you’re probably not. That level of smarminess is just obnoxious.

I could go for some mint chocolate syrup poured over vanilla ice cream. That would slap. Please make me lose.

Alright, here are the official stats: getting perfectly clean gives you the buff Cleanliness IV for 1 hour, which then degrades to Cleanliness III for 3 hours, to Cleanliness II for 8 hours, followed by Cleanliness I for 12 hours.

The time runs at a base rate of 1 hour per hour, but your environment may lead to the rate accelerating or decreasing. For instance, being out in the hot sun may lead to sweating which increases the rate to 1.25-4 hours per hour depending on how hot it is and your passive constitution score and buffs. Being in a perfectly air conditioned, filtered environment could reduce the rate as low as .5 hours per hour.

There can also be instant hits to the timer. For instance, being hit by a thimble of mud may take off 10 minutes at once, slathering it to to cover more skin will take off a larger chunk from the timer.

But not on an asteroid

I did the math. The $1324 they give was $1324.243 in my calculator, which multiplied by 102 gives $135,072.80.

I’ll admit, I’ve not listened to much of Fountains of Wayne’s first album, more the others. They’ve been one of my favorites about as long as I can remember though. I tend to resonate with a new song of theirs every year or two. Do you have any favorites off their first album?

When I think of my favorite albums, they tend to have come to me at a time to hit me emotionally. There may be one or two songs that aren’t my favorite, but don’t detract from the whole. Oddly enough if I listen to an entire album I prefer it be a concept album, but my favorites tend to not have one cohesive theme. My favorites ordered by time include:

The Red Album by Weezer- My dad gave me the CD when I was in middle school, we’d jam to it in the car on the way to school, and when I got an mp3 player I’d listen to just about every song often.

Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd- Yes, this is a cliche. The one time I experienced ego death was on a heroic dose of LSD in college while laying in bed with an eye mask on listening to this album for the first time. I felt that I was in on a joke, that life was so vast and yet so short. I laughed, I cried, it moved me. I gave serious consideration to what I wanted out of life for the first time instead of only wanting some direction given to me. I listened to the album many more times after that when I needed a reminder of that experience.

The New Abnormal by The Strokes- This album came out at the start of the pandemic when I was stressing out of my mind at the state of the world. I loved the album name, I love every song off the album, they all felt relatable in some way, Spotify said I was in the top .5% of Strokes listeners that year. When one song comes on from my library I’m always tempted to play the whole thing. It’s great.

The Sonic Age by The Symposium- I think this is one of my favorites. I couldn’t name half the songs, but I found the artist and the album came out shortly after my dad passed away. I really like how rushed yet smooth and relaxed the album feels, it mirrored how I felt processing his death and I could just put it on and feel fine with not being fine for a bit.

I am sober and digging it. No alcohol for me today.

In 10th grade, my best friend moved away and I realized I had very few friends left. I had spent middle school considering myself part of the “social outcast” group that didn’t really fit into any of the cliques. What I did was find the lunch table that other students I shared classes with and sat there listening to them talk. Sometimes all the seats were full and I sat at a different table, but eventually as I got to understand the people and dynamics at play I started chiming in a little more until eventually I was part of the friend group.

From there I felt more comfortable talking to more people, so I did until eventually in senior year there were folks saying hi to me while walking down the hall pretty frequently, I knew most people in my graduating class of 350 to some degree, and for some reason I was voted prom king.

I had the benefit of being in the same school district from grades 1-12 so I had had most of my life to that point to learn names, but my core advice remains the same. I became less awkward (or at least good enough at owning being awkward to not matter) by befriending new people, and I befriended new people by inserting myself into a friend group over time, and I did that by just being present and quiet until I felt comfortable enough to speak up more.

Pablo Sanchez?! I thought he only liked baseball!

I will give Rise of Skywalker one thing and one thing only: Babu Frik. I know he was probably designed by committee to be cute and endearing, but man I love that little dude.

It’s a nice touch that the bottleship’s sail is sagging due to not getting any wind.

Is the artist Canadian?

Well, you just have to not define them as full people and it’s fine /s

It is! They’ve mostly moved away from the powder to premixed bottles to take on the go, and I don’t think plain is even an option any more. There are also caffeinated bottles now. It’s still just kinda fine, but it gets the job done.

Well, I could care less, but I don’t care enough to determine exactly how little I could.

Do you seriously believe they are trying to starve to death and not trying to grow their own food in their garden?

I played some 4, but like 6 a lot more personally. A lot of folks still prefer 4. 5 I think feels like the worst of both worlds or a stepping stone from one to the other. The big thing I like about 6 is that citizens actually have to travel to buildings to work or use services.

In Tropico 4/5, a clinic may have a capacity of 200, so if your population is 350 you need two clinics placed anywhere, which I think makes city planning a little boring because you could just have a clinic corner where you build all your clinics as needed. In 6 a clinic has 8 visitor slots, and when a citizen needs healthcare they claim a slot and physically walk or transit across the map, enter the clinic, then spend some time there before leaving and freeing the slot up. This means you could build a couple clinics far away from each other so citizens have less distance to travel to the nearest clinic, or you could have one in your population center, but invest in making that building high quality so when a citizen leaves with a higher healthcare value it takes longer before they need to visit again, reducing the overall demand and making the visitor slots go farther.

It lends itself toward building actual neighborhoods where they are needed which I like!

Others have mentioned Tropico, but I like talking about Tropico so I recommend Tropico 6. Campaign missions have unique goals and conditions that can lead to interesting decisions, like the one where you can’t build houses, everyone lives in shacks, and I ended up going a dictator direction just to keep the populace in line.

Traffic is easy to manage, just don’t make four-way intersections (seriously, that’s it). Building choice and location are important because citizens have to travel from one place to another, so even if your clinic isn’t overwhelmed it may be good to build another far away so citizens don’t have to travel across the entire island to get there.

I could go on for a while, but it’s good, and Tropico 7 is coming out later this year so Tropico 6 will likely be pretty cheap next time it goes on sale.