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Comment Re:It's the best sedan Ford has right now (Score 1) 172

Absolutely, there is no one thing that makes driving in snow safe and practical; you need to apply several things at once to get the best result. You could drive like a maniac with snow tires and still end up in a ditch. You could drive well but not allow appropriate (increased!) following distance and still end up rear ending someone. I have found the best combination is generally
  • Experience
  • Snow tires
  • Experience
  • ABS
  • Experience
  • Extra caution
  • Experience
  • More experience

Of course gaining the experience can be challenging. As you noted some areas (including mine as well) don't have winter like they used to, which makes it difficult to prepare for winter storms like we used to get.

Comment Re:It's the best sedan Ford has right now (Score 1) 172

I've owned 3 Mustangs (none of which have ever been crashed)

So you only drove them on dry roads in sunny weather in a straight line? You must live near a desert.

I know I set myself up for that one, but I've actually driven them year-round in some of the snowiest parts of the country. It's amazing what quality snow tires can do; I had a 5.0L V8 with a manual transmission and 4.10 rear end gears that had better snow traction with snow tires than a brand new Subaru with all-season tires.

That said I've also driven the newest Mustang (as a rental car) with the turbo 4. That car would absolutely blow the doors off my best earlier Mustang - it's no mystery how so many young drivers end up wrapping them around trees.

Comment It's the best sedan Ford has right now (Score 3, Insightful) 172

If you check the vehicles that Ford sells in the US, you'll find the Mach E is the closest thing Ford is selling to a traditional sedan right now. The Crown Vic was axed years ago, as was the Taurus. The Fusion and the Focus went away some time ago as well.

You could argue that the Mach E is on the tall side for a sedan, but it isn't quite as tall as an Escape and it fills a different niche.

I am a bit of a fan of Ford - I've owned 3 Mustangs (none of which have ever been crashed) - and I agree with the point that comparing the Mach E to the Mustang doesn't make a lot of sense for several reasons. However if you look at the current American portfolio for Ford it's not a big surprise that the Mach E is a top seller for them; if a customer walks in wanting to buy a sedan the Mach E is the most logical choice.

Comment Re:The only question that actually matters here (Score 1) 117

Apple doesn't care if you waste time on their products. They really only care if you buy their products.

Apple sells an ecosystem, and arguably a lifestyle as well. Yes they want you to buy their products, but they even more so want you to keep buying their products. And the more you use their products the more you are likely to keep going back. Spend enough time with Apple products, and they expect you'll take more fondness to them. If you bought an iPhone 11 but not an iPhone 12, then something went wrong. They want every customer to be a repeat customer.

I recall some 25 or so years ago they even had a "macadvocate" program, where they were recruiting users to essentially sell the products for them. Some of the recruited folks would even go to the Apple Store at CompUSA (during the short time period where CompUSA was the only retailer who sold Apple) and help sales folks on their own time because they thought the product was that good. That is a level of consumer dedication I've never seen anywhere else. Even owners of Subaru or Tesla cars don't love their purchases enough to do that.

Facebook does not sell you a product. Facebook sells you as a product.

Absolutely, 100% without a doubt correct on that. The more time you waste there the more money they make off you, even if you don't ever send them money directly.

Comment The only question that actually matters here (Score 3, Informative) 117

Which company succeeds in wasting more of our time, Apple or Facebook? That is absolutely the primary goal of the latter, and a big driver of profit for the former as well. It sounds like he's just trying to claim that they could waste even more of our time if Apple wasn't so mean and blocking some of their efforts to do so on a very specific market.

Comment Re:We will survive 2025 (Score 1) 98

I'm not sure why you feel justified in this degree of condescension. You made a claim, and then your own links failed to support it. I pointed out how they failed to support it and now you're attacking me, while trying to play the victim card. I could try to continue to believe that you are not a conservative who just wants to waste my time, but you're making that increasingly more difficult to believe with every partisan link you share.

Your second link - to the White House budget - also plainly failed to support your central argument. You were trying to claim that all democrats are trying to stop using the word "woman", yet you pointed to a document that used it 19 times. You tried to claim that the democrats are universally trying to substitute "birthing person", yet that phrase in the same document came up only once and when we looked at the full text it was clearly being used to precisely refer to a woman who is in the process of birthing a child. In other words your second argument fell flat as well. Just because you found partisan authors who were trying to make political hay out of that phrase that was used once doesn't mean there is hay to be made in front of objective people who can read analytically.

I have already conceded that there was plenty wrong with the Harris campaign - including their choice for VP - and that the democrats did plenty wrong. Yet the argument you're trying to make here is that I am a terrible excuse for a human being for not agreeing with every point you are trying to make, and that I am even worse for daring to read in to the links you provide and show how they don't actually support your argument.

In other words, you are the same kind of narrow-minded person that you are accusing the democrats of being run by. If the democrats are to run a large-tent party they need to be accepting of other people's views, which you clearly are not.

Comment Re:We will survive 2025 (Score 1) 98

Here's a link to a site where birthing people are perhaps not pleased that many of them are now displaced by "assigned at birth" men have become women, therefore are woman because they say so, therefore must be allowed to play on women's teams. https://womenssportspolicy.org...

Interestingly that site has almost no evidence to support your claim of

little girls being run over by men on their sports teams.

Of the cases they listed, I counted 3 that were in contact sports. Two were in boxing, one was in hockey. The overwhelming majority were in sports that forbid contact - mostly cycling and track and field.

That doesn't mean that trans athletes won't have an advantage - especially if they are early in their transition - but your argument of "little girls being run over by men on their sports teams" simply isn't supported by any information that you have provided.

Biology is biology

What biology is not, however, is binary. If you think otherwise then I suggest you go and study it. Gene expression is almost never an all-or-nothing matter. Gender is frequently on a continuum for many species. Transgender is not a new concept at all, it has existed in many cultures for hundreds if not thousands of years.

And here my friend, is the full text document. https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-... Is it your premise that MAGA came and slipped the "birthing person" into the official document?

Did you read the document? The phrase "birthing person" was used exactly once in 74 pages. By comparison "women" was used 20 times. And if we look at where "birthing people" comes in, we find:

Reduces Maternal Mortality Rate and Ends Race-Based Disparities in Maternal Mortality. The united States has the highest maternal mortality rate among developed na- tions, with an unacceptably high mortality rate for Black, American Indian/Alaska Native, and other women of color. To help end this high rate of maternal mortality and race-based dispari- ties in outcomes among birthing peopleâ"and in addition to the investment in maternal health included in the American Families Planâ"the BuDgeT OF The u. S. gOVeRNMeNT FOR FISCAL YeAR 2022 19 Budget includes more than $200 million to: re- duce maternal mortality and morbidity rates nationwide; bolster Maternal Mortality Review Committees; expand the Rural Maternity and Obstetrics Management Strategies program; help cities place early childhood development ex- perts in pediatrician offices with a high percent- age of Medicaid and Childrenâ(TM)s health Insurance Program patients; implement implicit bias train- ing for healthcare providers; and create State pregnancy medical home programs

This is not being used as some sort of gender-substituting new-age term. It is literally referring to people who are having children. It is recognizing that we have an unacceptably high rate of death for both infants and mothers who are delivering children. It also uses the term "maternal mortality", which very much is a feminine term.

As well as the young male voters deciding they didn't want to vote for the party that takes their orders from people who demonstrably hate them because penis

That statement does more to support my argument of the narrative being controlled by the MAGA party than it does to support your argument. You reached that conclusion in spite of the actual facts, not because of them.

Until people with penises are disenfranchised, it is just possible you shouldn't continually demean them

It's interesting how the rules also differ across the aisle here. If someone is offended by the MAGA party they are told to suck it up. If someone is offended by the democrats they are welcomed to the MAGA party with open arms, regardless of whether or not their offense is grounded in reality. In other words, one party gets infinite second chances, while the other is out on the first strike even though no pitch was actually thrown.

Declare me wrong if you like, but I do pretty good research, and my conclusions are generally sound

I wish your links supported that claim.

Comment Re:We will survive 2025 (Score 1) 98

What you are stating here is not the message of the party, but the party's message as reflected by the MAGA-sphere.

So was Seth Moulton a MAGA plant or something? The reaction to his saying he didn't want his little girls being run over by men on their sports teams.

I live in a very, very blue state. I know several trans women personally. I know many high school boys and girls who attend schools with LGBTQ youth in their population.

The scenario you are trying to encourage fear over has never happened here, and I have yet to hear of it happening anywhere. There are a few fringe cases of trans women competing in other sports - we all heard about the swimming contents, the weightlifting contests, etc - but I have not heard of one case of a trans female competing in a contact sport in any high school, anywhere. Interesting that you were able to come up with links for so many of your other points but not one for that one.

I also know many high school hockey players, and this is one of the first states to have made girl's hockey into a high school varsity (and lettering) sport. The contact rules are vastly different between boys and girls hockey. Girls hockey is closer to figure skating in terms of contact than it is to the gladiatorial combat we love to see on the men's side.

replacing it with the weird and very exclusive term "Birthing person"

I don't know what conservative blog introduced you to that term but I never once saw it in any campaign material from any candidate from the democratic party. That term reeks of the efforts of someone trying to stretch the silliness of the question of "define a woman". Funny that if the a question like that had been directed the other way it would have been killed off by the MAGA party as a "gotcha question".

I was denied promotion several times in order for a woman to get it - a quota system of sex and race was used. I know this because the college I was at made it very clear that they were preferentially promoting women.

If that is true you should have sued over the matter. If you could show you were passed over while being equally qualified - and hence discriminated against based on a protected class - then you would have had an easy legal victory. Yet you make no mention of having taken any action in response to this supposed discrimination against you. Why would that be?

The democrats certainly got a lot wrong in the 2024 election, and the nation will soon face the consequences of it. The two main things that had the greatest impact though:

  • The democrats did not control their narrative well, if at all - instead allowing the MAGA party to set the narrative for both side and then attempting far too late a response that was far too insufficient for most people to even notice
  • The democrats ultimately failed in their Get Out The Vote efforts. If we look at the total vote counts between the past three election cycles, Trump saw almost no growth in the total vote counts nationally or in any state. What the democrats saw though was a loss of some 4 million votes. In others words roughly 4 million voters just couldn't be bothered to vote this time around. They didn't switch to Trump, they just stayed home.

Comment Re: We will survive 2025 (Score 1) 98

I'm more concerned about the people who prioritized health-care and didn't vote at all, because nobody made it an election issue.

You're very right that nobody - at least nobody running for office - made health care an election issue.

The reason why is the same reason we have the health care problem we have in this country. Namely, it wasn't an election issue (from the candidates) because the US Congress is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Health Insurance Cartel. We are obligate consumers of health insurance for that exact reason, and that reason is why we will not see even an option for single payer in our country any time soon.

The "death panels" that we were told to be so very, very afraid of have existed in giant health insurance HQ buildings for decades now. They decide who lives and who dies, based on where their ROI is optimized. Some part of that profit is then sliced off and handed to Congress to ensure the system never really changes.

Comment Re:We will survive 2025 (Score 1) 98

As I said, most of US society is either actively opposed to him, or just passive-aggressively refusing to go along with him.

Unfortunately the number of people who don't agree with him doesn't matter at all. That's how fascism works, after all. The opposition will be degraded one way or another until there is no opposition - or at least none that are allowed to vote or wield power.

donâ(TM)t believe for a second that the whole society is invested in the MAGA bs

It doesn't matter how many 2024 voters subscribe to it. What matters is how many elected republicans do. That number is, for all intents and purposes, 100%. The MAGA party - the GOP will be fully dead and buried on January 21st - supports everything that Trump wants. Even worse they control the SCOTUS as well as the legislative and executive branches. That means that there will no longer be any judicial review of laws signed by Trump, making every law essentially a constitutional amendment for some time to come. They could pass laws establishing the MAGA party as the only recognized party in the US and nobody would be able to challenge it.

the MAGA movement isnâ(TM)t nearly as powerful as the media makes it out to be.

They have 100% of the power in Washington DC and in several states as well. They don't have to care what the actual people think.

Comment Re:We will survive 2025 (Score 1) 98

What you are stating here is not the message of the party, but the party's message as reflected by the MAGA-sphere. Yes, the democrats spent too much time on gender politics, but that was in no small part because they were unable to refuse the bait that was laid by the MAGA folks. The democrats could have let the MAGA folks dig their own graves on bathroom laws but they just had to try to take a stand over it instead. Honestly most people don't give a damn about it one way or the other; just put up more single-stall genderless bathrooms and the bathroom issue goes away.

Your recitation of white people being told "they are the problem" is again an echo from the MAGA folks. The democrats were trying to give equity - that's the E in DEI - to people who previously were denied it, but equity does not mean things are taken away from others. Similarly equity does not mean some people are born bad; this concept comes from the same folks who kept telling us to be afraid of "CRT" being taught in K-12 schools.

This all in the end supports my earlier statement. The message for the democrats was not controlled in any meaningful way by the democrats. They had no plan for responding to that situation, either. This is, unfortunately, how the post-truth world that we live in works.

Comment Re: We will survive 2025 (Score 1) 98

Trump literally only talked about having "concepts of a plan", and in his prior term tried to repeal the ACA and replace it with *nothing*.

Actually you're giving the MAGA party too much credit there. They did have a plan, but it was worse than nothing. The plan that the MAGA party wanted to push through was to repeal the ACA, then replace it with the ACA. The only difference would have been the autograph on the bottom of the bill. They honestly believed that if it were signed by a MAGA POTUS - instead of a democratic POTUS - that it would have been amazing. All the MAGA party wanted was credit.

Comment Re: We will survive 2025 (Score 2) 98

"They ran a candidate who was orders of magnitude more knowledgeable and qualified for the position. It should have been an easy win."

They didn't

Can you show me a single matter pertaining to national or international politics on which Trump is more knowledgeable than Harris? Of course not, because no such matter exists. He is barely more knowledgeable on such matters than an average Golden Retriever.

Can you show anything that would make him more qualified to be president than Harris? Of course not, because nothing exists for that either. He was an absolute failure of a POTUS. His Administration was chaos from day one, staffed with liars and sycophants, and those were the best of them. He put horrendously unqualified people in charge of important government departments and then we were surprised when they lost functionality and credibility.

And don't get me started on her terrible choice for a VP.

That I will agree with you on. Harris was going to win Minnesota no matter what. Choosing Walz didn't help in any meaningful way. He is a smart man, but he didn't add anything to the ticket or help to bring voters over who wouldn't have already voted for her had her VP been a ficus tree.

Comment Re:We will survive 2025 (Score 5, Informative) 98

And the Democrats STILL couldn't manage to run a candidate that could beat Trump. Think about that for a moment. The worst possible person to be President (Trump) and the Democrats said "Hold my beer" while they roll out someone even more unelectable. That's amazing.

They ran a candidate who was orders of magnitude more knowledgeable and qualified for the position. It should have been an easy win.

What the democrats overlooked though was that the MAGA party still controls the narrative. It doesn't matter who controls the "media" as the media doesn't set the narrative any more. The narrative comes from social media, heavily produced and heavily covered political rallies, and all sorts of whisper campaigns. The narrative doesn't care about facts, it only carries the most repeated talking points.

It didn't even matter that Twitter was purchased by a far-right maniac and turned into another conservative echo chamber. That die was already cast. There were too many ways for MAGA folks to spread their preferred narrative, and the democrats couldn't figure out a response.

As has been said so many times before

a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes

And never was that more relevant than on election day.

Comment We will survive 2025 (Score 3, Interesting) 98

Sure, we have a rocky situation about to unfold this year in the US. Fascism is on the rise and it will control all three branches of the federal government, with no meaningful checks against its power. But 2025 will be nothing compared to 2028.

Assuming that Trump lives that long - which is a big assumption for someone who is clinically obese and in their 70s - what will he do when election time comes along? Will anyone stop him from declaring himself exempt from the 22nd amendment? Or will anyone stop him from appointing his own son as a new emperor?

And yes I know I will be moderated down into oblivion by the overwhelming conservative majority here. I also know that there is almost no chance of this site still being online in 2028, so nobody will see this comment when that day comes. That's all OK with me. Don't say you weren't warned. And don't pretend this doesn't impact technology.

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