Smaller EV pickups would probably work well as the Range used to and the Maverick is currently. Economic haulers of miscellaneous bullshit. All my local NAPAs have phased out Colorados for Mavericks. Many pest control trucks are also Mavericks here now, too. These compact rummage haulers have historically been more of a local vehicle rather than a long distance traveler. I assume the problem is that the monetary cost of EV tech and the space required for batteries is better blended into larger vehicles. F150s were already hovering around 60kUSD average with a range of like 45-110. So, for now, as evidenced by the general lack of even gas compact pickups, ev pickups are large.

As a compromise of cost, limited bullshit hauling needs, and range for a “do it all” commuter, the Maverick hybrid may very well be in my near future. I don’t actually have much range anxiety because I know the most my commuter must do is 45 miles/day, but I’m trying to not rely on my spouse’s car for every potential trip. The Maverick seems like it has just enough utility without penalizing me for it. What I need most at this point is ease of transport of 4ft wide and/or 8ft long wood, which is not really feasible in a typical hatch or suv. Maverick owners boast about that capability, even coming from Rangers and such

You add a good point that explains a difference I didn’t exactly consider. I talked about how pedestrian-hostile US cities are but never really considered why European cities are friendlier. Duh, the cities largely existed before the cars did. Horses and carriages aren’t far off in size, but their speed is a fraction of the automobile. Funny, because I’m well aware that European cars are tiny because they have to take roads originally sized to beasts’ asses while Americans can make u-turns on the average suburban stroad

So you like stereotyping?

I love rail. I work with rail. I don’t believe the USA is a candidate for the passenger rail system we’re picturing. Metro rail already exists in population centers with respectable, local capability. NYC, Boston, DC, Chicago, SF/Oakland, Philadelphia, LA, and Atlanta have some pretty healthy stats from their systems. So why can’t they be connected? Because the USA is huge, relatively speaking, and quite empty. Look at a population density map and you’ll see a small drop off moving west as you cross the Mississippi River and a huge drop off after the Missouri. It doesn’t come back in meaningful numbers until the pacific coast. It’s a sizable issue to make sensible routes that effectively cater to very, very spread out city hubs. Lemmy skews towards coastal residency, I bet, from a combo of sociopolitical demographic and, more importantly, the fact that most of the US population lives near the coast. If you’ve ever tried driving across the country, it sucks. There’s neat mountain chains that diversify the topography and ecology, but it’s vastly, widely flat and barren.

“But Japan does it” look at the rail map. It’s much easier to have a central route with many spurs due to the shape.

“OK so Europe then”. Not really. The dreamy European rail network is very heavily biased towards the western half - not unlike how the US network biases the Eastern 1/3.

“But there’s so many accounts of great rail travel, both in US antiquity and modern Europe”. Confirmation bias. How often do you hear someone complain they took an inter national trip and couldn’t find a train? Compare to how often a person reports their great train trip. The trips are great because in a train-based trip, you go where the trains go. This does not speak for the trainless European citizens. This does not speak for the pre-interstate US citizens that had no other choice than to travel by train.

I’m not saying the US rail system is great without need for improvement. It could absolutely be better. Other modes of public transportation are also pretty derelict here. But a system that can’t handle the “last mile” is not going to be effective. Adding onto the issue of bad transportation options outside the Amtrak station in the middle of a city, local infrastructure is typically hostile to non-car travelers. Highways intersecting cultural centers, sidewalks being rare, and spaced-out businesses make walking incredibly unfeasible in a majority of US cities. We can sit and blame the auto industry for lobbying various things in favor of the car, but we can’t immediately undo that. We also can’t change the fact that the big cities are still so far apart.

Look up whatever attractions you want to see and see how many hours of driving they are apart. Even on the dense side, NYC is 4 hours’ drive from DC or Boston. An improved Northeast Corridor (which is home to the upcoming Acela 2/Avelia pictured above) still would only cover 450 miles of a narrow population cluster. The current Acela covers that in 7 hours at best from a mixture of older track, tighter curves, and, of course, stopping to let people go other places. Driving is about 8 hours. From there, though, there’s still the other 3000 miles between NY and LA. So what is really expected of a cross-country rail network? It’s really not surprising that air travel beats it with speed (and the same inconveniences at the destination) and that driving beats it with flexibility (with about the same time requirement but less infrastructure cost).

Aside from that, Amtrak is continuously struggling against freight lines. Amtrak’s cross country capability largely comes from borrowing freight track rather than having dedicated lines. So while freight keeps playing games to steal extra track time, remember that freight is fighting a shitty battle against trucks. Trucks do a better job of fast delivery simply because they drive to the destination. Much less logistics surrounding transfers. Amazon taught us we can have it tomorrow and now it’s expected across all levels of trade. So sure, it’s easy to say build a new track, but that’s a huge, huge cost to fix some train cancelations.

Anyway, I was able to witness the Avelia do speed testing. It’s fuckin cool. Alstom/Bombardier of French TGV fame is behind Acela and Avelia, along with so much more of the US passenger market.

I bet C will stay forever because some successful marketing campaign convinced people it’s a natural remedy against all types of colds and flu, despite being worthless for that cause. Science ain’t got nothing on a good commercial.

Anyone else having Teams just disappear without notice? It happens across my office

Is this a reference to something I missed? Or is it a generalization of American Christians?

:)

But also :(

The Trojan horse was a great gift, a great gift for beautiful people. But the people giving the gift were beautiful too. Great folks on both sides. I mean just look at it, the horse, look at it, it’s got wood, and it’s so tall. I was there, people were telling me, Mr Trump, look, look Mr Trump, that horse is so beautiful. It was so beautiful, people were crying. Sobbing. Thanking me. They had never seen such a beautiful horse. Have you ever seen such a beautiful horse? I thought of seabiscuit. I love seabiscuit. They tell me it’s such a beautiful movie. But you know what I say? See biscuit, eat biscuit. What a lovely biscuit.

Could it be as simble as the inconvenience of sharing a plane that Biden once sat in?

I don’t know what’s more appalling, the number of antivax nurses or the number of people who reference their antivax nurse friends as authoritative sources. They are not doctors. They are not pathologisists. They are not immunologists, biologists, chemists, neurologists, or any other relevant ologists you can think of.

I don’t trust the Jiffy Lube oil change tech to diagnose my car’s power loss, but I guarantee they’ll have some anecdotal ideas because they “hear” about things all the time. I don’t trust an experienced mechanic to give a proper statement on reliability, either, because a mechanic will only see cars when they’re broken, biasing the sample.

So how do nurses become the voice of fact on this? I mean, I know why. It’s confirmation bias. This is more me screaming into the void, fuckin why?

They think this will somehow be a quick trade war that ends in everything being the same price, but suddenly produced domestically. They are still delusional. They are still riding the 2020 inflation wave they call bidenomics.

What times were these meetings? Was he sundowning?

I could see Trump being average among the atrocities of prior presidents. I see absolutely nothing wrong with hyperventilating at each and every one of them, though. Average doesn’t mean acceptable.

It’s not just duped kiddies, it’s the liberals that didn’t vote for Harris, too. There’s enough single-issue voters on Palestine to make a difference.

It was probably engineered that way. There’s at least a dozen popular single-issues that can completely flip/prevent someone’s votes. Abortion, taxes, guns, Palestine, transsexuals, original flavor queer, non-Christian, non-white, non-male, vaccines, net neutrality, and communist/socialist label are the 12 I submit today.

As Hemphill got to know the women, he convinced them to confide their past sexual traumas, which he then deliberately reenacted as he assaulted them, Curzer said. He took advantage of some victims’ inexperience, the prosecutor said, or crossed boundaries that victims had clearly articulated

I read the whole thing along with the other… Character issues. Pretty sure he’s well beyond what I’d consider fixable.

My 98 has the 2.5 Lima/Pinto, the slightly larger version of the 2.3 in your 90s Ranger, and consistently hits 21mpg on 50mph highway with traffic lights. My buddy with a 94 2.3 also gets about 20. However, I’ve read lots of good things about the 2.3 Duratech/Mazda L that started in 01. I just picked up a 2008 in much better condition but have yet to check the fuel economy. It’ll be interesting going from a clapped out long bed to a short bed with a hard tonneau and a bedrug liner. But, realistically, I’m driving empty 95% of the time so I’ll take the cover for a little extra aero.

I’ve looked at the maverick as well. The price (of any newer car) is the main reason I went with an old ranger. That’s neat about the midgate, I hadn’t heard about that. While the 4ft bed of course reduces cargo space, my main concern is about long lumber. With an adjustable tailgate angle and bed pockets for cross boards giving it 6ft of support, the community seems perfectly happy with it for 8ft goods. That’d be awesome if a midgate fit 4ft wide goods through it, almost containing 8ft from rear seats to tilted tailgate. And a 40mpg hybrid? I’m in… Except for the price right now.

Ranger fam unite! 4cyl towing is only 3500 I think. Less than a car+trailer because that’s what people always ask about in the ranger community. And that’s with the proper frame hitch. The bumper is like class 2

I have an older Ranger. I don’t do much truck stuff. The bulk cargo area is the draw, not the weight capacity. The heaviest load I carried was 800lbs of plywood, which was 15 sheets or something. I have a 4x8 trailer that can also help haul bulky household goods for moves, a motorcycle, lumber, or furniture. While the trailer is rated for 1700lbs payload and weighs 300lbs itself, I have never put more than 500lbs on it, despite filling the 4x8 floor stackef 4ft high. I made the trailer before getting the Ranger, so now they’re redundant and never actually hauled together.

If you’re already towing, this probably isnt the truck for you. If you aren’t towing, it provides an option to tow something if you have to. The reason I chose the Ranger is because it’s cheap, gets good fuel economy, and has the capacity to grab full lumber sheet goods on my commute home. While I could find a 30mpg car for the same price, I’m still in the mid 20s. Maybe I could spend 30k on a newer F150 V6 and get similar, but then it costs 10x what I paid. Bulk space and handling scratchy cargo is the main goal. I think of the Slate as being what the Ranger should’ve been now.

I don’t take that to mean “no one actually knows what an astronaut actually is” because phrasing it like that floats in the sensationalism territory between click bait headlines and Trump ramblings. What I do take that to mean is that the term is evolving, both from a linguistics standpoint as well as a technological/societal standpoint.

What’s a phone? The average user here probably at least considers a device that makes telephone calls, but consider what’s actually sold as a phone today and what non-phone devices can communicate in phone-like fashion. The primary usage of my cellular smartphone is far from making phone calls - it’s a handheld computer with information, entertainment, and utility functions. If you argue that it can make phone calls and is therefore still a phone, then so is a modern car. If you expand to strictly internet channels such as FaceTime, zoom, or teams, then that’d include computers as phones. If someone says they’re going to buy a new phone tomorrow, we’re all picturing a smartphone.

There is no functional difference with the evolution of astronaut definitions. The accessibility is constantly improving. The purpose is expanding. The accessibility is still incredibly limited, on the global scale, so the original term still bears weight.

This is why Latin is used for sciences. The language is dead and no longer evolving. The rate of change is drastically slower, primarily driven by expanding definitions with discoveries rather than changing scientific properties entirely.

I wouldn’t call myself an astronaut after such a trip. I’d want to, I’d love to, I’d make jokes about being a spaceman, but I wouldn’t classify myself anywhere near the likes of anyone with a Shuttle or Apollo patch. I’d put it near U2 pilots and tourists