FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
And every gimmick hungry yob
Digging gold from rock n roll
Grabs the mic to tell us
he'll die before he's sold
But I believe in this
And it's been tested by research
He who fucks nuns
Will later join the church
User ID: 195
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
15hr ago
I've always wanted to watch a drunk driving track race. Every pit stop involves pounding a couple shots.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
18hr ago
Yes, and when Obama was elected he kept Dubya's SecDef along with most of his top generals, and after Obama we had two straight Dem nominees who voted for the Iraq war in the Senate. We did not see politicians who supported the war suffer consequences en masse.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
18hr ago
To be fair at this point every US president for 25 years has openly had calls for regime change in Iran. It's not like they're holding some grudge from their grandfather, every living Iranian knows part of the American government wouldn't mind if they were dead.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
19hr ago
Tbf to Israel they do seem to be arming and feeding and propping up some kind of Quisling tribal coalition that might evolve into a new Gaza government. But if that's the plan it's a ways away.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
19hr ago
We have managed to lose three wars in living memory and none of the politicians involved suffered electoral consequences.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
19hr ago
What makes you think the alternative people reach for is going to be surrender?
What country has responded to urban aerial bombings with surrender? Maybe Japan but that was, you know, and also their armies had been thoroughly trounced at that point. In nearly every case I'm aware of it has stiffened the resolve of the populace and strengthened hardliners.
As long as Israel and their western support bloc shows absolutely no love or friendship for the Persian people, they're not going to throw the Ayatollah out and replace him with western moderates, they'll replace him with a hopefully more competent Ayatollah.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
21hr ago
If you had a lot of dense traffic, and some of it can't legally go faster than 30, while others can go 90, is a nightmare.
Everyone needs to be going about the same speed for traffic flow.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
21hr ago
I'm jealous of your M5. I've always felt like at some point I'd like to own a full-fat M car, but the added expense just doesn't seem overly worth it and I probably never will.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
21hr ago
What cars have you driven on a regular basis? If they were expensive, have you found them to be worth the extra money?
Well, here's the list of everything I've ever put more than a few thousand miles on. Most of them were family vehicles in one capacity or another that I either borrowed for long enough to get a feel for them, or they were , only one did I buy new-ish from a dealer,
1952 Dodge Pickup Truck: A friend of my father had this parked in his driveway for about two decades straight. When I was in high school, he called my father and said all his wife wanted for her 50th anniversary was the damn truck out of the damn driveway. So my father and I went over and towed it out of where it had sunk into the pavement, and spent the better part of a year fixing it up. It's candy apple red with a small block chevy v8 in it, running through mostly Ford Explorer running gear. It's not actually fast, but it's fun to drive in that you feel every single thing. Sometimes I think that if you get caught speeding way over the limit, you should be sentenced to your license being limited only to cars like this, in that at a sustained 60mph everything rattles so damn much that it feels unsafe, while in better more modern cars 80 or 90 or 100 feels like nothing.
1991 Ford Bronco: I never actually drove this much on the road. My dad picked it up for $100 cash on the side of the road, and gave it to me for my 14th birthday to learn to drive on the farm. I drove it all over the local farms and trails. Not a bad car in and of itself, but I once read a statistic in an article that something like 1/10 of this model wound up involved in a fatal rollover crash, so probably good that I sold it before I actually got my license.
1996 Ford Explorer XLT V8: My sister's first car before it was my first car, stayed in the family for about twenty years. Bought for $1800 with 100k miles, ran without any problems through two fender benders to 200k miles, while being driven mainly by teenagers, before finally being sold off for $1200 two years ago. This was really a near perfect teen car, strong AWD system, the V8 had enough power to pull out on the highway but not so much that I got pulled over as a teen. You could pile ten kids into it when we went hiking, or about 500lbs of fireworks when me and a buddy bought them illegally. Had a six cd changer, which was the height of luxury.
Various American Work Spec Pickup Trucks from between 1990 and 2005: All pretty much the same. Ford, Chevy, Dodge, it's all the same thing to me. Different mechanics swear by different trucks, but with some minor variations (Chevys are cheaper to replace an engine on, Fords have the little keypad) it's all the same story. It'll run forever but everything will break. Every little thing will need to be replaced, but it's easy to find and never fatal.
2000 Subaru Outback Wagon XT Manual: First car I bought, off my elderly cousin who bought the turbo for some reason. Oh man did I love this car. Fun to drive, AWD, manual, space in the back for stuff. I'd still have it, if i hadn't been t boned at a rural intersection and gone into a coma for a week. RIP to a real one, amazing I survived after the damage it took.
2000 BMW 323ci Manual: Got it off a family friend. Gorgeous, perfect car, one of the best driver's cars ever made for my money. Perfectly balanced, rides comfortably but can take corners as hard as you want, perfectly stable predictable handling, the small engine option so you can drive the hell out of it, but despite only having 170hp the inline six pulls in every gear. I still have it, and periodically I think I should get rid of it because I don't need it, but I see the pittance I'd get for it and think eh I really like driving it when I do. Then my wife got a 3 series and now likes the his and hers/collection bit.
2003 Mercedes-Benz C230 Wagon: Here's where the chronology vs model year gets thrown off, I bought this car for $5k after I graduated law school. I love station wagons, especially small ones like this, and if they were more available it's what I'd drive now. It was a great car, only flaw was the automatic transmission. My dog loved it, riding in the back. It was great on the highway, had pretty good sporty handling, and it could hold all my rock climbing stuff. Got totaled in a hailstorm, I put the offer ($2k more than I'd paid) in my back pocket and drove the car for another two years and 30,000 miles, then sold it to the insurance company. I regret getting rid of it sometimes.
2003 Chevrolet Corvette: My dad's car, he bought it new when Chevy was running crazy incentive deals, as he tells it "post 9/11" though I don't remember the time well enough. Red, convertible, manual, FE RWD. What a vette should be. The 2000s GM finishing is as mediocre as you'd think, and it's not the performer that later vettes would be, but it's fun to hoon around in on occasion.
2004 Audi A6 Quattro 2.7t: My mom's car when I was in high school, I inherited it when I went to law school and they felt I needed an AWD. It was a great car, tons of power from the twin turbo, I'm told that a chip tune would double the power on it pretty easily but I never messed with it. Ran great for 100k until suddenly it didn't: died on the highway when an alternator gave out, then flooded in a rainstorm because the drain holes under the batter pan clogged with dirt, then the cooling system leaked and leaked and leaked. Sold for peanuts to some kid who I hope had better luck with it.
2005 Audi A4 3.0t Quattro Cabrio: Bought it used from a local dealer. Extremely fun car to drive, but ultimately I don't get the point of a fun car without a manual. Bad time technologically: screen but a crappy screen and no native bluetooth. Sold it for a little more than I paid for it after fixing it up a little.
2005 Toyota Camry: Another family car, my grandfather bought this new, in classic Indian-Dad gold/beige, and smoked in it every day until he died. Smell of cigarettes on the cloth is just fading now, but the burn holes aren't going anywhere. Honestly, one of the best cars ever made for my dime: starts whenever I turn the key, v4 is plenty on the highway and sips fuel, never done a single thing to it. Some of the interior parts are cracked from sun damage, and the exterior is showing wear, but it runs and runs. And when I park it in the city, I never worry about it, which is a use case all its own. I drive it the most, but really it's more of the family beater: it's the utility infielder if anyone needs a car, or the car we lend to a friend if someone needs to borrow a car. For which it is great, because it will always work, but no one is too thrilled about borrowing it. I reach for the key any time I need to go anywhere and not be seen.
2008 Chevrolet Avalanche LTZ: My first "nice" pickup truck in my life, got it at a bankruptcy auction from some jackass who didn't pay his taxes but did spend a ton of money on a chromed out bitch of a pickup. Still only 80k miles, so it's got a decade to go at least. Leather, good sound system, big v8, got a chip tune on it so it wouldn't do the v4 thing. Terrible mpg, but I have other options to avoid using it when I don't have to on long trips.
2015 Mercedes Benz E550: My mom's car for a while until it had some kind of weird electronic heart attack and was impossible to revive for less than it was worth. My god was it an amazing car while it lasted, though. I can see why at one time its close cousin held the Cannonball record: on a highway it would pull through 130-140 like nothing was happening, and would hold 120 better than the Camry held 65. It was still beautiful and the interior perfect when it gave out, but too expensive to revive.
2015 Mercedes-Benx SL550: My mom bought this car for reasons I have never really figured out. What possesses a 65 year old woman to buy a v8 coupe/convertible that gets to 60 in 4 seconds? I think she couldn't resist the bargain: she got it off the estate of an old guy who had only put 8k miles on it, and she got it for a song at seven years old. She almost never drives it...but I borrow it frequently. Honestly, it's too much power. It would be more fun with less engine. Within seconds of touching the gas pedal, you're committing a felony. Good for a couple of passes, but not really a great driving car at the end of the day. Handling is clumsy, transmission is herky-jerky with the too big v8.
2015 Lexus Rx350: My wife's first car. Workhorse, did everything you wanted it to do, ran perfectly except for eating batteries, but ultimately I just hated it for being a mid size feminine SUV. Around the time it hit 100k, I looked up its trade-in one day out of curiosity and realized that Lexus' hold so much value that we should really consider getting my wife a new car. Then my wife decided she didn't want a new car because nothing was any better than the Lexus, but my in laws had already decided that if my wife got a new car they wanted the Lexus and we had decided to give it to them, so we wound up buying my wife a...
2022 BMW 330i: My wife's new car, the ultimate answer to the last time I posted asking what car I should buy. This is honestly, in my opinion, the peak of the ICE car, the swan song of the genre. Four door awd completely practical to commute or take to costco, gets 40 on the highway with the mild hybrid, but also tons of fun to take on a twisty and hoon. Tossable, responds well to the gas pedal in sport mode, my wife loves driving it so much that she frequently takes breaks while WFH to just take it for a spin on country roads near us. Can drive it five hours and feel great, can rip around a country road and love it, can drive it every day. Fingers crossed on reliability, but Consumer Reports gave it good marks so maybe we'll be ok. Genuinely love this car, and my wife loves this car so much that she suddenly understands why I've loved cars before. Truly a great machine. Bought it two years old with 12k miles for a little over $34k, which was reasonable for me for getting my wife something she liked.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
21hr ago
Manual transmission Subaru Forrester:
Middle income professional, probably "could" have afforded something more expensive but chose the Subaru. Practical, not overly showy, but not overly false-modest either. LL Bean in human form. Probably outdoorsy, but in a modest hiking/biking/canoeing kind of way; rather than an EXTREME making it your whole personality way.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
21hr ago
I feel like if it was kept constant momentum it would just lead to a dystopia of motorcycles zooming through lumbering cybertrucks.
But if it were just a 20mph difference I'd agree completely. Big trucks and SUVs should stay at a steady 65, but let small cars and motorcycles play at 90.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
22hr ago
1: Yes. Using your turn signal should be an automatic part of any anticipated lateral movement of your vehicle. You should not assume that no one is around just because you aren't aware of them.
2: Yes. You should not assume that you are aware of everyone around you. Though, I guess I really mean no to the question as written, because I don't care about a slow rolling (<5mph) stop at all under any circumstances. Any speed above 5mph, though, is just running a red light with extra steps. This is why roundabouts are superior, because when no one is there you never have to stop.
3: No. Speed limits are nearly uniformly wrong, and should be followed only inasmuch as they may be enforced. I routinely drive below the speed limit in residential neighborhoods, for fear of hitting pedestrians; I typically drive a little above the speed limit on the highway. But get me an empty rural twisty, I'm not doing 35; get me on an open highway I'm hitting a daily triple.
4: Tailgating is never ok. It is the one driving crime I think should be punished more often. When you get too close to react properly, you risk an accident, people vastly overestimate their reaction times. Nor is it fun or efficient or otherwise rewarding.
5: Yes, mostly, though I think in most cases the reason you need to come over and there isn't space is because you waited until the last minute, in which case I will not let you in and will dare you to hit me. If you know your exit is coming up, you should be in the correct lane at least 1/2 mile and preferably a mile in advance. As soon as you see a "lane ends ahead" sign you should be trying to get over. Don't ride to the very end and then expect to squeeze in.
6: I don't break any of my own rules, but I do break some of other people's rules, so I think we all come out the same.
7:
-- You can tell a lot about someone from assessing their choice of car. Even if you think your car says nothing about you, it does.
-- Cars should abide by the "Gentleman's Agreement" to stick around 300hp, and anything larger than that should be heavily taxed. 300hp is plenty to have a quick mid size sedan, a very fast small car, or a reasonably drivable large SUV/pickup truck. Capping horsepower on most cars would encourage people who want to drive fast sporty cars to buy small cars, and discourage people from driving giant SUVs and pickup trucks they can't handle too fast.
-- I don't really know that I'll ever want or trust a self driving car, but I see 75% of people on the road and I wish they had one. At the same time, if regulators don't make self-driving systems EXTREMELY conservative and predictable in their behavior, we deserve to get paperclipped.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1d ago
I think Trump is getting dog-walked by Netanyahu, reacting to events and trying to seem in control, while actually being in a reactive mode and failing to achieve any kind of leadership over his putative allies or the people he has a "great" relationship with.
Whether Trump knew about it in advance or not, I don't think he wanted Israel to do this.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1d ago
This is a bad mod flag: SS in this case was pointing out the assumed consensus in the post he was replying to, which stated as conventional wisdom that Israel is trying to drag the USA into a war.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1d ago
Rome collapsed as landowners farmed their estates with slave labor, and foreign mercenaries were hired for defense. Meanwhile Roman citizens were given bread and circuses.
Three events that took place separately over about four centuries.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1d ago
Not to get all Marxist Econ-History-101 on it, but in large part the concept of disability is itself built around the capitalist conceit that the human worker is reducible to a standardized piece of machinery. And like all piece of factory equipment, a non-standard piece of machinery is best discarded, because one can't change factory procedures from standard.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1d ago
However, perhaps I'm frail hearted or something because it does hurt to see so many attack her so viciously, when they clearly have so much hate in their hearts. Perhaps it's Pollyannaish but I wish that we could do our shaming in a more dignified, and less clearly antagonistic way. It seems that most of the people shaming her, from my read at least, clearly enjoy looking down and judging someone harshly, seeing themselves as better than her. From my perspective, that's not just as bad as what she's doing, but still bad.
I generally try to avoid both porn stars and the anti-porn crowd online, because I always have the feeling that a lot of the more aggressive and verbose anti-porn people haven't earned the right to be so angry and so cruel. Which I think is what you're picking up on. Your modal anti-porn crusader on twitter or rat-adjacent spaces doesn't feel, to me, like someone who has lived a traditional morality. They feel like gooners, porn addicts, who out of some sense of sadism or some inferiority complex related to their own inability to stop themselves from masturbating.
If my Great Uncle Charlie wanted to criticize Aella, he would have every right to, but, well, he wouldn't because he would never have any idea who she was. He lived a pious life, and that included managing his media consumption to include only appropriate material. If he had come into contact with Aella, he would have recognized who she was and withdrawn immediately.
The people who bring up Aella constantly in order to abuse her, along with various other e-thots and porn stars, are not withdrawing. They aren't avoiding worldliness. They are the consooooomers of the content produced by e-thots, while also desiring that the e-thots be unhappy.
This is an experience I seem to run into all the time on the internet, the guy who messages me about some porn star who is hosting an enormous gangbang or made a million dollar severing her hymen on live or something, with a long screed about how degenerate this is. And my reaction is always kinda, hey dude I wouldn't even know about it if you hadn't messaged me, why do you even know who she is?
The best thing to do if you don't like Aella's values and think she should have less influence, is to ignore her.
Alas, I've fallen into the trap here.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1d ago
I'll admit to not being overly familiar with the history of SoS press releases in response to Israeli actions..but this seems like a shift in tone from the Biden regime doesn't it? Rubio offers no praise of Israel, no solemn intonation of our close alliance, no love for our "closest middle eastern ally." It's not even entirely clear that Israel is among the "regional partners" they are in close contact with.
I'll admit to playing Fantasy Trump right now, but this is just about where I'd like the USA to be when something like this happened.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1d ago
I see fairly few bicycles in my area, and I have a fear of killing someone, which can be easily allayed by simply taking a minute out of my day and waiting for a really clear spot to pass. If it were a constant problem, I probably couldn't do that.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1d ago
Cuban missile crisis. The USA essentially has it as a rule that no other western hemisphere country will have the bomb. We just don't notice it because it's so thoroughly accepted as obviously true.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
It's less about an argument in the logos sense than it is about the experience of reading it. It's a unique exercise in rhetoric.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
Something else to consider: the rise of Work From Home, and particularly the trickle down of WFH to lower and lower level administrative roles. I'm seeing more and more secretarial kind of roles in WFH. To say nothing of help-line call center roles. Basically we're seeing more low or no skill WFH.
This works two ways.
Panglossian, people are good way: a lot of people who would have taken disability are able to find jobs that aren't painful or undignified for them. Just removing commuting is, for someone who can't really walk and/or drive, a huge advantage. Then figure you can set up your own home so much more easily to accommodate than a business can, and at no additional cost to anyone. Even small things like: imagine someone with a spinal injury who can't sit or stand for longer than one hour without laying down for five minutes. Such a person can't work any normal job, it's impossible. WFH, literally who cares or would even notice? So a lot of people who otherwise would have been forced to take disability, or would have tried to get disability rather than work in a way that was undignified. And they're happier as a result!
Cynical negative view: Social Security disability appeals function by the putative disabled person saying they can't work any job, the government trying to find a job they can work, and the disabled person appealing saying they can't work that job. When I worked on those appeals, our local office loved to tell everyone to become Parking Garage Attendants because it required no strength or skills and you could sit down all day. I don't even know how many parking garage attendants there are in our area! But now, they can use WFH positions, that might or might not even exist, and that gets around a lot of prior disability efforts. Can't walk to work or drive? No problem, stay home! It's a lot harder to be too disabled to work a home call center job than it was to be too disabled to work the same job in an office.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
Wow I don't know how I managed to miswrite that one.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
Charitably I think I should have precisely specified traffic conditions. There are indeed times when it is inappropriate and antisocial to drive 120mph, I happen to think I choose appropriate ones. My interlocutors are picturing others.
Less charitably, I don't think they're used to driving like that and imagine it as more hazardous and less fun than it is.
Uncharitably, I think being this angry at people for speeding is a deeply effeminate behavior.
I don't really care because they've got skin in the game in the most literal way possible.
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