Just need to vent...

$5 in 1995 → 2026 | Inflation Calculator

 

As a young teenager I recall fellow kids mowing the entire neighborhood's grass for 50¢ /gallon. You'd ride your bike down to the station with a ½ gallon can & pay 25¢. That was 1971 right when Nixon took us off the gold standard - allowing the feds to destroy/deflate dollar value. Using the calculator above it shows how little gas has gone up in costs due to better tech for crude extraction. That ~$4/gallon we now pay was the equivalent of 50¢ back in '71.
That was when the term "GasWars" ended never to be heard of again.

 

Can I rant how much I hate driving?

It's not that it's boring. It's just that I hate being forced to do it.

Like, if I want to fly an airplane or sail a boat or something along those lines, I can decide if I want to make the time and effort to do so. That is fun. I love boating because of this reason.

But if I'm told I have to fly an airplane or sail a boat for the rest of my life to get anywhere, even to just pick up groceries, then it's not fun anymore, especially if I have to fly or boat in between hundreds to thousands of other pilots in the same forced situation, all right next to each other, wrecking into each other several times a year, all in a hurry to get where they need to go with no consideration of anyone else.

Oh, and when you can't see good enough to drive, then you're told you're useless and you have to depend on everyone else to do everything for you. Because nobody thought about how you'd go across several miles of land just without a car to pick up a jar of pickle and some hot dog buns for the cookout, that's also another dozen or so miles away. If I can't see good enough to motorboat maybe I could row boat or just fish from the shore. But cars? There isn't a solution.

 

You have several wrecks a year? Time for a bike or a move to the big (bigger?) city where you don't have to drive.

 

Me? No. I've never had a wreck in my life, except hitting a deer, which I've done twice in my lifetime. Not bad for living in the mountains.

But the general traffic does have several wrecks a year. We almost got backed into just yesterday. I also had a pickup just plow into me not that long ago as I was parked, car turned off, in a parking space, at City Market. The pickup wasn't even backing up, it was going forwards. One day I got rearended twice in a row, apparently because my sedan is so short these jacked-up pickup drivers can't see it and forget I'm there in front of them when the stoplight turns green. No place is safe.

Bikes are even more dangerous in a way. Ironically, you're more vulnerable on a bike, but less likely to do any major damage to others. I've known about 12 pedestrians and cyclists who've been ran over since I moved here. About half are dead, the other half have injuries they'll have to live with for the rest of their lives.

People weren't built to drive. Driving just brings the worst out of people. It isolates everyone from social contact with their neighbors. It's frustrating, and an easy way to let out that frustration. It pollutes. It's not really all that sustainable. Roads and highways are falling into disrepair because there aren't enough taxes, but people don't want to pay more taxes. And then countries have to wage war and invade each other to secure fuel so we can keep running over ourselves in gargantuan pieces of plastic and metal that only serve to move our butts around.

And it's all forced on us, there is no other choice.

 

Having followed Elon Musk activities for many profitable years, there was a distinct change when he touched the Twitter tar baby. His solid engineering skills remain but his social skills took a detour to the toilet. Sort of like learning Henry Ford was facist friendly. Then this showed up:
‘Your questions are designed to trick me’: combative Musk grilled over battle with Sam Altman | Technology | The Guardian

the trial continued on Wednesday with a cross-examination of the Tesla CEO. Musk began his second day of on the stand by repeating the accusation that Altman “stole a charity” and would endanger humanity with AI multiple times. OpenAI’s attorneys pressed … testy exchanges and multiple interventions from the judge.

Musk often refused to answer questions as instructed, and the judge interjected several times to tell Musk to simply give a yes-or-no response. At various points, Musk told OpenAI’s counsel, “You’re being misleading with your question,” and “Your questions are not simple, they are designed to trick me, essentially.”​

It reminds me of the disappointment when blood kin family members ‘went South’. Brilliant in most things, you don’t have to lose clever, but wandering off into a moral briar patch. Sad but not a dang thing one can do about it but increase distance.

I still like my 177,000 mi Tesla and converting TSLA stock into a solar roof, all good. But dam, what a fall. Not someone I care to hear from.

Bob Wilson

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iPhones have been a pain since day one. I remember all too well how hard it was to get something onto an iPhone or iPad. If I wanted to share, say a picture or a video; between Windows and Android devices it was pretty easy and still is. And it didn't matter if they were all my devices or someone elses.

But I remember someone on iPhone wanting that same picture or video. Micro SD card was never an option. Bluetooth didn't work. Hooking up an USB cable seemed to never work either. Putting it in a cloud and trying to download it to an iPhone or iPad was also impossible for many, many years.

So, I gave up. If someone wants a video of mine, I ask if they have an iPhone, and if they do I just say sorry, that I can't do that. I still would consider owning an iPhone, but their shenanigans aren't winning me over, that's for sure.

Windows is another problem in itself. If I hadn't bought a Windows laptop recently I'd be hard-pressed not to buy the new Mac Neo. It's like instead of fixing issues with Windows Microsoft is instead interested in force feeding ads and AI down our throats.