• 9 Posts
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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 25th, 2023

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  • Honestly, my advice, unpopular as it might be, is that unless you plan on riding a motorcycle you should probably get an automatic transmission car instead of learning on a manual transmission. Manual transmissions–in the US, anyways–are largely relegated to performance vehicles where people want them. But the hard truth is that automatic transmissions do a better job at driving efficiently and keeping the engine at a safe and ideal load than any driver with a manual. And it’s a lot less hassle for most of the driving that people tend to actually do. For instance, it’s uncommon to have a cruise control on a manual transmission car, which makes long drives more tiring, and stop-and-go traffic puts less wear on an automatic transmission.

    If you plan on riding a motorcycle though, you must learn to use a clutch, because all non-electric motorcycles use a clutch (usually a wet clutch, but Ducati uses a dry clutch); manual transmissions are lighter and more compact, and weight matters a lot on a motorcycle.

    I say this as someone that learned to drive on manual transmissions, and exclusively had cars with manual transmissions up through about 2022.


  • Learn to shift based off the sound of the engine, dont stare at the tachometer.

    Do not do this.

    Every engine has a different redline. The redline is based mostly on piston mass, which doesn’t necessarily correlate directly to engine displacement, given that it’s common to have 4, 6, or 8 cylinders in a car. If you’re shifting primarily based on engine sound, you can be shifting too low in one car, and then too high in another. The tachometer is a much more reliable way of learning where you should shift in any given vehicle.

    Also, constantly running your car in the maximum power band–which tends to be close to the redline–probably isn’t great for it.





  • Thought I could/should work through discomfort and then pain at the gym, supersetting overhead push-presses and triceps dips. LOL, nope, gave myself a labral tear and tore my supraspinatus. My shoulder now has an unpleasant popping feeling + significantly less strength when I’m doing anything like a bench press with my elbows properly tucked; I’ll likely never be able to do narrow grip bench press or triceps dips again.

    Why was this dumb? Because I was a personal trainer, and I fucking know better than to try and push through pain. But I was trying to get back into lifting seriously after losing a lot of time to the pandemic.



  • Gov’t funded doesn’t drop the cost that much. Countries in the west that are single-payer and/or have national/socialized healthcare systems pay between 1/5 and 2/3 of what we do per capita, on average. It might be better in countries where the entire supply chain is subject to price controls (e…g., China), but I don’t know. But, regardless, if our system cost 20% of what it does now, or $900B, $3B would still be only .3% of the entire expenditure. Part of the problem is that, as far as western countries go, the US is just big. The population of Israel is estimated to be about 9.5M, compared to 340M or so for the US.

    Again, to be clear: I’m not suggesting that we should be giving–or selling–Israel anything at this point.









  • They won’t; sponsored by the big capital

    Yes, but that doesn’t mean they can’t get away from it. Sanders managed to run very strong presidential primary campaigns, twice, and almost all of his funding was from individual donors giving his campaign under $100 each.

    Dems could do this, if leadership had the will.

    3rd parties can’t, or they can’t yet, because none of them have put in sufficient work at a grassroots level yet to consistently win places on state legislatures, much less federally.