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.

 

I like driving, but I think it's human nature to not want to be told what to do. that's how we wound up with the world we live in.
there really is no connection between the two.

 

I like the freedom driving provides us and the infrastructure that enables everyone to have a car.

Obviously there are places like NYC and London where the subways are available and actually work better than driving. Our daughter lived in NYC for decades and never owned a car. She eventually moved to San Francisco and still had no car. However she always liked to drive and moved to Austin where she bought a hybrid and a sports car.

It is clearly costly to own and drive a car. For most people, it is worth every penny and is high on the freedom priority list.

 

I'll be sad the day I can't drive to Florida and are forced to fly. and the 'forced' is the hardest part.
only staying here all winter would be harder

 

it isn't the driving that brings out the worst in people, it's the other drivers

 

It's both a freedom and an enslavement. I love and hate it. I can go to any store, restaurant, park etc. in town or even in another town by going in my car. I can go up any road to beautiful mountain scenery that my car can handle. I can, at the last minute, go back home and grab something I forgot.

But at the same time; walking, biking and public transportation often are not options. Sure, a person can move to a city where those kinds of things are more doable. But then I'm far away from most of the reasons that I'd rather not drive.

While driving along the mountains often I can't look out at the scenery; I don't have the time to pull over and looking around while driving along a precipice is dangerous. I can't use that time I drive to read a book, take pictures, think about deep things, which I would be able to do if in certain cases like riding a tram or walking. My concentration on the road limits how deep of a conversation I can have at the same time with my wife, mom, dad, brother, sister or whoever else I have in the car.

Cost isn't the main thing that bothers me. Sure, if I put the money I spend on my cars towards retirement or housing, I'd get much closer to owning a home or having something saved up for retirement. But what bothers me the most is realizing that mankind lived for thousands of years without cars, and in many cases, without any sort of vehicular transportation, but now it's a requirement. For all that time 99.999% of humankind lived right next to their place of work. Shops and stores were built onto the sides of homes, homes were built in the middle of fields. At most, markets and wells were a few blocks away.

I got a letter in saying I didn't pass my DOT medical exam and that I had lost my driving privileges. Now what? Thankfully it was a mistake. But had it been true, there is no alternative other than moving to some other city, or maybe even some other country. My wife can't drive. If I couldn't drive then we'd stuck. So that's why I hate driving.

It's odd that the perfect driving experience is when there is no other car on the road. You'd think the more people you get together who enjoy the same thing the more they'd enjoy it together. It's usually that way with sports, picnics, concerts, etc. I can't imagine enjoying a picnic by myself.

 

Truer words have not been said

First impression of what it could be like in US but will never be in my lifetime (if ever)... was living in Germany a few years. The level of discipline -- and punishment for being caught shoveling douchey behaviour behind the wheel long accepted here (and in UK, which is proper-bad) -- were frankly embarrassing for this American to witness. Soooo nice driving there... but then again everyone in Germany earns their privilege to drive 200% more than here

And don't get me started on commuter rail comparisons The US is an industrial giant, shaped to haul cargo -- so any rail supposedly for people, will be half-arsed, decontented, and have its operating budget trimmed to the quick (Scamtrak). Unlike in Germany, where it's cheap, efficient, well-connected, environmentally-responsible, and people don't act like it's their effing bedroom / bathroom, on threat of jail time and permanent ban, as should be (at least when I were stationed there).

Re: Isaac -- do understand that fear. I'm ~20y from where that's a reality for myself... but even on this dinky little island in the Pacific... if you don't have a car and a driver's licence, you're f***ed (people w/o family willing to do the legwork of providing for elderly here, tend to move into assisted housing when they can't drive -- which is understandably fought tooth-and-nail). However, I love driving, if not in love with driving next to those who could give a shite about little more than themselves on-road, when things hit the fan (patently, other Americans).

The fear of needing move to another country... most European cities are designed around pedestrian traffic, thus their much higher incidence of us pre- and genuine old-timers, walking to get their daily needs met. Same in Japan and SK. In the US? Good effing luck with that

Maybe I won't love it when I'm where you are, who knows. But also don't redline my BP driving a cliffside road (was a motorcyclist 20y after all)

 

My favorite bumper sticker...