FWIW, you can order a V6 regular cab F150 work truck with an 8-foot bed. Still costs $40k, but it exists.

Ranger and Maverick can both haul plywood sheets with a few 2x4 slats in the stamped slots on the side of the bed and some tiedowns.

This is very specifically how Oklahoma’s AG sold their case against the religious charter school.

[Oklahoma AG Gentner Drummond] said allowing a school like St. Isidore would open the door for state-funded schools to teach other religious beliefs, such as Sharia law or Satanism.

“While I understand that the Governor and other politicians are disappointed with this outcome, I hope that the people of Oklahoma can rejoice that they will not be compelled to fund radical religious schools that violate their faith,” Drummond said.

I wish the Dems had felt more confident in 2020, or that Kamala Harris had proven to be a more vibrant personality able to take the reins in 2024. I wish the Overton window in the US were farther to the left. But that’s not the fight in front of us; we are where we are.

I don’t think anybody denies that Biden is in physical and a sort of general mental decline. He’s old AF. I tend to think “turning it on” just takes a lot out of him and maybe requires a couple of days of R&R which you don’t normally get as president, but I would hardly be surprised if they give him a little chemical helper sometimes. If taking a stimulant just makes you feisty and articulate and able to pop off a solid State of the Union speech then, again, that just speaks to your being old. Someone who literally doesn’t know what they’re doing will be the same idiot, but higher energy…

You know, like Trump.

“Facilitated open computing initiatives and exercised independent judgment and mastery of social engineering techniques and forum software.”

Fair; I guess I should have run some data. I just used gasbuddy.com to run a similar track for what would have been my rather lengthy commute if my employer had asked us to return to office (and kept the lease on that building). Apart from a couple of outliers just outside the Dallas-Fort Worth airport, I’m only getting an 8% variance (about USD 0.23/gallon, versus your 25% and AUD 0.55/litre – is that right?).

That said, Iwill admit that $0.10/gallon suboptimal average price is probably more likely than I thought, though with a less intense driving situation one would still be well under the $260/year “convenience premium.” Outside the US and other oil-subsidizing countries, the numbers clearly work out very differently.

I might also add that some people forget about the “repetitive” in Repetitive Stress Injury. Adjustable is your friend because it allows you to find a really good posture, and also because it allows you to accommodate multiple postures through a day or month or whatever.

How do you find the twist-scrolling? I have the Orbit Fusion for my laptop because the ring is still my preferred scroller on trackballs, and the god-damned scroll-ring Orbit still doesn’t have a third button. I actually remapped a different button to be left-click so I could use a flatter hand position like most of their older designs (even the SlimBlade Pro) allow.

Our new zojirushi rice cooker plays songs. It’s weird and makes me wonder why the kitchen sounds like the laundry room.

the lens of his that stare decisis is a poor doctrine

I can imagine an abhorrent precedent like Dredd Scott leaving a bad taste in a young black lawyer’s mind, but it’s certainly an odd way to approach jurisprudence in a common law country, and it’s a pretty shit way to regulate a complicated body of law that relies on litigation for clarity. Combine it with a simplistic version of originalism once stare decisis is discarded, and I stand by my statement: bafflingly literal and lazy, and I’ll add arrogant. “I know best, the entire body of built up law that came before me is without value, and the decisions that real people make under their influence are gauze in the wind.” It invites constant relitigation and enables the most extreme kind of judicial activism while claiming to be above that fray.

I haven’t kept up with his output, but when I was studying SCOTUS cases years and years ago, his opinions, mostly dissents or concurrences back in those days, were just bafflingly literal and lazy. Shit like, “I would declare the government’s actions unconstitutional because they’re regulating cars and the word ‘car’ is not in the Constitution.”

I can’t believe his thread of, I won’t even call it originalism, more like historical-context-free literalist textualism, has gained any traction.

People are weird about gasoline. They’ll drive around looking for the cheapest option, to save 2 cents/gallon. Even with a huge tank, that’s less than 50 cents of total savings.

Bless 'em for keeping the price pressure on, but this is so very true. Once I ran a couple of mental hypotheticals, I stopped giving a shit, beyond avoiding places right by airports that jack it up a dollar or more (Las Vegas and especially Orlando, with lots of tourists in rentals, are the worst offenders I’ve seen).

For a pretty extreme example consider, as you say, a large 25-gal tank, and filling up from dry twice a week, at an average of $0.10/gal non-optimal price: you pay an annual premium of $260 bucks not to drive yourself batty hunting for pennies, and burning at least a tiny bit more fuel to do it. Most people will pay far less. It’s just this weird thing that stuck in people’s brains long past the point where a cent increase was any significant percentage of the fuel purchase.

Sounds like this sinkhole is a non-trivial dive, but depth-wise it’s only 200 meters. Pressure vessel engineering should not be the limiting factor. Also, for whatever reason, this guy left OceanGate in 2013.

Opal Lee is single-handedly keeping Texas a place worth making better.

I’m exaggerating, but only a little. She’s a god-damned saint.

Finished up my last hand wired keyboard the other day, and also the RPi powered Pokédex my daughter had wanted me to finish for her for quite a while.

It’s a crude little thing, especially the 3D printing — it was this project that convinced me I had to move on from TinkerCAD — but the software (not mine) works perfectly, the battery is big enough to power the Pi and she’s fond of it.

Based on what I recall of his tenure at UNT, I doubt they stuck it out for very long. I think his kid is the head coach at Carroll now.

Hell, it’s not even like I live someplace that’s terribly different from Southlake, but the gusto with which that town throws itself into toxic rich people shit is impressively awful. I understand there’s finally a bit of a quiet counter-movement now that the chickens are coming home to roost.

Well, the University of Missouri DID join the Southeastern Conference…

God, I hate Southlake.

I do wish I could go back to hating them just because of their smarmy spoiled football team.

Here’s another article on Juneteenth.

You want proper patriotism, this is it. Celebrating more liberty, and hoping for even more still. Also a fitting commemoration of the Civil War, because as the old saw goes:

• First, you learn the Civil War was about slavery.
• Then, you learn it had many causes.
• Finally, you learn the Civil War was about slavery.

No doubt. Jeff Richmond was a huge part of the success of 30 Rock (and Kimmy Schmidt, and Girls5eva).

He has zero care or motivation to further the country once he’s in power. He wants to save his own ass and his properties.

Sadly, this is the best case scenario if he manages to win.