Just as an anecdote - When I was buying my last car I went in and asked for just the base model with nothing added onto it, ie not even the "eXtra Special" designations, and the dealership said they probably won't have any for a long time and if I'd like to pay 50% more for one with some features added on.
I declined and kept looking at the inventory of the 4-5 dealerships nearest to me. For six months they never had a single base model.
I started looking at another maker and they seemed to have base models that just wouldn't sell, stuck on lots for that same time period.
> and the dealership said they probably won't have any for a long time
In my case, I told the dealerships I was okay with waiting up to two years to get the exact trim I wanted. I told them whichever dealership could get me an allocation first got the sale. Then I literally stood up to leave.
And like magic, they went to the computer and found the exact trim I wanted and got my allocation a month out. I was extremely picky on color and options, though. If I had been flexible on color it would have been sooner.
The sales people at dealerships will pressure you into upsells. They’re not going to turn down an easy sale if you demonstrate that you know what you’re doing. They were trying to upsell you.
>> When I was buying my last car I went in and asked
> In my case, I told
Exactly.
When you’re paying, you don’t ask, you tell.
This is what I want, and this is what I’ll pay.
Don’t get me started on fucking real estate agents either. Parasites. Real estate sells itself. Conveyancers / Solicitors do all the real work, and typically charge a set fee. Real estate agents typically charge a percentage and they literally don’t do anything.
The sales folk at a car dealership aren’t there to help you.
There is literally no situation bad enough that a car sales agent or real estate agent can’t make worse. Incapacitated pilot? Fucking useless. Need a dental cavity filled? Fucking useless. Got a problem with your Goggomobil? fucking useless.
Packing peanuts are more effective at their claimed benefits than car sales agents and real estate agents are at theirs.
Sometimes real estate agents do a lot. Anecdote of course, but my real estate agent spent a few hours basically every weekend with us for like 2-3 months as we toured 25 houses, went over ~10 inspection reports, and made 3-4 offers. And he and his team got roughly 20k. In a better housing market I think they do a lot less, but I know ours did a lot of work.
That seems unlikely as I literally left and did not buy a car with more options and stayed in contact afterwards but I have seen that technique before where they suddenly "find" one in inventory after they realize you aren't going to take the option that gives them more comission.
The best part about the F-150 is that it isn't even toddlers at that point. The most common F-150 variant I see in my area's hood goes up to my shoulder and I'm 2 meters tall.
You often see the very important people driving these working their way through crowded parking lots and places that are primarily foot traffic with a "Wtach out for ME!" driving style.
It's so funny that when people design vehicles that actually have a need to be big - big buses, commercial vans, fire trucks - one of their common features is that visibility is treated as something important, and often these types of vehicles have either a nearly flat, uniform front side, or they try to minimize the engine compartment hump as much as possible and make the windshield huge. But when we talk about cars that are made for the consumer, all sanity goes out the window, we get these near-caricatures that would be hilarious if they weren't real. The craziness can only be somewhat tamed by government restrictions, depending on where you live, but the peak of this design results in huge, elevated flat boxes for engine compartments, mounted as high as possible. It doesn't matter that the driver has a blind spot in every direction, what matters is showing off how HUGE your 18L V32 engine must surely be under that hood, how powerful it must be to draw air through that chrome grille that's half a person's height, and most importantly, how much of an imposing heroic warrior one must be to own that tank.
Not to mention the amount of stones they kick up. In AZ if your truck has a suspension lift, you're supposed to have mudflaps. But that law (and many other vehicle laws) is not enforced.
Being from rural Canada, I prefer the truck and snowmobile sizes of the 90s (but not their emissions, it's hard to breath when they drive by). All the options are so big now.
I'm sure you know her better than me, but I'm not convinced it's not a Clark Kent-esque disguise. He takes his glasses off and he's obviously Superman, have you ever seen her in heavy Egyptian eyeliner? It might clear things up. Also, if she ever smites things by "shooting with her eyes", that's a pretty good tell.
As for that vehicle, it strikes awe and fear into me. Like it wants to eat me. A less threatening but equally whimsical vehicle is the Bombardier B12 from the 40s:
I see SO many illegally modified trucks and I've never seen or heard of someone getting in trouble or failing inspection for them. It boggles my mind every time I see a car with tires extending half a foot on either side of the cabin veering here and there, making their presence everyone else's problem.
I don’t know what specialty stores you’re talking about but A4 is readily available at most stationary stores, or anything related to letter writing, pens, or paper. I got the A5 notebook I’m currently using at Barnes and Noble, they also have A4.
Heck, I’m pretty sure you could get a sheaf of it at any number of office supply stores right now if you wanted.
I don't think it requires an additional subscription. Apple music started as solely an "upload your music to play anywhere" service. I use apple music over the other offerings solely for this feature and for a large portion of it I didn't even have any apple devices and so didn't have iCloud+.
Good to know there's at least one sane streaming service option left out there, although at this point I'll stick to my physical media. I've been burned by music providers enough times to think that Apple will eventually follow the same path as the rest.
I see it, at least weekly, at a Costco in Texas. Not just the pallet stuff but refrigerated goods and smaller stuff (gathered in boxes as is the custom at Costco)
Jacobin is not a whole journal on literal communism.
It’s a magazine with a professed socialist view point but it’s more aligned with left-of-center American politics. Think Sanders or Mamdani rather than Stalin or Mao.
> Jacobin is not a whole journal on literal communism.
It’s a magazine with a professed socialist view point but it’s more aligned with left-of-center American politics. Think Sanders or Mamdani rather than Stalin or Mao.
> Sanders or Mamdani
Sanders and Mamdani are about as far left of center as one can get at the moment, such that they almost meld into Stalin or Mao.
The mental gymnastics you’re doing to blunt that fact is absolutely incredible.
> Sanders and Mamdani are about as far left of center as one can get at the moment
No, they aren’t. They are about as far left of center as you can get and be competitive in US elections, maybe, but that’s a very different thing. There’s a lot to their left (as you an see from the by the opposition from leftist as sellouts to capitalist/imperialist/etc. institutions both have.)
> Sanders and Mamdani are about as far left of center as one can get at the moment, such that they almost meld into Stalin or Mao.
So, when's Mamdani's Great Purge coming? Do you think he's gonna stand by the standards of his historical ideological equivalent, Stalin, and execute a couple hundreds of thousands of elites (if we're going by the same proportions as the USSR), or is he going all out - maybe he could get a million deaths in? Maybe he could also start a famine or two on the way there?
The utter insanity of American politics baffles me. "Anything left is abhorrent totalitarian communism in the making" isn't just a meme, it's a foundational piece of mainstream American ideology that has been at its core for nearly a century now.
While I agree that the US has a historical obsession with communism, "anything right is abhorrent totalitarian fascism in the making" has been a far more commonly stated position for the last decade. At this point, it's necessary to regard both "communism" and "fascism" as simple pejoratives and focus on the specific policies being discussed.
This is unfortunate but perhaps inevitable. There are not that many left that remember the horrors of either ideology clearly.
Stalin was an ideological authoritarian that executed political rivals and used lethal force, price controls, and other governmental tools to control the economy and the general working population. The idea that Sanders and Mambani advocate anything close to that is laughable.
The rhetoric on both the right and left that liken today's politics to extremism in the 20th century is a ridiculous anachronism that needs to be called out more often.
Basically a two step process:
1. Keep humidity at 40% year round, using dehumidifiers. This stops their biology and makes them go dormant quickly. Their eggs and protonymphs will die out after a year or so.
2. Remove existing allergens from your home. In short: allergen covers around your bed, get rid of old fabric stuff(curtains, rugs, carpet). Launder everything you can on the highest heat possible.
Are you from Mumbai? or a place with notably bad AQI? Do you smoke?
Mumbai is one of the most polluted cities on earth, many people report being unable to perform aerobic exercise or describe breathing the air as being similar to smoking.
I'm from a place with excellent AQI (semi-rural Sweden). I do not smoke. I usually don't mind when other people smoke, but I don't like how they smell just after finishing. :-)
I know that the Mumbai air is not healthy, but my subjective experience of it was very positive.
I declined and kept looking at the inventory of the 4-5 dealerships nearest to me. For six months they never had a single base model.
I started looking at another maker and they seemed to have base models that just wouldn't sell, stuck on lots for that same time period.
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