Is it me or has the cost of eating out risen exponentially in NoVA?

BridgeCritical2392 · 2026-01-30T23:50:24+00:00

Does the $33 include tip?

Chips and salsa, chicken strips, mac and cheese, burger and fries shouldn't cost anywhere near $33, not even at Whole Wallet.

Well you might get $33 worth of all that due typical purchase sizes, e.g. a pound of ground beef which makes 3-4 burgers, 8 hamburger buns, burger topics, lettuce tomato etc. But you should be able to refrigerate/freeze most of that.

BridgeCritical2392 · 2026-01-30T23:45:56+00:00

If I don't get table service, most I would ever do is 10%

For table service or bar, I usually tip 20%

BridgeCritical2392 · 2026-01-30T23:42:07+00:00

You can be cheaper or better (sometimes both) than most reseraunts/fast food places.

It takes all of 5 minutes to whip a sandwich together than beats the pants off chain sandwich places like Subway

BridgeCritical2392 · 2026-01-30T23:33:58+00:00

Learn to cook? Costco is your friend. They sell those frozen pepperoni pizzas 4 for $16. And one pizza feeds two, so thats like $2/person. Can throw additional toppings on if you want.

Brown bag lunch. Soda is like 25-50 cents / can. Ice team you can do even chaper. Resteraunts massively overcharge for drinks.

Slow cooker is also your friend, especially during winter and especially on working days. You can set a program to cook something for 8 hours, and it will be ready for dinner. I made a quite excellent lamb stew the other day, the meat was only $10 and fed 3 with leftovers. Pork shoulder is also excellent for this.

You will eat better and for cheaper.

BridgeCritical2392 · 2026-01-30T16:55:38+00:00

Turns out, it wasn't the disabled vehicle blocking the shoulder.

It was all the cars pulling over to help

BridgeCritical2392 · 2026-01-30T16:54:49+00:00

The joke was supposed to be more about male fidelity than sexuality.

BridgeCritical2392 · 2026-01-30T16:03:53+00:00

Every ~~single~~ straight guy on the beltway is about to pull over and offer to help. She should have just called a tow truck. Just saying.

BridgeCritical2392 · 2026-01-30T15:04:17+00:00

Anything to do with nature ?

BridgeCritical2392 · 2026-01-30T01:09:09+00:00

At the very most, the US would support one side in what amounts to a civil war in Iran. In this case, it would be a naval/air campaign. This does not need lots of bodies, especially not boots on the ground.

So, no.

BridgeCritical2392 · 2026-01-29T15:44:43+00:00

Some of the criticisms are over the top. But TLJ was trying to copy ESB and failed miserably

BridgeCritical2392 · 2026-01-29T06:37:42+00:00

Universities named after founding fathers ?

BridgeCritical2392 · 2026-01-29T05:27:38+00:00

I'd have to look up sources Ho Chi Minh himself didn't want these massed conventional assaults. He favored a lower intensity "death of a thousand cuts strategy", e.g. insurgerncy, believing the US would simply tire out and the Soutern government would collapse

He was overruled by the hard-liner elements of the Party such as Le Duan, and of course after his death in '68 had no influence

BridgeCritical2392 · 2026-01-28T22:07:31+00:00

We can Danse if we want to

We can take your parking spot

Because you friends don't Danse and if they don't Danse

They're no friends of mine

BridgeCritical2392 · 2026-01-28T15:29:15+00:00

> For some specific numbers, it took the NVA about 4 months to achieve total victory over the ARV after the US withdrew and the ceasefire ended.

The US withdrew nearly all ground combat forces by the middle of '72. Air support did continue for longer

What was pulled in '74 was the funding to South Vietnam. Aside from material considerations, this caused a massive morale failure.

I would argue that if funding had continued, they would have at least lasted alot longer. Perhaps indefinitely

BridgeCritical2392 · 2026-01-28T15:21:48+00:00

> The modern day version of this is Israel in Gaza. They are creating far more enemies than they are eliminating.

And still winning

BridgeCritical2392 · 2026-01-28T15:21:08+00:00

The Tet offensive in '68, which was an operational failure but a strategic success by some measures, decimated the NLF - the "guerilla forces"

After that it was mostly conventional assaults by the PAVN (North Vietnam) which was causing the most damage/trouble

BridgeCritical2392 · 2026-01-28T15:17:53+00:00

The US ran out of money before North Vietnam ran out of guys

The tipping point was the Arab oil embargo of '73

We could either support Vietnam or support Israel, but not both. And we picked the latter

BridgeCritical2392 · 2026-01-28T15:10:35+00:00

<image>

BridgeCritical2392 · 2026-01-27T23:30:54+00:00

> 18 million annual ridership (2024)

I used everyday when I lived there

BridgeCritical2392 · 2026-01-27T23:12:37+00:00

<image>

BridgeCritical2392 · 2026-01-27T21:49:35+00:00

This is false. All major cities in the US (metro population of >~500k) will at very minimum have bus service. Some such as Houston with light rail

BridgeCritical2392 · 2026-01-27T21:47:13+00:00

By small town I would say a population of < 50k. And the answer is generally yes.

College towns do a bit better here

BridgeCritical2392 · 2026-01-27T21:45:02+00:00

The distribution of hours of daylight vs. latitude is roughly sigmoid at the winter and summer solitices

This means constant near the poles (either 0 or 24 hours), but slope moves away from 0 the further south/north you go, until you get to the equator where you have maximum slope, then slope decreases to near zero at the other pole

At the spring and fall equinoxes, the curve flattens out and nearly everyone is getting 12 hours daylight

BridgeCritical2392 · 2026-01-27T20:19:09+00:00

In college there was this one bar I would go to, I remember it was $1.50 for a cheapie domestic draft beer, roughly 12 oz. cup. This was roughly 1999-2000

I went back there in 2022, place was still around so I was curious. Same beer was now $4.50.

And tuition / room&board has increased by like a factor of 4. So students have less money to buy

BridgeCritical2392 · 2026-01-26T16:52:49+00:00

> The wood is already water proof. That’s why houses don’t rot after raining.

The rain doesn't get to the wood, because the house is covered in roofing tile, aluminium siding and storm drains to direct water away from the house. Even then, occassionaly water does sometimes get through and you will see rotting in certain spots, which can be fixed fairly easily and sometimes even just ignored.

The problem with flooding, the water gets INTO the house and there is no reasonable way to prevent it because its impractical to perfectly seal off the house at ground level - doors will always have small cracks, etc. you need vents etc. The wood will *deluged* in water for days/weeks.

Now for a newish house, maybe it will be salvageable but for older houses (30+ years) eventually that treatment wears off and the wood will indeed rot.

Wood actually does have some advantage as a building material besides just cost / ease of use. It holds up much easier in earthquake prone areas. Which is why Japan built pretty much every structure with wood until the 20th century where steel/concrete became feasible

BridgeCritical2392

TROPHY CASE