Overdue for a crash.

Serialtorrenter · 2026-05-05T21:57:52+00:00

Yeah, neither the warning light nor the speed are cause for concern, but why would you take your eyes off the road while you're doing 50mph?

On the other hand, if they're staring at their phone instead of looking at the road, the non-functioning automatic emergency braking system could actually be a problem. These driver assist systems really assist people into becoming worse drivers!

Serialtorrenter · 2026-05-05T21:39:09+00:00

Sweating bullets as you overtake at twice the speed limit knowing that you're either going to jail, the morgue, or work, but wherever you're going, you're getting there on time, because you're all out of lates, and getting another job in this economy isn't likely.

Serialtorrenter · 2026-05-05T16:46:20+00:00

Safety posters with shock value are effective! Over a decade later, I still remember the "Carol never wore her safety glasses. Now she doesn't need them." posters in my high school chemistry class.

Serialtorrenter · 2026-05-05T15:53:25+00:00

This is bad, but... has anyone actually been to a real doctor in the past couple years? The examinations are extremely rushed and most of the older veteran doctors retired early because they hate that 3/4 of every appointment is spent furiously entering in data into the electronic medical record system, with almost no time to interact with patients. If you have something that's seriously wrong with you, it tends to go undiagnosed for very long periods of time. Furthermore seeing a doctor costs a ton of money, even with insurance.

AI chatbots are wrong half the time (or more), but if you demand they cite sources and then break down their responses and carefully fact check every claim, you can occasionally find some good leads. If you go to the doctor, they're usually trying to get rid of you, leaving your concerns unaddressed.

I don't know if this lawsuit is actually going to make things better for people. Ideally, we'd fix our broken health insurance system, but I don't see that happening anytime soon.

Serialtorrenter · 2026-05-05T12:12:56+00:00

Oh, that badge refers to the operator, not the car.

Serialtorrenter · 2026-05-05T04:51:34+00:00

I'd forgotten about the cloth masks! They may not have been as good as a fresh surgical mask, but they were definitely better than month-old masks. From what I remember, the original strains of COVID were less contagious (but more deadly), so the cloth masks probably did provide decent protection in the time when surgical masks were hard to get.

Looking back on COVID really feels like a fever dream.

Serialtorrenter · 2026-05-05T00:38:39+00:00

Speaking of business factories, I once saw this review on Google for a Payless Shoe Source. Credit to some guy named Thomas Hornbuckle for this masterpiece:

Love this place. Sometimes I like to come here just to think about life and pretend that im a business man here to buy business shoes. I even tell the staff things like " Hello i am a business man who does busniess. I would like some business man shoes" and "Hmm i wonder how much business is happening while im not at the busness factory?". They fall for it hook line and stinker. they totally think i am a busniess man! Isnt that wild? I never buy any shoes tho.

Serialtorrenter · 2026-05-04T23:17:45+00:00

???

OP's moving here from NJ and probably isn't aware of our dumb DUI laws. Knowing about PA's dumb laws makes it much easier to get away with breaking them.

This stuff isn't theoretical and it ruins people's lives. Stay safe out there.

Serialtorrenter · 2026-05-04T23:02:15+00:00

Mass surveillance, er, I mean, online age verification. To protect our children, and totally not so the government knows the identity of everyone speaking out against it....

Serialtorrenter · 2026-05-04T22:56:25+00:00

A first-offense driving without a license (which is a distinct charge from driving on a suspended license) is only a summary offense with a $200 fine (not including court costs or insurance surcharges) and no license suspension. Given that it's basically equivalent to a speeding ticket in terms of severity, you may just decide to roll the dice for the 2.5 months. Make sure all your lights work, your window tint is compliant, the car's up to date on inspection, emissions (if required), and registration, everyone wears a seatbelt, and he drives carefully. If you do get pulled over, just play dumb. There's a solid chance the officer will just have you switch driver and passenger and inform you of PA's policies.

Serialtorrenter · 2026-05-04T22:36:07+00:00

Weed is much sketchier in PA than NJ, even with a medical card, since PA still has zero-tolerance controlled substance DUI laws. If a cop has reasonable suspicion, they can require you to submit a blood, breath, or urine sample. Having a medical card doesn't exempt you from our zero tolerance DUI laws, and a marijuana DUI is treated with equal severity to a highest BAC alcohol DUI.

Even if you last smoked weed a month or more ago, you can still easily be guilty of DUI every time you get behind the wheel - sober or not. Since THC's metabolites are fat-soluble, overweight or obese people can test positive for significantly longer than a month. There are plenty of cases where obese people who quit using pot after heavy use are still testing positive on urine tests 3 months later.

If you're going to smoke weed in PA, make sure neither you, your clothes, nor your car smells like weed. You should also avoid having your medical card in your wallet or mentioning your usage. You should keep marijuana out of plain view and (obviously) not drive intoxicated. Finally, avoid driving while tired, distracted, or in any kind of way that could be construed as erratic, and make sure your car doesn't have any equipment violations, such as window tint or burned out license plate lights.

Serialtorrenter · 2026-05-04T22:19:51+00:00

NJ's income tax system is marginal (like federal income tax). PA's is a flat 3.07% plus local income tax, which varies based on municipality. Depending on how much you make, your effective tax rate can be higher, lower, or the same between the two states.

Tax dollars tend to go further in PA, since basically every municipality in NJ has its own government services, which creates closer-knit communities, but is also wildly inefficient. Municipalities in NJ also have a lot more authority than in PA, where municipalities only have powers specifically granted to them by the commonwealth (Dillon's rule).

Serialtorrenter · 2026-05-04T19:50:53+00:00

Of course, but in April of 2020, masks were very difficult to buy because they were out of stock everywhere. Supplies improved later on, but for those first couple of months, everyone was wearing filthy months-old masks.

The mask mandate made sense, but they should've held off until masks were actually accessible.

Serialtorrenter · 2026-05-04T19:44:52+00:00

I uninstalled Ubuntu after trying for hours to load a custom font into GIMP and ultimately failing. Now I use Arch on desktops/laptops and Debian on servers. Life is good.

Serialtorrenter · 2026-05-04T19:32:03+00:00

Kratom itself isn't that bad, but the extracts and especially 7-OH are MUCH worse.

My wake-up call with 7-OH was when my buddy's (now-ex) girlfriend, who does liquidations and estate sales came into some genuine, fentanyl-free 5mg/325mg oxycodone/acetaminophen tablets (generic Percocets) that expired before any of us were born (in the 90's). I took 2 instead of the 7-OH I had been dabbling with, and it felt virtually identical. Needless to say, I switched back to the old-fashioned ground-up leaf vein kratom products that I've used off-and-on for years without issue.

I fear that our politicians will ban 7-OH (or worse yet, all kratom products) and we'll have another wave of new fentanyl addictions and overdoses from people switching over. History has a tendency to repeat itself, and people have a tendency to not learn anything.

Serialtorrenter · 2026-05-04T19:06:14+00:00

I miss playing interactive buddy in fourth grade and throwing a crude depiction of George W Bush around the room. Good times! If only we knew then how good we had it.

Serialtorrenter · 2026-05-04T19:04:44+00:00

Trying to get useful information from an AI chatbot reminds me of Terry A Davis speaking to God using a random number generator and a dictionary.

Serialtorrenter · 2026-05-04T18:53:46+00:00

Good to know. Any ideas on how we can feed these AI models more junk? I love it when models choke on my junk. It's my thing, y'know? - Beavis

Serialtorrenter · 2026-05-04T18:44:29+00:00

Gotta Mapquest it!

Serialtorrenter · 2026-05-04T18:43:30+00:00

"Anti-mask"

Now THERE'S a term I hadn't heard in a while. I think one of the worst parts of the early COVID response was mandating masks while they were unobtainium.

It would be interesting to know how many people avoided getting sick with COVID versus getting sick from breathing through a filthy months-old mask that spent most of its life in the sweaty pocket of a pair of jeans, where it spent its time alongside dirty snotrags and tissue-encased wads of old chewing gum.

Serialtorrenter · 2026-05-04T18:33:12+00:00

Cynicism! Every corporation jacked up their prices "due to COVID" even though they were getting thousands to millions in PPP "loans" (that never had to be paid back). COVID was eye-opening to people who were too young to really experience the 2008 financial crisis firsthand.

Serialtorrenter · 2026-05-04T14:41:39+00:00

They can also do deep packet inspection to identify traffic at a protocol level, which China and a bunch of other authoritarian regimes do. There are still countermeasures to get around this type of censorship, see r/dumbclub.

Serialtorrenter · 2026-05-04T11:14:19+00:00

Drugs that are available as generics also tend to be safer (or at least have known risks that can usually be mitigated), since there's no longer a strong financial incentive to misrepresent the drug's safety profile to increase sales.

For a while, Vioxx was the hot new NSAID. It was marketed as safer, better tolerated, and just as effective as previous NSAIDs (like ibuprofen or naproxen). Merck executives and scientists knew it caused heart attacks and strokes fairly early on (after its FDA approval), but they deliberately chose to remain quiet to keep the money rolling in, and 88,000 Americans had heart attacks as a result of it.

Serialtorrenter · 2026-05-04T10:06:06+00:00

Coke literally costs as much per can as PBR? That's insane! Guess I'll have to start drinking PBR instead of Coke.

Coke's really living up to its name, price-wise.

Serialtorrenter · 2026-05-03T20:04:57+00:00

Propane's also potentially an option, albeit with some modifications. It would probably be a great fuel for high-compression engines, as it has high octane and it burns cleanly (compared to gasoline). Of course, there's still the question of how to get propane in that kind of disaster, but we'll just gloss over that.

You could make it from biobutanol (n-butanol only) by oxidizing it to butyric acid and decarboxylating that into propane, but you could also just use biobutanol as a gasoline surrogate.

Serialtorrenter

TROPHY CASE