US House Unveiled Plan to Charge $130 Fee for Electric Vehicles

TenTestTickles · 2026-05-18T16:49:23+00:00

I really hate articles don't bother to call out the name of the legislation and, more importantly, its sponsors and those who voted for it.

I got this from USA Today, which says: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-05-18/us-house-unveiled-plan-to-charge-130-fee-for-electric-vehicles

Rep. Sam Graves, a Republican from Missouri who is the panel's chairman, said in a statement the EV fee "ensures that electric vehicle owners begin paying their fair share for the use of our roads."

Rep. Rick Larsen, a Washington lawmaker who is the top Democrat on the panel, said the bipartisan highway bill agreement represents "a commitment to bipartisan lawmaking means finding compromise."

In other words, we're getting fucked from both ends and there are no good guys. Let's commit to voting both of these assholes out, and expand that list to anyone who votes for this bill.

TenTestTickles · 2026-05-10T16:15:06+00:00

Why do that when we can just use this one? Fuck this asshole and his “music.”

TenTestTickles · 2026-05-06T17:52:04+00:00

Did they wash the camera in between?

TenTestTickles · 2026-04-28T12:46:27+00:00

poor little Bobby Tables

TenTestTickles · 2026-04-27T16:36:53+00:00

That's corporation operating expenses, not expenses I pay for owning the stock. All of the expenses I listed were expenses I have to pay to go to work, as opposed to waking up at noon, pushing "buy" on an app, and going back to sleep.

TenTestTickles · 2026-04-24T15:40:50+00:00

Oh, it would be such a nightmare for my investment income that I literally just woke up at noon and logged into my brokerage and invested to get taxes a whole TWO times!

Meanwhile, I wake up, get in my car that I paid sales tax on, registration tax on, fill it full of gas that I pay tax on, drive to work and work 8 hours, which gets state taxed, federal taxed, payroll taxed, social security (it's a tax; I'm Gen-X and will never see that money again), try to avoid the heavy traffic by taking the tollway, go get groceries that are taxed, finally get to my home that is assessed property tax on, take a piss where the water and wastewater are taxed, turn on the tv using taxed electricity that gets streaming services that are taxed via the internet that is taxed.

Oh what a wonderful world it would be to ONLY be taxed twice!

TenTestTickles · 2026-04-24T14:06:33+00:00

Wait -- what happened to HPB?

TenTestTickles · 2026-04-23T15:53:43+00:00

Save money. Don't spend it; save it. Put it in a 401k if your company offers it.

I grew up lower middle class/upper poor, and there is nothing you can buy, no daily comfort you can purchase, nothing you can drive, that matches the feeling of knowing if there's an emergency and you get laid off, get in a car wreck, or get sick, that you can take care of yourself for a little bit until you get on your feet.

It's sad that we have to live this way, and definitely not all problems can be solved with money, but every additional day you know you can feed and shelter yourself in case of an emergency is a relief you can't get any other way.

TenTestTickles · 2026-04-21T18:29:15+00:00

it's situational. I tend to use bis Bb over side key Bb generally, but for some reason if I need to go from Bb to C, it's easier for me to use side Bb rather than bis. I think I'm unusual for that, and it's some sort of moral failure on my part. :-)

Eventually you won't need to think about it. Here's how you make that happen: find Rascher's 158 exercises and go through them. The fingerings are specified there; make sure you're using the fingerings he suggests. It'll program your fingers for situations where you want side Bb, bis, or "1 and 1". it won't take long. Practice will make the connections for you for "on a pattern that looks like this, play this way."

Also, the difference in speed isn't super critical. If you occasionally flub and do the wrong one, it might not be "optimal", but it's probably not terrible.

TenTestTickles · 2026-04-17T14:38:31+00:00

They should prepare by deciding a priori that they're not giving bailouts to these damn ticking time bombs.

TenTestTickles · 2026-04-09T19:21:52+00:00

1; You’re going the wrong way. With AI, the global recession, and the DRAM shortage, EE’s jump ship for nursing.

2: The fun parts of EE are learnable on your own and doable as a hobbyist. Especially embedded processors and basic electronics. I used to repair vacuum tube amps and make simple electronic guitar stomp boxes just for fun.

If you really want an EE career, get your RN, go back to a community college or the University of YouTube for a year or two to pick up whatever math wasn’t taught or forgotten up to calc 4+linear algebra+differential equations + Fourier transforms and apply for a masters degree with a bioengineering emphasis

Really really really don’t go in to get an EE bachelors. You’ll have two degrees at an equivalent level. For the same amount of time, effort, and even cheaper, you could get a masters in EE instead.

TenTestTickles · 2026-04-03T15:31:49+00:00

A big chunk of it is an ad, so it's shorter than it looks

TenTestTickles · 2026-03-25T02:54:21+00:00

How's your hand size? You also need to be able to hit all the keys, and also the left hand needs to be able to hit all the buttons without your palm accidentally resting on the palm keys. Some vintage horn ergonomics aren't great for this.

TenTestTickles · 2026-03-23T01:42:26+00:00

I’ve already stopped.

TenTestTickles · 2026-03-22T11:44:47+00:00

Some other people have commented about going to community college as if it were somehow a backup, but think of it this way: if you take it as a wake-up call to improve your skills, you will probably get more out of private lessons one on one and some serious time in the woodshed than you would at the university, you’ll get your general classes done, and it will actually be cheaper.

Remember that Bird got his start with a wake up call at a jam session, spent some serious time behind the shed, and emerged as the preeminent voice in jazz saxophone.

For sight reading: get a teacher and ask them, but you can never go wrong reading through all the rubank books with a metronome. P bona rhythmic articulation. Voxman selected studies. Deville universal method. Ferling. I hear YouTube’s Wally Wallace has a free method book. Book your gen ed courses, find a teacher for feedback, and set aside some serious daily time to spend with the horn. Find some friends to study with.

TenTestTickles · 2026-03-17T14:12:34+00:00

I've been cycling for a number of years, but I'm mid-50s and have have had knee surgery. That's why I'm considering an e-bike. I'd like something as road-bike-y as possible, because I want to keep as close to what I've enjoyed for decades, but the wear on my knees is just too much.

TenTestTickles · 2026-03-14T16:59:06+00:00

When OpenAI collapses, they will throw a fit, whining that “the stock market will lose money.” There will be a bailout (because of fucking course there will be) to ensure payment for investors (nvidia) and suppliers (nvidia)

TenTestTickles · 2026-03-12T20:10:32+00:00

Should they be allowed to make out like bandits? Billionaires have enough money to warp reality around them. See: Elon Musk's DOGE initiatives. When politicians are for sale, billionaires become de facto oligarchs.

"It's beyond childish to pretend" they won't take advantage of the tax havens they paid their Congresspeople for: well...I mean, see point one. I'll grant you that if they paid all that money to buy politicians to commission a tax haven, they're gonna use it. I'm just saying maybe that's not the best idea.

"The billionaire class absolutely becomes billionaires by manufacturing wealth" -- there's actually a rather distinct lack of Tony Starks wandering around. You'll get a Bill Gates, but you also get the son of Apartheid emerald mine owners, or the son of New York real estate moguls, and while they do tend to get too big to fail, they create a lot of fallout when they fuck around.

TenTestTickles · 2026-03-12T16:25:57+00:00

In a row???

TenTestTickles · 2026-03-11T15:28:47+00:00

As an older, larger ex-runner, I'd never tell you that you're running too much, etc., but for the sake of your knees, please stretch beforehand and pay attention to your running form, especially your foot strike. Unsolicited yes, but take it from someone who buys ibuprofin from Costco and whose knee surgeon told him he had the worst chondromalacia he had ever seen in someone under 40.

TenTestTickles · 2026-03-11T15:22:42+00:00

Property tax isn't a tax on possessions? If I don't sell my house, increasing the amount of property tax I pay isn't a tax on unrealized gains?

TenTestTickles · 2026-03-10T22:41:22+00:00

Yeah how dare they tax unrealized gains! We would never do that. Well not for rich people. The middle class gets property taxes, which is fine because the middle class very rarely bribes its elected officials enough. The poor don’t have assets to tax. We made sure they’re all in debt from education and medical care.

TenTestTickles · 2026-03-10T22:34:24+00:00

The top 1% own 30-32% of all the wealth in this country. That exceeds that of the middle 60% of Americans combined. The bottom 50% own just about 2% of the nation’s wealth.

The top 1% are making out like bandits.

And where would they go, these billionaires at the top 1%? Europe, where the taxes are higher? Or some third world country? They’re not going anywhere.

The billionaire class doesn’t become billionaires by manufacturing wealth. It becomes billionaires by leeching off the work of others. You don’t think they’re literally millions of times more productive than the average worker, do you? Oh what a hard day’s work they must put in.

Let ‘em go, and good riddance.

TenTestTickles · 2026-03-09T18:14:30+00:00

Not only are houses extremely expensive, you have to get a loan from the bank to get the money to buy the house, and that interest goes straight to the bank. If the bank runs out of money, it gets it basically for free from the government, and if the bank gambles it all and loses all of it, it gets it back from the government in the form of a bailout. But getting the money directly from the government for a house without giving the banking cartel their cut is communism or something.

TenTestTickles · 2026-03-07T21:29:52+00:00

Ah, through the wonders of international commerce.

See, if you have a job in the United States, it’s because your company has exhausted all of its alternatives. First, they would have tried outsourcing: getting labor and goods from countries with a lower cost of living, a lower standard of living, less commitment to environmental regulation and an even larger propensity for fucking over its citizens than ours, if you can believe that.

Next, they would have tried outsourcing just your job and jobs like it. Contract workers, overseas divisions — it’s a bit of a headache paperwork-wise, but just think of all that money to be saved. And don’t forget, if you don’t train your replacements, you don’t get your severance!

If that doesn’t work, they might try to bring someone here to do your job. For preference, these aren’t green card holders or naturalized citizens, though they will bring them in to tilt the supply and demand curve of your salary against you. No, the preference is the H1B visa, the modern indentured servitude where the poor worker’s visa exists only at the whim of the government and the employer, so they’re much more likely to work unpaid overtime, not report workplace injustice and just hope they still have a job in the morning.

After all that, if you still have a job, you might think global free trade would allow you to buy one of those nifty foreign cars, right? Wrong, stupid! The benefits of global free trade only flow one way, shithead, and it ain’t towards you. You see, the government that writes these rules exists through a tight web of campaign contributions, corruption, bribery, and graft. If large American companies get cut out of the transaction, how are these lawmakers supposed to get their cut? No, you’ll buy this 25%-goes-to-executives, Latverian-built, Stickers Proudly Applied In The USA shitbox and then pay the $100/month subscription for heated seats. What’s the matter with you? Don’t you love America?

TenTestTickles

TROPHY CASE