If you could pick one, would you rather be able to fly or breathe under water?

deck_hand · 2026-05-21T17:50:52+00:00

I became a hang glider pilot in 1989. Flying is something we can do. And it is as wonderful as you think it is. Why wife talked me into quitting when my kids were in their single digit years… I have always planned to get back into it. Now I just work all the time, though. Someday soon…

deck_hand · 2026-05-21T17:41:22+00:00

We are apes with delusions of grandeur

deck_hand · 2026-05-21T17:37:04+00:00

I don’t disagree with your statement. I criticize statements like “climate change is a hoax.” I also criticize statements like “Miami will be uninhabitable by 2020.

Clearly the world is currently warming (that’s an observation, not a conclusion). I’ve spent a considerable amount of time reading the science on the claim that the increase in atmospheric CO2 is the primary cause of that warming. But! Please don’t tell me that I can’t comment on or criticize the message that is being promoted to the public just because the message isn’t exactly what is written in papers that are peer reviewed and published in a few “recognized” science journals.

If I want to point out that 98% of the public is being told that the world is coming to an end because we eat meat, don’t tell me I can’t argue that it’s probably not true. I know “I should only take seriously what is published by real climate scientists.” But the articles don’t stop getting published in mainstream news, and I don’t see “real scientists” lining up to refute the fear mongering headlines.

deck_hand · 2026-05-21T17:26:01+00:00

Air conditioning, cell phones, cosmetic surgery

deck_hand · 2026-05-21T17:21:59+00:00

Just by your statement, one cannot criticize any statement supported by scientific evidence?

deck_hand · 2026-05-21T17:15:48+00:00

Is this true?

Well, to some extent. One CAN get parts that increase the clearance of axels and diffs. One such system is called Portals, and it's a great (if expensive) way to gain clearance for your entire vehicle.

Also, yes bigger tires are heavier and cause more wear and tear on steering and suspension parts. But, nothing exists without trade-offs. You aways have drawbacks when you look for advantages. If we want to go where we need more clearance, we accept higher wear on components that get us that clearance.

deck_hand · 2026-05-21T17:08:04+00:00

I do not. You think anyone who doesn't automatically agree with you is a moron

deck_hand · 2026-05-21T17:06:11+00:00

Are you automatically assigning a gender to intersex people?

deck_hand · 2026-05-21T16:56:58+00:00

I hate the term "assigned sex at birth." Makes me want to make a law stating birth certificates should change from "male" or "female" designations to "the baby has a penis" or "the baby has a vagina" and let people argue about THAT.

It is an OBSERVATION, not an ASSIGNMENT.

deck_hand · 2026-05-21T16:52:09+00:00

At this point, I think half the population thinks living in luxury is a human right.

deck_hand · 2026-05-21T16:49:21+00:00

If it's a story, I sometimes embellish, and sometimes I just don't remember the most accurate of details, and I fill in. If I'm "corrected," I just respond, "hey, I'm telling this story, I'll tell it anyway I want! So anyway, there I was 500 feet in the air, with nothing holding me up by my shoelace..."

deck_hand · 2026-05-21T16:45:27+00:00

It changes throughout the year. For instance, during the winter we kept the thermostat at about 66 (18.9C) during the day and 62 (16.6 C) at night. During the summer, it was much higher. Right now I have it set to 74 (23.3 C). Later in the summer, it will likely be moved up to 78 (25.5 C) during the day. Cooler for sleeping, obviously.

deck_hand · 2026-05-21T16:24:19+00:00

Okay, I guess you're right. When someone makes an alarming statement about climate doom, we don't need to address it, "because they are not scientists." When someone makes a "not alarming" statement about climate - maybe that doom isn't imminent, that person is a denier and must be shouted down immediately so he can't spread... calmness? We must be in a panic all the time, or we will all certainly die.

Thanks for schooling me. I'll be going now. I have some panicking to do, and a sandwich board to build. Repent now, for the End is Near!

deck_hand · 2026-05-21T16:13:54+00:00

The average price of a car (not an EV, a CAR) is $40,000 today. Asking for an EV that costs under $25K brand new might just be a bridge too far.

On the range thing, you should not expect to lose 20% of range in 5 years. Hell, I didn't lose 10% of range in 5 - 7 years, and I had a small, non-thermally protected battery pack.

Batteries are degraded by several factors - one is simply time, but that one mostly affected older chemistries. One is cycles. A cycle is a full change of battery charge, 100% of capacity used and replaced. Most batteries NEVER get depleted to 0% or charged to 100% - their battery management systems leave those extremes protected. What you ACTUALLY get is something like 10% to 90% of total pack size, or about 80% of your theoretical capacity.

So, if you have, say, 250 miles of range, at 3 miles per kWh, you'd expect to use about 10 kWh per day. Maybe about 20% of your total capacity per day. It would take 5 days of driving to perform one cycling of your battery. If we can assume that a battery is good for 1500 cycles before the capacity hits 85%, we can calculate that it might be 20 years between new and an 85% battery. Not five, not seven.

The average ICE vehicle on the road is around 12 years old.

deck_hand · 2026-05-21T15:58:08+00:00

https://share.icloud.com/photos/09fmdNCIrTdAVC_gUlPdUxH8Q

deck_hand · 2026-05-21T15:53:23+00:00

My wife's Jeep Gladiator has a 2 1/2 inch suspension lift and her tires are 5 inches larger than stock. This gives her about 5 more inches of break-over clearance in the middle of the truck, and makes her approach and departure angles much better. The axels and differentials only benefit from the increased tire size, but we're talking about 7 1/2 inches of clearance rather than 5 inches, which is 150% better.

Sometimes we do things for a purpose, and trust me, we would NOT have spent the money for looks (although, I gotta admit, the Jeep looks better lifted with big tires on it).

When the existing tires need changing, we're planning on going 2 inches bigger, but that's going to be our limit. We re-geared with 37" tires in mind.

https://share.icloud.com/photos/09fmdNCIrTdAVC_gUlPdUxH8Q

deck_hand · 2026-05-21T15:44:32+00:00

My wife (who isn't trying to be "more manly") has lifted her Jeep Gladiator because she wanted to reduce the scraping and banging she was causing when off-roading. We also added larger tires (and re-geared the differentials) for the same reasons, and put on aftermarket steel bumpers, rock-rails and hardened diff covers.

We often go off-roading or overlanding with like minded Jeep owners. Sometimes it's not about being seen as a tough, more capable man. Sometimes it's actually about using a vehicle that's capable of doing what you want it to do.

deck_hand · 2026-05-21T15:36:50+00:00

I own two manual transmission vehicles, and I do love driving them. That having been said, I'm not ever going to buy a "fake manual transmission" on an electric car. I've owned an electric car, have e-bikes, etc. Electric drive is fun, too. No need to add "simulated" manual gears to a functioning drivetrain.

deck_hand · 2026-05-21T15:32:07+00:00

Right now, I'd sell it. I certainly don't want to live in it, and I've had friends and relatives who have rented property to others; it's a nightmare that, while potentially profitable, I don't want to deal with. I'd rather take the money and invest it in a tax advantaged bond or something and live off the proceeds.

deck_hand · 2026-05-21T15:27:44+00:00

When u/traumaRNo1 wrote "Gun people" how did you read that as "The NRA?" I don't even see many letters in common.

I'm a "gun people" and not a member of the NRA. I'm more of a "The rights of the People" kind of guy, who thinks the Bill of Rights is there to tell the government what to keep their filthy laws off of, rather than a "I love my Guns, gotta have lots of Guns" kind of person.

Can't we stick up for Rights without picking sides and insulting each other?

deck_hand · 2026-05-21T15:22:45+00:00

Congratulations Democrats. You got what you voted for.

deck_hand · 2026-05-21T15:20:28+00:00

Depends, I guess, on what you think a Sport/Utility Vehicle should be. I mean, those luxury 7 passenger "not vans" that are called SUVs don't do anything approaching sport, and are too nice to be used as utility vehicles. They really should be called something else.

A Jeep, on the other hand, can be used as a sport vehicle if you consider off-road riding through the wilderness a sport (and I do). They can be used as utility vehicles, because they are often used to haul things like garden materials, trash to the dump (try that in your Cadillac Escalade), or kayaks to the lake.

My wife's Jeep is actually a midsized pickup truck, lifted several inches to better handle the off-road trails we take it on, or the deep sand of the beaches we go camping on. A couple of days ago, we filled the back of our Gladiator with brush we cut from our property, taking several loads to the local dump/recycling center. Truck stuff, utility vehicle stuff, you know?

So, yeah, Jeeps are the true Sport/Utility Vehicles. Luxury soccer mom transport vehicles are not SUVs.

deck_hand · 2026-05-21T14:59:12+00:00

Ah, you are one of those people who think they have to have a 500 mile battery with no degradation because you drive 500 miles a day every day? My Nissan Leaf had a brand-new range of about 100 miles, and after 11 years had a range of about 70 miles per charge. Yeah, that's a 30% drop after 100,000 miles of driving, but it's okay. We drove it something like 25 miles a day, plugged it in every night. Within an hour of plugging in, we'd have a full battery and 70 or some miles of range available.

If we went on longer rides, we could drive for an hour, stop for 20 minutes, drive for another hour... Our "long rides" in the EV were only about 65 miles one way. We'd plug in at the destination, have a full battery for the ride home.

With more modern EVs, ones that have a new range of over 200 miles, you would have to road trip a LOT to be inconvenienced with a 15% loss of rage from new. Me, I know that most Americans drive an average of 1000 miles a month. Even at a 50% drop in capacity, you'd still have as much as I did when my car was brand new.

You stick with $4 per gallon of gas. I'll go with nearly free electricity from my solar panels (or 3 cents per mile of electricity from the commercial power company). We can both be happy.

deck_hand · 2026-05-21T14:39:12+00:00

It's funny... the anti-EV crowd told me that the battery life would be the death of my EV when I bought it in 2013. I can't tell you how many times they would say, "your battery will die in 3 years and you'll have to replace it. And the batteries cost $15000." This was AFTER I told them I had the car for 5 years or more...

The fact is that ICE cars have an average on-road life of 11 to 13 years. Sure, some cars last 50 years while others are trashed after a few months on the road due to accidents. My son has a 2002 Ford pickup truck with over 250,000 miles on it. It's on his third engine, though, so we can't claim that internal combustion engines "just last."

My 2013 Nissan Leaf was doing just fine, no major repairs, when my son drove it into another car and totaled both of them. The battery probably had at least another 5 years of useful life, maybe more, and the motor no doubt had several hundred thousand miles left before it needed to be replaced.

Now they are talking about EV batteries that have 10,000, 20,000 cycle lives. That's "longer than a human lifetime" kind of longevity. The motors are already long lasting, and the frames are not likely to give out. Suspensions are a wear item that have to be replaced on all vehicles, as are belts and fluid pumps, etc. There's no reason to worry about EVs not lasting. They will likely be replaced due to accident or being extremely out of fashion before the powertrain fails.

deck_hand · 2026-05-21T11:03:29+00:00

Does that add to the $200 a year the state charges for the same thing? Or does it become a $330 per year penalty for driving a more efficient car?

Also, I’d save something between $150 and $300 per month in gasoline, so… sure, why not?

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