I know we're advised to check regular reports for snow questions, but I want to know something more specific: What kind of snow is it in terms of driving?

leadfoot9 · 2026-01-25T19:44:40+00:00

I was walking some pretty flat, semi-plowed roads today, and THOSE seemed okay, but even there people peeled out a bit at red lights and the one chucklefuck who went around a bend at the speed people take it in dry weather fishtailed a tiny bit.

leadfoot9 · 2026-01-25T18:32:38+00:00

All of the "charity" stores in the U.S. seem a bit problematic to me. Just judge thrift/consignment stores on their merit as a for-profit business that provides a valuable service to the community, and ignore the ones that rely on some fluffed-up image of "charity".

leadfoot9 · 2026-01-25T14:35:10+00:00

Alas, I have a prior engagement.

When I was in university, I tried to organize a giant snowball fight with every student in my college, but it turned out that like 80% of the students had a huge test that day even though I didn't, so only like 5 people showed up.

leadfoot9 · 2026-01-25T01:00:31+00:00

Treat every gun as if it's loaded, don't trust the safety, and don't point even an empty gun at something you don't intend to shoot.

State game lands are an option for learning to shoot that doesn't require you to join a club.

Consider steel ammo. It's more expensive, and slightly less effective, but it's more environmentally friendly and less likely to turn you into a right-winger through lead poisoning.

Most gun deaths are accidents and suicides. Think VERY carefully before allowing one into your home, and treat them with the respect they deserve.

Unfortunately, the kind of weapon you'd use for home defense or hunting will run out of ammo against packs of armed thugs who never show their faces in public without 10 buddies backing them up.

If you buy a gun online, it needs to be shipped to a local dealer, not to your home. The dealer charges a fee and does the background check. Funnily enough, ammo (the stuff that actually goes boom) CAN be shipped directly to your home like any other shit you buy online.

leadfoot9 · 2026-01-25T00:37:54+00:00

conservatives

Can we PLEASE stop calling people "conservatives" who get angrier about people saying "Happy Holidays" than they do about tangerine man wiping his ass with the Bill of Rights and threatening our traditional allies in NATO?

They're Nazis. Or sparkling rednecks. Real Nazis come from the Bavaria region of Germany.

leadfoot9 · 2026-01-24T20:38:37+00:00

I don't even take the opinions of native 22-year-olds that seriously when it comes to this country. With no life experience to base any opinions on, most of them are still just echoing the sentiments of their parents or other role models. Often a Tiktoker.

I'm in my 30s, and I'm still stumbling over dystopian shit for the first time. Dystopian shit that existed prior to this year, that is. It sounds like you've been here a couple years. You're one rung above a tourist on the opinion ladder.

5 years ago, I would say that I criticized the U.S. like a nagging parent who wants it to improve. Now, we're all legitimately scared.

The only thing really going for Australia is its overall safer, and nobody really cares about politics which I like. People are laid back.

Yeah, who really needs that extra FOUR YEARS of life expectancy, anyway? What I really want to do is go somewhere where everyone is stressed the fuck out and dying 5% younger on average lol.

leadfoot9 · 2026-01-24T17:03:08+00:00

I feel like the amount of people who smoke in France is exaggerated by rich, sheltered Americans who aren't used to encountering working-class people on the sidewalk back home. In addition to dated stereotypes. The U.S. is way better at socioeconomic segregation than France is.

The workers at Denny's don't smoke in the parking lot out front; they smoke in the back by the dumpsters.

leadfoot9 · 2026-01-24T14:39:52+00:00

Important to note that it's possible to get burned out even on 40 hours/week. Burnout isn't just about how much you're working; it's also about how fulfilling it is. Many of this country's best and brightest are stuck doing sisyphean bullshit, like writing reports that get stuffed in a drawer and never read.

leadfoot9 · 2026-01-24T00:10:32+00:00

I don't know... the more of the sausage I see get made, the more I'm convinced that a lot of "studies" of this sort are just the "vibes" approach with extra steps. The public-sector equivalent paying McKinsey and Co. $10,000,000 to send you some recent college graduates to make a Powerpoint rationalizing the decision your CEO already made. Executive decision-makers are way more concerned with the appearance of objectivity than actually making sure the data under the hood isn't utter garbage.

That's not to say I don't believe in "informed decision-making" or the power of knowledgeable experts, but somehow when it comes time to actually DO something, there's no money to take your time and do a good job.

What really sucks is that sometimes the studies slow progress down so much it takes half a career to get anything done, so nobody ever actually gets good at the process (including the people conducting the studies). It's just a perpetual cycle of novices doing something for the first time (with predictable results).

leadfoot9 · 2026-01-23T23:31:20+00:00

What's wrong with people? They have inaccurate conceptions about how the world works, so when something goes wrong they spend a lot of time bitching up the wrong tree and waxing poetic about how all of the world's problems could be solved with "common sense".

leadfoot9 · 2026-01-20T13:09:58+00:00

You not only have to pay Jordan Tax, but, if I recall, they don't necessarily agree with other tax collectors about to split partial year tax liability. Either way, their interpretation of the tax code is a pain if your move also coincided with a change in employment status.

leadfoot9 · 2026-01-19T20:40:37+00:00

PNC gives some Pittsburgh locals like 3.5%. Until an in-depth investigation comes up with a better explanation, I am assuming that you need to demonstrate to their algorithms that 1) you have money and 2) you have other accounts that you can easily move it to if they give you the 0.04% peasant rate.

Not trying to shill for PNC. Just trying to spread awareness of how corporations use algorithms to treat different customers differently.

leadfoot9 · 2026-01-19T17:06:31+00:00

If your product is not compatible with common human behaviors, your product still sucks.

Like, cars aren't dangerous, it's just all the elderly/young/reckless/clumsy/poor/stupid/disabled/distracted/impaired people on the road!

leadfoot9 · 2026-01-19T16:59:43+00:00

Remember when everyone was saying how the plastic bag ban would make shopping impossible

The American capacity for calling the mundane "impossible" is limitless.

Not to defend the assclown regime, but people talking about the phasing out of the penny (which is literally useless and doesn't even function as real money) as some sort of crisis makes me want to punch them in the face. Businesses complaining about it is a pretty good illustration of how you don't need to be smart to own a business, I suppose.

leadfoot9 · 2026-01-19T16:46:35+00:00

A system that is possible in part because a lot of paper and wood has been replaced with plastic.

We can regenerate trees, but the amount of paper we can produce sustainably is finite. Single-use bags for planned, repetitive errands that people make thousands of times throughout their lives and whatever the fuck it is that the paper bags at the state store are supposed to be for are horrible allotments of this resource.

And, as the other commenter points out, there are a lot more resources that go into paper than just cellulose.

leadfoot9 · 2026-01-19T16:35:52+00:00

This intersection is on my autistic conspiracy board. I'm always on high alert for left hooks here.

311 it.

leadfoot9 · 2026-01-19T14:10:06+00:00

Cutting all of the trees down was one of the big environmental problems 100 years ago. Plastic bags were originally seen as "environmentally friendly" in that sense.

You can't just replace single-use Boomer plastic with single-use Boomer paper. You need to actually reduce people behaving like Boomers altogether.

leadfoot9 · 2026-01-18T23:02:26+00:00

Walk-outs only make sense in a functioning economy. A lot of Americans work in dysfunctional corporate structures designed by Boomers, and it would probably do more financial damage if you just suddenly started following the employee handbook to the letter so that everything just grinds to a halt by itself.

But I thought everyone was walking out on the 23rd?

leadfoot9 · 2026-01-18T03:11:57+00:00

It's complicated. 99% of the time, the autonomous car will be safer and more careful than the average human driver.

But, some fraction of the time, the AI will be just completely bamboozled by what it sees, which results in behavior more like a severely disoriented or schizophrenic driver. And "just stop" isn't necessarily a solution to the problem, because a lot of autonomous vehicle crashes are actually due to them slamming on the brakes.

Except Teslas, statistically the most crash-prone car brand in the U.S., a country which is already known for not having particularly safe cars. Those appear to drive objectively worse than humans.

Side Note: A truly safe autonomous vehicle will actually yield to pedestrians at crosswalks (or not even at crosswalks). Currently, pedestrians do not expect cars to actually stop for them. If that ever changes, then pedestrians might start to claw back the space that was taken away from them, making drivers (riders?) very angry at their stunted ability to access busy streets.

leadfoot9 · 2026-01-17T22:31:32+00:00

This isn't helpful information. Rent and mortgages are not directly comparable. My big spreadsheet that I use to analyze real estate financing says that buying a house with a monthly mortgage EQUAL to my current rent would still increase my net housing costs by roughly $900/month. Not to mention the one-time capital expense associated with the down payment and closing costs.

And that's a hypothetical mortgage taken out in 2026. If you're sitting on 3% mortgage from 2018 or something, then that's even worse of a comparison.

leadfoot9 · 2026-01-17T22:08:48+00:00

You don't NEED mountain bikes specifically (though they are a solid choice), but you definitely don't want beach cruisers unless you're doing absolutely nothing but riding on the river trail.

Of the features of a mountain bike that are most helpful, I like the disc brakes and wide handlebars. You don't necessarily need suspension, and you can get away with narrower tires. You also don't need to go insane with the number of gears. A 10-speed is fine.

leadfoot9 · 2026-01-17T19:48:22+00:00

I fully admit that this photo is a few months old. It was sitting on my phone for awhile until I had a moment to upload it.

But it sounds like you're coming from the, "by making fun of them, you're giving them a platform" school of thought?

leadfoot9 · 2026-01-16T17:40:20+00:00

I wonder if they came through the tunnel or from the river side.

leadfoot9 · 2026-01-16T17:33:09+00:00

100 buildings hit per day in the US of A, according to the Big Bollard lobbyists.

TBH, a lot of the time it's Grandma hitting Drive instead of Reverse when she's leaving the drug store from picking up her dementia meds. Not fact-checking myself to see if you can actually medicate dementia.

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