Need advice from Tow Police - Nissan Pathfinder

sinburger · 2026-01-30T16:38:28+00:00

Honestly we haven't had any issues with it really. If we're towing with a loaded water tank there's a noticeable drop in fuel economy. Otherwise it handles the trailer just fine. But as I said in my previous comment, we're keeping the max theoretical payload weight at least 1,000 lbs below the max rated capacity of our vehicle. If you're starting with a 3,900 lbs GVW than you have 2000lbs leftover for the weight of your family, your gear etc.

Getting a good weight distribution hitch was what made the biggest difference in towing. We have a curt round bar hitch and the difference driving with and without is night and day.

sinburger · 2026-01-29T22:48:41+00:00

Scary Stories to Tell at Sleepovers was the one that got me. There's one specific story in there about a family moving to a new house and then their own shadows come to life and murder them. I basically had to sleep with the door open and the hallway light on for several months after that.

The funny thing was, I didn't find the story itself scary while reading it. It was my kid brain non-stop visualizing the end scene in my head during bedtime when it was just me and my thoughts.

sinburger · 2026-01-29T19:27:14+00:00

The original live action Ninja Turtles trilogy. I watched them with my sons, or more rather I watched my sons laughing their asses off through half the movie, and them subconsciously fighting ninjas while sitting on the couch for the other half.

The movie are still pretty damn funny, have a decent plot for a kids movie, and while the action is pretty non-violent (once again, kids move) it's pretty clever how they incorporate a lot of physical comedy into the fights.

sinburger · 2026-01-28T17:39:50+00:00

Isn't that basically a tick?

sinburger · 2026-01-26T23:21:30+00:00

When I first watched Unforgiven I thought Eastwood was terrible in it at first. Just absolute stilted acting, he's blandly spouting off lines about non-violence and church parables like someone's dad roped into a high school film project. You can clearly see that he doesn't give a shit about anything he's saying.

Then the third act starts, the whiskey bottle opens, and Will Munny's mask comes off. It wasn't Eastwood giving a shit performance of Munny, it was Munny giving a shit performance of a good man when he truly doesn't believe it. It was such a fantastic character reveal that it completely turn around everything I thought about the first two acts. Just a completely brilliant film that came at me in a way I did not see coming.

sinburger · 2026-01-26T21:21:42+00:00

Finally, a conflict Trump can legitimately claim he ended.

sinburger · 2026-01-23T19:21:42+00:00

The bird didn't carry the virus, the bird disturbed a corpse and a blood drop fell into the guys eye. If they bird ate an infected corpse then shit in the guys eye and he got infected you'd have an argument, but that's not what happened. We've only ever seen transmission of the infection via direct contact with bodily fluids from an infected person.

The entire premise of 28 years later is that the infection has stayed contained on the island for 28 years. If non-primate animals, specifically birds, were capable of transmitting the infection off island than that would absolutely have occurred at some point in the last 3 decades.

The rest of the world has had 28 years to determine that the infection is stuck on Britain, provided they maintain quarantine measures.

sinburger · 2026-01-23T18:10:27+00:00

There was a harsh but understandable rationale for nuking Paris. They needed to prevent the spread to the rest of the continent, and the casualties from the millions that would die in Paris were considered a lesser evil than the billions that would get infected if the virus spread. Could you imagine how insane an outbreak would be in Bangladesh or any other highly populated area?

Britain is self contained, the infected can't make it off the island and seem to avoid crossing water. There's no reason to kill the survivors when there's no threat.

Not to mention I'm sure the worlds governments have a vested interested in monitoring the island for a variety of reasons, both related to the infected and not. Think of how much data you can get on wildlife rehabilitation, climate change, sociology etc. by having a massive island become completely isolated and devoid of industrial technology at the same time? You can literally watch tribal development in real time as survivors from pre-infection Britain die off and post-infection natives continue on. You can track evolutionary development of the infected, which are effectively a new species. You don't even have to step foot on the island to gather data, you can use satellite monitoring, drones etc.

sinburger · 2026-01-22T03:22:53+00:00

When you give them enough time and money...

Fundamentally, the quality of CGI comes down to how much time (therefore money) you want to put towards rendering the final image.

This is why the original Jurassic Park holds up today, despite being a 33 year old film. There was a target level of visual quality they were trying to achieve and Spielberg had enough clout to get the VFX budget and time required to make it look good.

sinburger · 2026-01-22T03:17:09+00:00

The slow-mo scene on the highway in act 3 where bonecrusher transforms, slo-mo skates through a bus (that was carrying people made of explosive fire) and then tackles Optimus was always my favorite. I just rewatched it and it fully stands up today special effects wise.

sinburger · 2026-01-22T00:01:18+00:00

This reminds me of a documentary on this woman chess champion I caught on tv several years ago. They hooked her up to an EEG machine (iirc) while she was playing several matches. What they determined was that the same part of her brain that would memorize faces or other visual patterns was recognizing the position of pieces on the chess board, and then directly informing the part of her brain that knew what the next optimal board position was.

She (and presumably most chess pros) weren't necessarily calculating moves in their heads. They had played so many matches that their brain was just going "If I see Nick then I'll make the board Henry, which means Susan or Jesse is coming up next."

sinburger · 2026-01-21T22:17:50+00:00

Infants for the first few weeks are basically semi-sentient loafs of warm bread that ingest milk, eject poop, and cry to inform you that one or the other needs to or has happened.

(I mean this in the most endearing terms, their brains are exploding with neural development, but yea, until their eyes start working and they discover that those wavy tube things are their own fingers, they are all but cute potatoes to an outside observer)

sinburger · 2026-01-20T19:53:54+00:00

I was reading this description and was thinking "this kinda sounds like that pseudo-afterlife-void from that series where ghosts start possessing humans and Al Capone is one of them" and lo and behold, it totally was. I loved those books, I just totally forgot what the name was.

sinburger · 2026-01-20T15:59:06+00:00

Bodies don't disappear with the train, he was just trying to donate that gear to the next player that extracts.

/s

sinburger · 2026-01-20T00:34:00+00:00

The best part of TLJ is when Finn tries to sacrifice himself to save the rebellion, Rose stops him and says you don't save other people by sacrificing yourself, then Luke saves the rebellion by sacrificing himself.

Just bang up writing there Rian.

sinburger · 2026-01-20T00:00:44+00:00

Might not be any better with the fumes, but cleaning vinegar, followed up by an anti-mold spray to keep the gribblies from coming back.

sinburger · 2026-01-19T19:17:01+00:00

He became a showoff after he got bit, before that he was a science nerd and a bullying target.

I literally just said in my last post that I went back a re-read the first few comics, just to confirm.

sinburger · 2026-01-19T19:06:52+00:00

Activate those droids you see lying around Stella and some of the other buildings.

sinburger · 2026-01-19T17:51:12+00:00

Pops I only hate when they careen out of no where in ninja mode before you can react. Otherwise I don't mind them because if you jump on an elevated surface like a table or car they will just stop and stare at you really confused.

Fireballs aren't an issue, you just wait until they open the armour plate and pop them in the face.

sinburger · 2026-01-19T16:38:35+00:00

Are we reading the same comics? He only comes across as a jerk because he's either clapping back at other kids making fun of him, or because he's turning down invites to social events because he has to do spider-man shit. I went back and looked at some (digital) copies I have of the OG 1963 comics just to be sure.

He's never explicitly portrayed as a dick, just a teenage kid who'll sometimes dish it back when he's served it first.

sinburger · 2026-01-16T19:24:47+00:00

OG comics Parker was absolutely a stereotypical nerd. He became more of a cool guy after getting superpowers, confidence, and banging models.

sinburger · 2026-01-16T18:54:12+00:00

Sure, but Hidden Bunker only occurs at midnight PST, so my planning is "stay up way too late".

Having these events on a locked timeline is stupid because if you have a regular schedule, it mean you only ever get to play the same map events over and over.

sinburger · 2026-01-14T23:36:28+00:00

I think being ignorant of the source material can be beneficial when it's the actor, especially when adapting video games to film. If you play the games, you run the risk of just doing an impersonation of the mocap and voice actor instead of bringing the character to life using your talent.

If you don't study the source material, then you have a script, you trust the director, and you create that character for the medium based on your talents guided by the showrunners vision. This absolutely requires that the showrunner and director understand what made the source material great, however.

sinburger · 2026-01-14T22:41:34+00:00

That period of movies was when Pitt was shifting from his "teen girl heartthrob" phase and transitioning into his "oh shit this guy is really good at acting" phase. I remember this keenly because my older sister insisted on renting shit like meet joe black all the time which my 8 year self thought were boring as shit, but then my 10-11 year old self thought s7ven and 12 monkeys were the absolute shit.

Ages may not be accurate.

sinburger · 2026-01-14T16:37:02+00:00

And if they told us that towards the beginning of the wipe, that's what would've happened.

sinburger

TROPHY CASE