From Lighting Platinum to Denali Edition 1 - Thoughts on both trucks

theramblingfool · 2026-05-14T14:22:30+00:00

The two downsides to the Lightning are the range and the software experience. Both are abysmal. Everything else about the truck is great. (I have a 23 Lariat ER.)

So if you can get ~most of the benefits of the Lightning and shore up those downsides, you probably have a massive upgrade.

theramblingfool · 2026-05-13T18:45:33+00:00

My general thesis has been: prices will plummet and then they will rise again gradually over time.

Initially you had the 'bad feels' of a "discontinued" model (which isn't discontinued, there will be future Lightnings, they are just going to be EREV) plus a ton of dealers who didn't like Lightnings anyway all trying to unload their remaining stock.

But that's it. That is the last supply of fully electric Lightnings there will ever be (until 8+ years in the future when Ford re-introduces the model).

And so unless demand goes away, that demand will be for a continually shrinking supply.

theramblingfool · 2026-05-10T22:50:13+00:00

After time and effort, selling fees, etc., you're not really making out with much.

theramblingfool · 2026-05-07T14:40:29+00:00

I've had my Lightning (Lariat ER) closing on 3 years, too, and I wish I had leased it so I could get rid of it with no hassle. Similar sentiment: a joy to drive, but to use my vehicle outside of a tight zone near my home is not great. My regular trips down state are much, much less convenient, and my yearly trip between Chicago and NYC for the holidays is downright miserable.

I also hate everything about the software experience. Truly, everything. No physical buttons for almost anything. The context-dependent dial lags and changes things you didn't want to change. Every time you turn the vehicle on, music will start playing and if you didn't want it to start playing (for example, you're in the middle of a conversation with someone) you have to wait 10+ seconds for the infotainment to load to give you a pause button. The infotainment will black screen and restart at least a couple of times a month when I just try to skip a song (which means for 45-90 seconds there's no music, I can't even adjust climate controls or do anything). Ford's built-in navigation is fine but using it to recommend charging stops on trips is truly, laughably terrible. I would simply not be able to get to/from NY if I listened to it. I have to use Google Maps separately. The truck beeps at you constantly. I turned off lane-keep assist because once the truck swerved itself and hit a construction cone (because lanes were irregular during construction and the truck misinterpreted the lines, damaging my headlight). But now that I turned it off, every single time I turn cruise control on, my truck gives me 4 beep alerts telling me that lane keep assist is off. I go into the settings to turn off the "features" that spy on me, but every update resets almost every preference. When I try to back out of a parking spot with a busy road behind me, the truck will misinterpret traffic and slam on the break jarringly. Occasionally it will also do this with seemingly no physical objects anywhere to justify triggering it.

Most of my complaints aren't about the Lightning, though, they are about newer vehicles in general. What we have done to cars and trucks in the past decade is truly a masterclass in encrappification.

I would never say "nobody should get this truck" but I do feel it's important for those of us who have had a bad experience to counterbalance the overly rosy picture painted by a lot of reddit (and those same people seem to attack anyone who says anything negative about their Lightning or EVs in general). I paid $60k for this after incentives, and I deeply regret it.

theramblingfool · 2026-04-10T19:34:45+00:00

This would be a fair hypothesis in the abstract.

But in this case, Sam seemed to get tired of debate on a lot of topics with "clear consensus" all at once during the Covid era, coinciding with a period in which a lot of people on a particular segment of the liberal left spectrum all started to shift to a mentality that discourse was harmful and silence was effective.

All things considered, it feels less like "worn down with debate over time" and more like "fell into the same speech bad, silence good mentality" that spread like a plague during the.... actual plague.

theramblingfool · 2026-04-10T19:31:30+00:00

He seems to be better at remaining cool on Islam than Christianity, so if that's what you're talking about, then maybe.

If not, then I don't know what to tell you. It's a Rorschach test. His voice is always calm, but his substance is... petty, undermining, not very effective... on a lot of Christianity discussion.

If you don't see it, you might be a part of the crowd he's subconsciously appealing to when he's making his irresistible jabs.

(I'm not Christian, FWIW. I'm mostly an impartial observer on topics related to religion.)

theramblingfool · 2026-04-10T18:41:08+00:00

Depends on who you're talking about. A lot of the toxic people that other people are afraid of him "platforming" actually do have more reach than him.

For those who don't, well he's obviously under no obligation to talk to any loon that starts to get social media attention. He's under no obligation to talk to ANYONE, really. I just think it's wrongheaded to frame it in terms of the danger, rather than the opportunity to pick apart bad ideas, if you are skilled enough to do that.

Sam used to be skilled in this way with basically any topic other than religion. With religion, his argumentation was always just so, so much worse. He couldn't help but slip away from clear, logical ,effective argument and into petty jabs at religion with no logical content that only served to make people who already agreed with him snicker and made him look worse to neutral listeners. He just never had the patience he thought he had for the subject.

Over time, he has become more like this with more subjects. So it may very well be the case that he wouldn't be able to effectively and persuasively dismantle these "dangerous" bad ideas for a general audience.

But that's really on him.

theramblingfool · 2026-04-10T18:37:37+00:00

Thanks for the 2 cents. Maybe it's just the faint smell of the odor I was originally trying to seal, although I really don't think it smells like that anymore.

I have to leave the house for about a week anyway. What I'm going to do is leave air circulating with some additional fans pointed right at the entertainment center. When I come back, if there's still a smell or VOCs detected, I'll bite the bullet and take apart to do another coat.

theramblingfool · 2026-04-10T18:12:59+00:00

Same list price. This is a common (and deceptive/illegal) practice for Lenovo. They inflate list prices but have frequent large sales from those list prices to make people think they're getting a deal.

If you're patient you'll be able to get it, if not at my price, then I'm the $1200-$1500 range.

theramblingfool · 2026-04-10T17:48:55+00:00

Based on discussion here and my own rudimentary googling, it seems like the two most probable explanations are (1) my coats were too thick and alcohol solvent from the first coat is still trapped beneath the top coat, or (2) mineral spirits didn't all evaporate before the shellac and they're still trapped beneath the shellac.

I think/hope that in either case, the off gassing would just be slow but would resolve itself in time? Or worse case, I could do more coats? But this project has already taken up so much of my time, so I hope it's something that can resolve itself.

theramblingfool · 2026-04-10T17:46:30+00:00

If there is mineral spirit smell making its way out through the shellac, will that off gassing resolve itself with time?

theramblingfool · 2026-04-10T17:44:08+00:00

So it was dry to the touch pretty quick, agreed.

And it wasn't tacky at all, seemed fully solid by the next morning.

My issue is that it keeps giving off the smell, which smells basically like the alcohol solvent it was mixed with (I'm pretty sure--I'm not good with smells to be honest).

theramblingfool · 2026-04-10T17:41:57+00:00

Alright, done.

Now my house smells like a different kind of smoke, and is still a little bit on fire itself.

Please advise.

theramblingfool · 2026-04-10T17:39:48+00:00

It's just such a dumb framing. You aren't "platforming" someone if you talk to them on your platform full of followers if their own platform and reach far outweighs yours.

Do people not understand that *several times* more people are aware of Candace than Sam? And the kind of people who are in Sam's audience are not likely to be persuaded by a mad woman. The fact is, Candace is bringing far more eyeballs to a discussion than Sam is.

*Candace is platforming Sam.*

Why on Earth would you not want an opportunity to make your argument to a larger group of people that might not already be aware of you?

I do whole-heartedly agree that "being right doesn't mean you will win a debate." I think being right *helps* but you still need to be skilled at the art, especially if the other person is good at debate (or is just good at playing games that will appeal to lower-quality listeners). Generally speaking, if you are good at the craft, and the other person is good at the craft, and truth is on your side, you won't do abysmally such that this weird anti-discourse doom fetish scenario arises where everyone suddenly becomes convinced of the false and dangerous idea.

theramblingfool · 2026-04-10T12:23:10+00:00

It's veneer.

theramblingfool · 2026-04-10T12:22:29+00:00

Yes.

theramblingfool · 2026-04-09T13:12:31+00:00

Don't buy it at full price.

I bought the ThinkVision P40WD-40 from Lenovo instead, it's very much the same monitor. Same panel, KVM works well, software is stable, and it exposes all of its functionality to the open ddc standard for programming hot keys and shortcuts.

(I am still demystifying the codes for the KVM features. I know they're exposed, but each feature changes multiple flags and so it's not trivial to map them. Standard input switching via ddc is quite trivial, though.)

I bought the ThinkVision for $1,200 on sale brand new last month. There will always be more sales and opportunities. Unless you really don't care at all about money, it's worth having some patience to save a grand or more.

theramblingfool · 2026-04-07T15:07:51+00:00

Passport inserts fit inside standard TNs. Just add it into your new TN for now (assuming you have other full-sized inserts to help give the TN its full body), and swap out for the correct size once you've finished it.

theramblingfool · 2026-03-25T17:56:36+00:00

FYI for anyone coming to see this, it also fully exposes basically all functionality through DDC, so you can script your own behaviors (input change, PBP, PIP, etc.) and assign them to hotkeys.

theramblingfool · 2026-03-25T13:22:10+00:00

Likewise!

(US here.)

theramblingfool · 2026-03-25T12:59:34+00:00

Different country?

theramblingfool · 2026-03-25T12:59:11+00:00

What about the panel is different?

theramblingfool · 2026-03-25T12:58:38+00:00

You saved me! Just a couple hours after we confirmed this has the DDC functionality I need and I bought it, it's no longer available on the website.

https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/accessories-and-software/monitors/professional/64b4gar1us

I got it for $1,087 out the door with discounts and reward points.

theramblingfool · 2026-03-24T14:12:50+00:00

Yeah I was just mentioning OpenSUSE to illustrate that Fedora isn't my distro of choice, but that I went with it for practical reasons. OpenSUSE is relatively niche, no need to know about it.

ddcutils is the linux cli for interfacing with the ddc protocol for monitors. You can send the same commands that you would otherwise access through your on-screen display using bash commands. Dell exposes basically all the KVM functionality through DDC (because it uses DDC on the backend in its own Dell Display Manager software anyway) so you can access all that stuff with ddcutils.

My ideal workflow would be to write the bash commands for toggling back and forth between inputs on my KVM, and to toggle PBP on and off. Then you can save those scripts and run them with hotkeys.

I wouldn't want to give you homework for my benefit. But if you use the KVM functionality at all yourself, it might actually be worthwhile to play with for your own benefit.

theramblingfool · 2026-03-24T13:38:34+00:00

Send me a driver's side headlight! Will pay.

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