Indeed.

Unfortunately, no matter how well you tune your carburetor, just a change in atmospheric temperature is enough to throw off your mixture.

The only feasible way to adjust it fast enough to keep up with atmospheric changes is with some kind of fuel injection, an ECM, and an O2 sensor to provide the feedback needed for closed-loop mixture control.

Fortunately: https://speeduino.com/

Still, that is about as chill of a cat as I’ve ever seen in a bath.

Lean burning increases mileage, but produces nitrous oxides.

Rich burning produces carbon monoxide, which eventually converts to CO2 in the atmosphere.

Unit for unit, NOx emissions are 265 times as damaging as CO/CO2.

https://scied.ucar.edu/learning-zone/how-climate-works/some-greenhouse-gases-are-stronger-others

To successfully convert NOx, catalytic converters need a stoichiometric or slightly rich fuel/air mixture to the engine.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalytic_converter

let’s not get involved.

The mantra of the Democratic party.

My alma mater!

Vance was specifically selected because he poses no threat to the leader of the personality cult.

Trump has been able to quash dissent well enough to keep MAGA in his orbit. Vance doesn’t have the chops to hold it together.

and part of that is that adults absolutely do buy stupid status symbols to flex on each other.

Exactly. And when they do, we don’t say “Well, that’s just what humanity does”.

We say “Despise these covetous pricks”.

I use “philosophy” to mean one’s individual, personal relationship with reality: how they choose to interact with the world around them. I understand this is a somewhat atypical use. There is probably a better word for that concept. It eludes me at this time.

As I used the term, “Christian teachings” (etc.) would only qualify as a philosophy if the individual actually adheres to those tenets. If not, those teachings are just a work of fiction.

There certainly are “striking similarities” throughout the the populace and time. My point is that we don’t need to accept, excuse, explain, or tolerate those widespread behaviors simply because they are widespread. As I see it, “Human nature” is a slightly more egalitarian synonym for “boys will be boys”.

What’s the culture where people don’t covet meaningless status symbols?

While there are numerous examples of such philosophies and cultures around the globe, I don’t actually need to identify such a culture to demonstrate my point.

If one can remain human without engaging in this behavior, this behavior is not a characteristic of the human condition.

The question before you is whether the members of such a hypothetical culture are inhuman specifically because they do not engage in that covetous behavior.

The abhorrent behaviors being described are conditions of ideas held by certain members of the species. The species is not lessened by the rejection of such ideas. The “certain members” are lessened by their adherence to those ideas.

Don’t pretend we’ve ever been better than that as a species.

Will you make the argument that people who refuse to follow such fashion trends are somehow inhuman?

If you are unwilling to make such an argument, I will not accept your premise that this is a trait of the “species”.

What you (and the parent comment) are describing is a characteristic of certain childish behaviors, philosophies and cultures.

The sophomoric behavior of these geriatric children is not an indictment of humanity in general.

Those aren’t adults. Those are geriatric children.

And yet, still not a distraction from all the child raping.

If anything ageism is far worse in the private sector, anyway…

For the same degree of productivity in comparable roles, I would say that the elected official has far more job security than either the private sector worker, or the non-elected public sector worker.

The private sector and the non-elected public sector will discharge non-productive workers relatively quickly. Elected officials tend to hang around well past their obsolescence.

Working beyond a reasonable retirement age indicates the candidate does not share my values on the subject of retirement.

I don’t want my elected representatives representing the idea that We The People should be expected to continue to work into our 70’s, 80’s, 90’s.

Government is serious, important business. There are plenty enough horseshit corporate jobs and needy non-profit charities to meet the perverted workophile needs of these elderly people who still feel compelled to labor.

Representatives of the people, they are not.

I want to work hard now, and retire someday.

I don’t want to be working in my 80’s. I don’t want to be working in my 70’s.

I want my representatives to share and promote these values.

Anyone over the age of 65 who is still actively seeking office clearly does not share these values and is unqualified to continue to hold office.

Yes. The relevant metric:

99.55% of posts are on a single instance. That is not “federated” in any meaningful sense.

I’m home now, but if someone is going to give me a 10 minute warning, I won’t be when they get here.

Wait until they start reporting their training data to the police.

That’s all good. Now, about the child rape…

I’ve tried this repeatedly. I’ve answered “No” to their upsale. I’ve sat there in silence, waiting for it to time out. I’ve asked for a human. Every time the AI takes my order, it adds nacho fries that I didn’t order and specifically rejected.

The problem isn’t that I need a human to fix it. The problem is that the AI is specifically programmed to ignore a rejected upsale. Their AI is smart enough to recognize the rest of my complicated order, but it can’t understand “No”? Horseshit. They are using this fraudulent programming to increase their upsale metrics, expecting us to docilely accept the sale rather than raise a fuss.

Drive-offs are another of the metrics they look at. Since I’ve communicated with nobody but the AI, they have nobody but the AI to blame for the drive-off. They don’t get to blame a human for failing to remediate the problem.