I always loved BMWs from the 80s and 90s, but settled on Volkswagens because I was just a poor teen or early 20 year old. Finally got the means to buy a top of the line X7, and have regretted the purchase for may of the reasons you listed.
The software is garbage, the car is too fancy (electric folding seats) but poorly implemented so it’s just frustrating. Total nanny car, can’t turn off backup beeping alerts. Rear row of seats randomly go to full hot on the climate system.
New battery is $700. Can only use a BMW battery installed by a BMW technician with computer access (they are coded and only a tech with the keys can pair the new battery to your car).
Should have just bought a damned minivan, but the wife likes it and doesn’t want to get rid of it.
I love my older (80's and 90's) Mercedes. Reliable and pretty simple to work on. But I would not buy a new one for similar reasons as you cite for your BMW.
But parts for the older ones are getting harder to come by. The Classic Center isn't what it once was. You used to be able to get almost any part for any car but many things are NLA for cars that are only 20-30 years old.
I thought the same as you and delayed having a second kid as a result. Ended up having two more. The second kid was so much different than the first, slept fine, is way more emotionally regulated, etc. I regret my fear based decision making to delay. The third kid is somewhere between the first two.
Fear based decisions don’t always lead to the best outcomes, though I am in no way dismissing the fear :)
This is not even remotely true. I have done a decent amount of shooting, some dedicated training, and own multiple firearms of different types including AR style rifles. Your sort of rhetoric is at best disingenuous and not even remotely true.
If you have ever trained with any rifle you will quickly realize that while there are hunting oriented semi-automatic rifles out there, the minimized recoil, the high rate of fire, the lightweight nature, and all the ergonomic accessories make AR style rifles incredibly fast and easy to shoot. Using a red dot site you can fire two rounds to the chest and one to the head at 25 yards in under 2 seconds with a small amount practice and training. Minimally trained people can do the same with iron sites in under 3.
I am a big fan of the AR platform because of these reasons. They are not unique to the AR, but they are unique to a class of gun that is designed with these characteristics in mind. These are not the characteristics of hunting rifles.
Honesty is important, even if it works against your beliefs!
I ended up getting gifted a set by America's Test Kitchen. Their website is pretty bad, they actually have some fundamental books - chicken dishes, side dishes, fish dishes, etc with hundreds of recipes in each. Most recipes describe a couple of failed attempts, the reasons they failed, and why the final recipe works. Great for learning. Most are simple recipes that don't take a bunch of ingredients.
My cooking just accidentally went up a couple of notches after cooking a couple dozen recipes out of the books, and paying attention to their failure descriptions. Pretty great way to passively learn!
On general aviation planes there are usually two altimeters that are independent. The instrument a pilot uses to fly with (round dial gauge or digital version in glass cockpit) and one inside the transponder itself. If you lose your altimeter you actually can call up atc if you have a mode-c transponder and have them read it to you. It’s separate.
No idea how it works on a passenger jet, but I would be shocked if it was different.
On the aircraft in question (the 757-200) there are 3 altimeters (captain, FO, standby/backup) fed by two different colocated static ports (that were both taped over). The transponder sends the altitude reported by the captain's altimeter.
This is why the crew trusted the captain's altimeter over either of the other two because it precisely lined up with what ATC was telling them. Neither set of parties knew that they were the same incorrect figure derived from the same source. The captain correctly diagnosed that the entire pitot-static system had gone to shit, but still trusted ATC's figure, right up until they started hitting the ocean, even with the GPWS alarm from the (correctly functioning, entirely separate) radar altimeter blaring in the cockpit for over a minute.
The parent poster is getting downvoted, for I think obvious reasons (instantly bringing a broader topic to a narrow political hot take), but I don't think they are wrong.
From what I can tell the mainstream media (which unfortunately has blended itself into a stew of "real news" and opinion pieces through their own outlets and through various readers) exists to serve a couple of interests.
In this case, I think this would be called "earned media" in marketing speak. A "journalist" or someone working in a news organization knows a bunch of PR associated people who have lines on what could be called lifestyle newspieces. The juicier the lifestyle piece the more clicks the org gets, so cultivating these relationships with PR firms that push this stuff results in revenue for the news org. That PR firm might push the segment onto multiple receivers, so you get a little critical mass.
The second interest, what the parent poster is alluding to, is the political party that the news organization and their journalists are aligned with. Since everything political now is so existential, the entire news organization ends up having this zeitgeist of pushing their political agenda. And obviously we are at where we are at in no small part by the shock outrage clicks political news headlines receive.
So, I don't think the parent is wrong, but it's more complicated than "it's all propaganda". Criticising the mainstream media has become popular in the last 10 years, but goddamn it's so easy to do because of how transparent the whole process has become.
At first "propaganda" referred indiscriminately to both the political and the economic variants; after WWI (née "The Great War") left a bad taste for the term, it was quickly rebranded, with the political version turning into "psychological warfare" and the economic "public relations".
This is still a thing in other languages, Venezuelan Spanish still calls "propagandas" what Anglos call Comercials (I don't think I've heard it in other variations, maybe Colombian Spanish)
This is just some guy writing about a podcast he listened to to fill his article quota.
The idea that everyone not constantly reading about whatever political story I am obsessed with is distracted by propaganda and that’s the only reason social change doesn’t occur is frankly horseshit.
If it’s important, why cede control of your own discipline to a notification loop of a for-profit company? A technique I like to use is to wake up an hour early everyday and do some studying before anyone else is awake. Making dedicated time for something is like making a commitment to myself. Strengthens my ability to do it each time, feels more like I am in control.
Awesome to be learning something new either way though!
Edit: I reworded my original comment to sound much less harsh. Same sentiment, better delivery!
I generally don’t think all people are equally capable. I have a kid with fairly severe adhd, and i am mildly affected myself. I’m very familiar with executive dysfunction. What I have found is that it’s a muscle I can exercise and keep in shape, and if I start slacking on it it’s very easy for my discipline to fall apart. It took a couple of years to build up that fitness as well.
I have fairly severe ADHD myself, and while it's possible for me to be vaguely functional, it already takes all of my energy just to not quit my job, and then there is no energy left for my personal time.
(I love my job, but that unfortunately doesn't stop it from being made nearly impossible for me. thanks, ADHD)
I started writing this before you updated your comment. I'm glad I saw the change, because I was going to reply with a similar level of snark!
In my case, I'm learning German. My wife already knows a good bit of German (which she learned in "real" classes, not Duolingo) so I have a captive practice buddy. We speak German with each other sometimes, and she has coached me through some things Duolingo can't - like properly articulating the German "ch" sound.
I like your approach, by the way - it's almost exactly what I use for my photography. I wake up with the sun, about 2 hours before my wife, and I go make photos.
The thing about HN comment threads is that you don't know who anyone is. So, the natural(?) assumption ends up being that anyone who disagrees with you is the perfect strawman for your own side of the argument. In my case, I have a support structure outside of Duolingo, I have an active interest in taking my learning outside the app...
and I still find the gamification and notifications helpful. I just don't feel very motivated some days, but I still get a few lessons in! Something in me wants to be high up on that leaderboard. Is this the healthiest way to harness behavioral psychology to learn a language? I don't know, I'm not a psychologist. In any case, I'm practicing German every day, and that's pretty cool.
With Duolingo, I think the ends justify the means. FWIW you can turn off the notifications in your phone's settings, and emails are easy to direct to junk/spam/whatever black hole you prefer.
Thanks for the detailed response. Sounds like what I do too, but for the social component I try and find someone learning the same thing. Sometimes that’s easy, sometimes not.
Like most people with young kids these days, I’m struggling with the reduced willpower people are trading for their digital conveniences. My original comment took that reflexivity too far and ignored the obvious utility of apps (I have ones I use too!) with a blanket assumption.
Because language learning generally sux, is horribly boring and I don't get enough of sleep enough anyway.
So, if there is an app that makes me want to open it, enjoy the process, then it is pure gain. Sometimes I get double motivated and do extras (content consumption, reading grammar), other times I just keep the streak.
But if I had to wake up every day an hour sooner to study language, then I would be forgetting everything in two weeks, because that would genuinely lowered my quality of life.
And yes, I am ok with idea that you will learn faster then I will.
Just read a fiction book that had this as the premise in a war between china and the USA. China took the high orbits and blasted the low. Personally I thought it was a a very interesting twist!
The software is garbage, the car is too fancy (electric folding seats) but poorly implemented so it’s just frustrating. Total nanny car, can’t turn off backup beeping alerts. Rear row of seats randomly go to full hot on the climate system.
New battery is $700. Can only use a BMW battery installed by a BMW technician with computer access (they are coded and only a tech with the keys can pair the new battery to your car).
Should have just bought a damned minivan, but the wife likes it and doesn’t want to get rid of it.
The enthusiasts car company is no more.