James Scripko

@MikeCalcara ... and the Tesla did everything else. Not one bit of manual intervention through the side streets of small towns, turnpike driving, construction zones, and finally pulling into our driveway. It doesn't like to back into his usual spot, so he did the last minute.

@MikeCalcara Saturday night, my son and I left a concert in Hershey PA to go home. It was 11:45 PM, raiing, many other drivers all trying to figure out unfamiliar roads. After the parking area (a grass field) had finally got to the "moving" point, he hit the "Home" option, hit go...

People find out I'm a car guy and eventually someone asks: "Will my new EV have self driving like Tesla?" And it's true that Tesla isn't the only brand with self driving capability. But they coined the term "Full Self-Driving" and marketed it aggressively enough that a lot of people think all EVs have some form of full self-driving. But there are many levels to it. Tesla's system is officially called Full Self-Driving Supervised. It can handle highway driving, city streets, lane changes, and traffic lights under driver supervision. It's impressive. It's also the most capable system available on a consumer vehicle right now in terms of the range of roads it works on. But the driver is still legally responsible and still needs to stay attentive (the car will let you know to look up). It is technically a Level 2 driver assistance system regardless of what the name implies. GM has Super Cruise. Ford has BlueCruise. Both are hands-free highway systems that work well on mapped divided highways. You can take your hands off the wheel, but you still need to keep your eyes on the road at all times. Mercedes has Drive Pilot on the S-Class and EQS, which is the only system currently approved for hands-off and eyes-off operation in the US. But only in Nevada and California. And it's limited to major freeways only. So it's still very restrictive. Where does that leave us? Every major automaker has some version of advanced driver assistance right now. None of them are fully autonomous in the way the term implies. The technology is genuinely impressive across the board. But the name "Full Self-Driving" has done more to confuse car buyers than almost any marketing term in the last decade. If a salesperson tells you a car drives itself, ask them which level of autonomy it's certified for.

@AStratelates For that to work out for the better, there would have to be high school faculty who could both teach and understand statistics. Well, never mind, it looked good on paper.

Do you want more people who are statistically illiterate? Because this is how you get more people who are statistically illiterate.

@number_pizza111 My wife started doing geneaology in the 1980s, and family research involved a lot of looking up possible census records and staring at the microfilm/microfiche reader, after the librarian (the grunts) went into the archives to find what you requested. It was like that.

How did historical research work before the internet? I’m trying to imagine how you’d go about answering a semi-niche research question and it seems like it would be a complete mess. If you needed to find, say, Egypt’s 1953 constitution, how would you even begin to look for it?

@Strangeland_Elf Try as we might, Nature always wins. That storm system keeps sending these little bursts of nasty every half hour or so (I'm not too far west of Philadelphia, I'm seeing them out my window). Losing a team to a lightning strike would be bad publicity.

So does this mean I’m gonna have to choose between watching the rest of the France match and watching Norway’s match? Rude.

@flobries Which is really amusing because Sam's Club *IS* WalMart.

That's not a deal when sams club has these at $0.29 per package and you don't have to spend $1300

@FiredUpCoug Difficult, but Bass Pro Shops has darn near everything, including the biggest damn frying pans I've ever seen.

You can definitely do anything you can do on a griddle in a pan. The hard part is finding a pan that is 36x18 inches.

@Blue__Squire This is true only for properly designed modern ramps. I've seen plenty of older ramps where a Tesla in Ludicrous mode wouldn't be able to reach highway speed by the end of the ramp.

When I am emperor: 1. This will be a mandatory question on the driving exam. If you get that question wrong, you do not get a license (no matter what your overall score is). 2. Police will be directed to ticket anyone who reaches the end of the on-ramp without reaching highway speeds. 3. Pleading guilty/being found guilty/failing to appear for court on such a violation will automatically invalidate your driver's license. You will not be able to get a license after that until you re-take drivers training and pass the driving test. 4. Subsequent violations will permanently invalidate your driver's license. 5. Accidents caused by this will result in charges of intentional vehicular assault/homicide. This includes cases where the person who did not reach highway speeds is not directly involved in the accident, but was the proximate cause of the accident.

@Strangeland_Elf They're lucky the tornado warning didn't quite reach the venue. I would not want to try and get however many people were there under a semblance of hard cover.

Intense rain at the France vs Iraq game.

@lisavsworld I lived in Ann Arbor for a few years. I enjoyed it, but then again, I've always liked where I've lived. OTOH, summer in SE MI does bring to mind two words: black flies. If the temp was only in the 70s I could outrun them, but they got faster as the temp went up. At 80 I hid.

Michigan is the best state for summer. It's no contest.

@wbridgefa But did you find the other seven yet?

I was at a Boy Scout camp for about seven hours today, and a couple of hours yesterday I found five ticks on me.

@Shaneand91 @ReubenR80027912 You know, while I've heard that comparison all my life, I don't think I've heard anyone say skunk odor is a pleasant smell, like roses. It's always just "smells sort of like roses". You may be in that one-third!

@JScripko @ReubenR80027912 Another sure about this, but to me roses (and most flowers) smell almost as vile as skunk

Real talk: I’m a cilantro truther. I don’t believe, for 1 second, that 20% of ppl are genetically predisposed to to thinking it tastes like soap This is the ONLY food on earth that ppl have this genetic issue with?? GTFO This is just the Latin version of “MSG in Asian food”

@Oilfield_Rando "Chicks with dicks" used to be a small, out-there subset of kinky porn. Now we get the mayor of Chicago celebrating it.

The wildest thing about “transfemicides” is that if you dig into the actual cases of it, it’s usually a black guy killing a black prostitute when he realizes his prostitute is a dude dressed up as a chick.

@SparkyBru Counter example: Target. I wanted a new kitchen trash can, saw one on their website that fit the bill, price "$20.90 (online price only)". Since it was in stock at the store nearest me, I figured I'd whip in on my way to do errands and get it a few days early. In store: $24.90.

Ever notice that stores carry less and less merchandise to force you to buy online to charge you high shipping costs……Lowes and Home Depot do this a lot….

@SithHaters I'm not certain of how job progression happens at Starbucks, but in other food service types of companies even the managers have to do stints at the "grunt" jobs. My youngest has been working at a convenience store for about that long, and he's finally made manager level.

Grabbing a Starbucks before the show begins (having a baby today) Heard barista say: "Oh yeah, I know Cindy's drink, it's been the same thing for the whole 8 years I have worked here" EIGHT YEARS? Working at a Starbucks?! I don't know who needs to hear this but: SERVING COFFEE IS NOT A CAREER. Level up your life people!!! A "job" should only ever be a financial stepping stone while you plot out a better life course. I will never understand the mentality of settling for a job as a barista. In 8 years you should be able to open your OWN coffee house! I have worked plenty of side gigs and jobs over the years, but none of them were ever the end game for me. Never settle, never stop building.

@SunnyDfan4eva @ReubenR80027912 The general term is "anosmia". I have it in regard to stink bugs. I do not smell it AT ALL when I squish one. If I do it near a group of people I wil get quite a reaction even if they didn't see me do the deed.

@JScripko @ReubenR80027912 About 30% of people can’t smell cyanide, 70% think it smells like bitter almonds. There are plenty of cases of stuff like this.

@handmadeshoesia HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! That was a joke, wasn't it?

What is the best time to change a newborn diaper that they won't immediately poop in the new one? 🫠 Anyone got any breakthroughs on the secret?

@ReubenR80027912 Okay, so I've heard that forever, and said, well let's see if there is a reliable source for it. Grok says there isn't one, so it may be one of those fabled "urban legends".

@JScripko No way!

@Abbywillia69841 There was a cooking show on PBS a few years ago titled "The Frugal Gourmet". He didn't go for the cheapest ingredients, but whatever he did use he used wisely. His fanciest meals would still cost less out-of-pocket than eating out.

. Being raised by a very frugal mother did not prepare me in the slightest for how many adults are truly terrible with money. She used to wash and reuse ziploc bags. Cut dryer sheets in half. Drove the same car for nineteen years because “it still runs, doesn’t it.” I thought everyone’s mom did that. I genuinely thought thriftiness was just a normal adult skill, like knowing how to do laundry. Then I moved out and met actual adults. My first roommate had four hundred dollars in her checking account and a six hundred dollar payment due on a couch she’d already had repossessed once before. My ex spent more on energy drinks in a month than I spent on groceries. A coworker, thirty-eight years old, asked me what an emergency fund was like it was a foreign concept she’d just heard about for the first time. I used to think my mom was just being extreme. Turns out she was just being competent, and competence with money is apparently rare enough that I mistook it for personality quirks for most of my childhood. I reuse ziploc bags now too. Not because I have to. Because somewhere along the way I realized she wasn’t being cheap. She was the only adult in my life who actually understood what money was for.

@CyborgPeds I suspect the poor guy spent a year of his life in big cities or the immediate environs. I certainly have no desire to live in those places either.

We don’t need poors