Fondots

Something about Chabad-Lubavitch and Brooklyn rang some bells for me, which isn't normally the kind of thing that would catch my attention, so I figured I must have seen something particularly weird about them in the news in the not-too-distant past.

And only one weird story from New York about Orthodox Jews comes to mind for me personally, and sure enough it was Chabad-Lubavitch that was involved in the Synagogue tunnel incident

Not that I think there's any direct correlation between these two incidents, I'm mostly just bringing it up for anyone else who had the same "why does that name ring a bell" feeling.

For me, a lot of it has to do with how it's presented in schools

Pi, for example. One day my teachers just kind of dumped this magical 3.14... number on me without any real explanation. Just basically "use this number to do stuff with circles," no real explanation on what pi actually is on anything, just "remember this"

Years later I found a gif of a circle sort of unraveling that showed how the circumference is π × the diameter of the circle

And sure, mathematically, the formula tells you that, but actually seeing that animated out made a hell of a lot more sense to me.

Now I got most of my basic math education before those gifs were so readily available, and smart boards were just becoming a thing when I was in high school, so it would have been a little hard to show that to a bunch of elementary or middle school students without having us huddle around a desktop.

But that's something that could have been illustrated pretty well with a couple circles of different sizes (cardboard cut-outs, printed on paper, different jar lids, etc,) a piece of string, and a ruler.

And the same goes for a whole lot of different math things.

In the interest of battery life and redundancy, I think it might make sense to have 3 devices.

Ereader with an e ink display for reading, a lot of these can last days or weeks on a charge easily

An mp3 player for music. I don't know what the current state of mp3 players is, I suspect a lot of no-name imported garbage, but over a decade ago I know my iPod used to go days or weeks on a charge with pretty heavy usage. Probably look for whatever has the least bells and whistles you can find- no touch screen, physical controls, etc. if you're up for a bit of tinkering I'm pretty sure there's a pretty active scene for people modding old iPods with better batteries, more storage, etc. that would probably be a great option.

A tablet or smartphone for movies, or possibly a laptop (I'm not an apple guy, but I've heard MacBooks have pretty insane battery life these days.) Keep all the wifi/cellular/Bluetooth/gps, etc. turned off, keep it on power save mode, disable anything you can that you don't need to watch movies. Unfortunately if such a thing as a dedicated video-only tablet exists, I couldn't find it with a quick search. If such a thing can be found, I'd probably recommend that.

A dedicated device that does one job well will usually be more efficient at that thing than a multipurpose device like a tablet, smartphone, or computer that needs to be able to do it all. An mp3 player only needs to be able to play music, it doesn't need to be running a full-on OS that's capable of sending emails, making phone calls, playing games, etc.

Also that way if one of those things does die on you, you still have the other 2.

I saw in one of your other comments your concern about a tablet having a bigger screen would be a bigger drain on battery life. That's true to an extent, bigger screens draw more power, but since the whole device is bigger they can compensate with a bigger battery. I haven't exactly done an exhaustive survey of tablet battery life and don't care to look into it, but in my (fairly limited) experience, they usually pretty much at least break even or surpass phones in battery life. I have a cheap tablet that I really only use for reading it lives in my bag, usually in my car, often forgotten about for days or occasionally weeks at a time, and doesn't exactly get heavy usage, but it usually can go at least a few days without a change, even with WiFi and Bluetooth left on. If I'm not using it at all, it can sometimes go a couple weeks just sitting idle. It's usually good for at least a couple hours of streaming HD video, with WiFi turned off and 720p video on internal storage I imagine it's good for at least a couple movies.

WiFi and cellular data are pretty big power drains too. I know when I check my battery usage on my phone that probably accounts for about ⅓ or so of it. Having those turned off can go a long way. Jailbreaking/rooting your phone to disable unnecessary services probably wouldn't hurt, but that's probably a drop in the bucket compared to just keeping your device offline.

Honduras? No, of course not, that would be ridiculous.

She's in CECOT now.

/S, hopefully

When they try to leave they just tend to not get very far because they never learned how to pump their own gas.

Just as an FYI, aerodynamics can be a little complicated, it depends on the exact vehicle, the speeds you're going, etc. but there's a lot of cases where a tonneau cover will actually hurt your mpg.

Price is definitely the thing holding me back from a new vehicle as well, even though the maverick is one of the more affordable trucks out there it's still too rich for my blood. I have a friend who just got one though, so I plan on using him as a guinea pig for the next few years until a new car is hopefully in my budget.

It does only have the bumper, I've never looked into it because we've never needed to tow anything. We have the long bed so anything we've ever needed to haul fit in there just fine.

I love that truck. It has yet to hit 100k miles because until the last couple years my parents had 3 vehicles and especially now that they're retired they never really go anywhere anyway.

And for a 32 year old truck, it still gets pretty decent gas mileage, pretty damn close to 20mpg, the new rangers don't beat that by much.

It's not without its downsides, it's rwd so it's kind of shitty on anything but dry pavement unless you have some weight in the bed, and it's 0-60 time is probably best stated as "eventually," but it's done everything I've ever needed a truck to do.

If Ford came out with basically that exact truck with a modern engine to get better gas mileage but otherwise kept the performance the same, it would probably be my next vehicle. Wouldn't mind AWD/4wd too but I could live without.

I really like the maverick but the small bed is kind of a deal breaker. I've heard some rumors that they may add a midgate in a couple years to open the bed up into the back seat so if they do that I'm probably sold.

Yeah, for towing that's basically useless unless you're only using it to tow around a wood splitter or something.

That said, my family has had a 1993 Ford ranger for many years. I'm pretty sure even with the 4-cylinder engine it still has a towing capacity several times that much, but we have never towed anything with it. We have gotten a lot of use out of it as a truck though, moving furniture, camping gear, small loads of firewood, trips to the hardware store, etc.

I can also potentially see this being big for certain fleet vehicles. Growing my dad worked on a military base as a civilian in their wastewater treatment plant. Part of his job involved driving around the base once a day or so to take water samples from a couple places. The public works department had a couple small trucks, Chevy S10 I think, that he'd use for that. They got used by other public works employees, never for anything particularly heavy duty but they did occasionally tote around some bulky tools, equipment, materials, but a significant amount of what they used them for could probably have used a golf cart. I'd be amazed if those trucks went 10 miles most days, they sat most of the time, kind of a perfect sort of situation for them to sit on a charger.

I don't really like brand favouritism, but if you're able to find a Toyota in your price range, as far as I'm concerned it's pretty hard to go wrong with them. I'm pretty hard-pressed to think of anyone I've ever known who's had a Toyota who had anything really bad to say about them, even with the few years of Tacomas that had major rust issues around the early 2000s, everyone I know who had one felt that Toyota did a pretty solid job of doing right by them.

My current car is an '07 4runner. I bought it used with around 150k miles on it about 5 years ago, I now at just over 200k miles. and except for the usual shit like brakes that are expected to wear down every few years, the only major thing I've had to deal with was replacing the alternator. It does have a small exhaust leak that throws a code for the catalytic converter every so often (it's on for maybe a couple weeks every few months or so) that I'm not particularly concerned about. I'm fairly confident that with not much beyond regular upkeep this car could make it to 300k+ pretty easily.

My wife is driving a Prius that's a few years newer (2012 I think) she's had it for a few years now, only thing she's needed is new tires so far.

Growing up my mom had an '89 Corolla, and there's a damn good chance it's still on the road. At some point we sold it to my uncle who later sold it to a cousin, and after that we lost track of it, but around that time (circa 2010-ish) it was still going just fine, even after having a pretty large tree fall on it and all of the usual wear and tear you'd expect on a 20+ year old car.

Outside of my family's favoritism for Toyotas, I also have a hard time thinking of people who have anything bad to say about Honda's. I've also never heard anyone complain about their Subaru, I have less personal experience with Subarus overall, I've never driven one, but my overall impression of every one I've ever ridden in has been positive, and Subaru owners sing their praises.

Most people I've known with Kias and Hyundais have also spoken highly about them..

Overall, my general advice is buy from any of the major Asian car brands unless you need a larger pickup truck (¾ ton or bigger,) then pretty much your only options are pretty much American trucks. For ½ ton or smaller trucks, I'd personally stick to Asian brands still, with the possible exception of the Ford Maverick.

As far as specific models, my personal recommendations are

Subaru in pretty much any market segment they inhabit. Smaller sporty cars are dumb regardless of brand, but if that's your thing, go Subaru.

Sedans/hatchbacks- Toyota Corolla or Prius, Honda Accord or civic.

Compact suvs/crossovers- Toyota RAV4, Honda CRV, Kia sportage, Hyundai Tucson. Wrangler if you actually intend to go off roading, Suzuki samurai if you're going off roading and not in the US.

Mid-sized SUV: Toyota 4runner (I've dialed in that a midsized SUV is the right sized car for me personally at this point in my life, not going to go into all of the reasoning for that, but having driven a few different brands and models I am personally confident in saying that it is the be-all end-all of mid sized SUVs for me, if Isuzu ever makes a comeback in the passenger vehicle segment and resurrects the trooper I may be open to reevaluating that because I loved my trooper, but they're all 20+ years old now)

Full-sized SUVs: do not recommend. If you can find one of the old school jeep wagoneers maybe do that for the cool factor, but if you're contemplating a full sized SUV what you really want is a minivan, or maybe a Ford flex. They're not "cool," but trust me, minivans are the shit.

Minivans- they're all pretty good, never met a minivan I didn't like.

Small pick-up trucks- Ford Maverick, or if you need/want a "real" truck get a Tacoma or Frontier, or go for old rangers/Mazda B series or a t100 if you're ok with an old truck, or replace all of those recommendations with a Toyota Hilux if you're not in the US/Canada

½ ton pickup- Toyota tundra

Bigger than ½ ton- you don't need this unless you are regularly towing a heavy trailer or live and work on a farm, or do major construction business with your personal vehicle, or something to that effect. If that applies to you, take your pick of any of the big 3 American brands, I like Fords, but honestly I view this as the same as picking your favorite color, it's what you like personally, don't let anyone else yuck your yum.

Personally, and I'm not saying this applies to everyone by a longshot, what car you need/want is fairly personal, but if I had carte blanche to go out and buy any newish car I could find to replace my current vehicle I'd be looking at

Toyota 4runner or Tacoma Subaru Crosstrek or Outback
Ford Maverick

But I'm an outdoorsy, DIY-minded person, who goes "off-road" occasionally (I don't go off roading for its own sake, but my life sometimes tak me driving onto a beach, or down some shitty dirt paths, over fields, etc.) has to commute in the snow, often has to pick up bulky lumber and such, and occasionally how small trailers.

My wife who doesn't usually have any of those needs would probably be looking at a newer Prius, or maybe a Hyundai Kona if she decided she wanted something bigger.

And in an ideal world, I'd probably have a maverick or 4runner for my various outdoorsy and DIY pursuits, and whatever the smallest cheapest DIY hybrid or electric car I can find is for my daily commuting as long as it has 4 wheels, a/c, and a radio, pretty much anything out there would be just fine for me. But I can only count on having 2 parking spaces.

Honestly at 5k in this economy, you're probably scraping the bottom of the barrel of anything that can be considered a "good" car, and you're probably going to just end up with whatever is available near you in your price range with relatively low miles. Go asian if you can't but don't expect anything amazing to present itself.

First of all, this isn't something I support, I don't trust literally anything this administration does, and it's not really something I want my tax dollars spent on

But taking a step back, when I think about it, I'm a little surprised the pentagon doesn't already have one.

Pretty much anyone who goes on TV is getting a quick once over by the hair/makeup/wardrobe people. And it's not like they don't host press conferences and such at the pentagon with some frequency.

And the military is all about appearances - uniforms, hairstyle regulations, polished boots, etc. If you're putting some military bigwig in front of a camera, that's, in part, a propaganda opportunity, so you want them to look the part

True, I did think about mentioning that but decided to skip over it to keep things simple.

Animals like cows for example, can get by almost entirely on fiber. Stuff like grass doesn't have much in the way of carbs we can use, but it contains a ton of fiber, and cows digestive systems are set up to actually do something with them.

The extra "stomachs" they have allow for some extra fermentation and such to happen so they can break down that fiber into simpler carbs.

Gonna try to give a very general ELI5 sort of answer

There's basically 3 main types of carbohydrates

Simple carbs- basically sugars (mono- and di-saccharides)

Complex carbs- starches, whole grains, etc. (polysaccharides)

Fiber- arguably these are just really complex carbs that your body can't really break down

In general, sugars are the source of energy your body actually runs on, especially glucose. Everything else basically gets broken down into glucose.

Your body can pretty much use simple sugars as-is or can easily break them down into a form it can use. There's some variation just how quick and easy it is for your body to use different sugars, but in general your body will start to feel the effects of eating sugar in the space of a few minutes, and the effects will peak within about an hour or two.

Complex carbs take a little more digesting to break down into a form your body can make use of. They're basically being turned into simpler sugars, but that process takes a while. You might hear about athletes carbo-loading with a big spaghetti dinner or something the night before a big competition. The idea there is that the energy from that big, complex carb-heavy dinner won't really hit them for a few hours or even until the next day, and it will keep providing that energy for a longer period of time.

Fiber is, for the most part, indigestible, your body can't really break it down into simpler sugars that it can make use of. It goes in your mouth, through your digestive tract, and out the other end relatively unchanged. That doesn't mean it's useless though, it still plays an important role in digestion. It takes up space in your stomach helping you feel more full. It absorbs water and helps keep your stool soft and helps waste move through your intestines, and it minds to things like bile acids and cholesterol so that they can be passed as waste.

Again, this is meant to be a very general answer, there's a lot of details I'm glossing over both just to keep things simple, and because I'm not a doctor or anything of the sort and I'm not 100% sure myself.