Nah, the only thing that might be worth worrying about learning to drive stick is the clutch, and that’s a wear item designed to be replaced anyway. (Not necessarily often or cheaply, but still, a wear item.)

Even then, unless somebody’s truly hopeless, they’ll figure it out well before putting on any noticeable excessive wear. (Source: I’ve taught at least five people to drive stick using my own cars, including myself, and haven’t had to replace a clutch due to wear yet.)

Maybe, if you’re also driving an antique that doesn’t have high-RPM lockouts to prevent overspeeding the engine. But even my old cars going back to the '90s have those.

Do I look like I know what a Fiat is?

Eh, not really. The tricky part (which isn’t even that tricky) of learning to drive stick is modulating the clutch, not somehow accidentally downshifting

Don’t forget to think about how to keep the salt air from corroding the electronics. Either build a spare or two that you keep sealed in plastic, or find an airtight case with an integrated heat sink or something.

Edit: you might want to look into conformal coating and dielectric grease (for the connectors) as well, although I don’t know enough about that to competently give advice beyond the mere suggestion.

Neat, thanks! (What about Dragon?)

to dangerous (they land so far away that they’re in danger of… being eaten by bears before anyone reaches them)

I know Soyuz was designed to land in Kazakhstan or whatever, but is Starliner (or Dragon, for that matter) even capable of landing on solid ground without damage and/or injuries?

It used to be at least three felonies a day when violation of a website’s TOS was a violation of the CFAA (which can land you 25 years).

Did that stop being the case?

conspicuously on the same day as the Wikipedia Blackout protesting against SOPA / PIPA (PS: They’re still wanting to lock down the internet, which is why they want to kill Section 230).

Yeah, they’ve also tried to ram through ACTA, CISPA and the TPP since then.

Honestly, not really. He’s got way too many r/rimjob_steve moments for me to believe trolling is his goal most of the time. (Obviously right now he’s trolling though, of course.)

Back when MIDI and the quality of your synthesizer actually mattered!

Every definitive trait has some counter example that still counts because people “feel” it’s good enough.

There’s an aphorism in statstics / science: “all models are wrong, but some are useful.” I feel that the distinction between genuine off-road-capable SUVs and crossovers/tall cars/glorified station wagons or minivans is useful, even if it isn’t completely definitive. Generally speaking, if it’s a unibody vehicle it probably isn’t very good off-road, and therefore doesn’t really deserve to be called an “SUV.”

So does a 2wd “suv” (by your definition) then get declassified?

A 2WD SUV is less general-purpose, but I think they still have enough potential to count (think desert-racing prerunners, which are often 2WD but legitimate off-road vehicles).

Plenty of large “tall station wagons” are unibody. About the only legitimately capable offroad 4x4s I know of that are unibody are the Jeep Cherokee (the old one) and maybe something like a Suzuki Jimny (edit: nope, even that tiny thing is body-on-frame).

(Consider the difference between a (unibody) Toyota Highlander and a (body-on-frame) Toyota 4Runner, for example: only the latter is a “real” SUV, in terms of being capable off-road.)

I am sure there’s a real distinction

Body-on-frame with a pickup truck chassis vs. unibody construction.

I think the good ol’ Alt-Right Playbook can shed some light on that one.

I linked to the specific part of the video that explains the particular point I want to make, but I recommend watching from the beginning anyway. Also, the extra-short TL;DR is basically that the Democratic party is structurally predisposed to continually give the benefit of the doubt and assume good faith, even when it is not only blatantly undeserved but also being actively exploited by their opponents.

Is he ducking out to delay the decision on Trump’s presidential immunity case?

Fuck that! If he’s absent, the Court should simply be required to decide the case without him.

The comments two and three levels up were about third-world tropical houses and old houses respectively, both designed to be habitable in hot climates without air conditioning. As such, they are/were designed exactly the opposite way: to maximize cross-ventilation instead.

What you really want these days would be a house that’s tightly insulated but also has lots of operable windows, a whole-house fan, and/or a design that facilitates stack effect ventilation so that it can use either cooling strategy when conditions are appropriate.

I have to wonder if the United States builds houses inefficiently on purpose.

Starting roughly during the housing boom just after WWII, the United States started building houses cheaply on purpose. One of the most noticeable changes is common house designs went from being Craftsman bungalows with high (e.g. 10’) ceilings, lots of windows for good ventilation, and large roof overhangs for shade and protection from wind-driven rain, to “American Small Houses” with 8’ ceilings, minimal windows and no roof overhangs.

As the owner of one of the latter (in the South, BTW), I can tell you that trying to keep it cool via cross-ventilation is largely ineffective.

If I had listened to my parents in 2009, when they told me I was too young and couldn’t afford a house, I’d be absolutely screwed today.