Captain Aggravated

It’s $400, there’s no choice of carrier, the battery won’t hold a charge, and the reception isn’t very-

More Slates than Silverados will be powered by coal.

It’s got a lot of elements that evoke other trucks and 4x4s.

A lot of the face evokes Toyota Landcruisers. The shape of the hood is very Land Rover. The thick B pillar reminds me of a Nissan Hardbody. The Slate graphic on the tailgate reminds me of old Toyota pickups. The fastback roof reminds me a lot of the later model 2-door Chevy Blazers.

You know what? You’ve led me to the diagnosis of my own EV range anxiety: Unpredictable performance.

In a gas powered car, you pretty much can think in miles. They put the “24 city, 29 highway” numbers on the sticker in the window, and that’s pretty close to what you’ll get out of it. Maybe loading it until it squats on the suspension or pulling a trailer or driving like a maniac will decrease the economy. But, if you do those kinds of things, you can fill the tank, note the mileage, drive like that awhile, fill the tank again, note the fuel consumed and the mileage performed and you’ve got a figure you can pretty much rely on no matter the weather. The limiting factor is almost always the driver. Drive 200-300 miles, stop for 5 minutes to fill the tank, drive 200-300 miles, stop for 5 minutes to fill the tank…

I happen to be a flight instructor. There’s a whole chapter in flight school about cross country flight planning and predicting aircraft performance. Wind is such a factor that you really can’t rate a plane in miles of range, but in hours of endurance. So to plan a flight, you look up the route of flight on an aeronautical chart, the weather forecast, read performance charts and tables out of the plane’s Pilot’s Operating Handbook, crunch a whole bunch of numbers and you’ll know fairly precisely how long you’ll be aloft and how much fuel you’ll burn.

With an EV…they spit out a range in miles that the vehicle will do in unspecified ideal conditions, tell you that heat, cold, using the heater, using the air conditioner, carrying weight, wind and age will reduce the range, and then they’ll get impatient with you if you try to work out what the vehicle will actually do and they’ll mail you anthrax if the answer you arrive at is “not enough.”

That’s a false dichotomy.

I’ve been driving an S10 for decades. Yeah, it’s a little bit 20th century, it makes 18mpg out of a large, slow, primitive V6. It’s great for small truck missions, it’s reasonable for long hauls, and I can expect to go THIS far on THIS much gas.

Aerodynamics. The Bolt is a slick little running shoe. The Slate is a slab.

I’ve no more fucks to give.

My fuck fuse has just blown.

I’ve looked around for my fucks all day but they’ve up and fucked off home.

I’ve no more fucks to give.

My fuck rations are depleted.

I’ve rallied my fuck army, but it’s been fucking defeated.

I’ve only read the first book. Are the others worth putting up with the author being a shitheel?

I never saw Luke considering joining the dark side. A MAJOR personal challenge of his, perhaps his greatest struggle, was reckoning with his father’s fall to the dark side.

As depicted in the only six Star Wars movies made before I started refusing to watch them, Luke Skywalker manages to be on the light side, and fully human. The Jedi as depicted in the prequel trilogy have to sand most of their humanity off in order to remain on the light side. No family, no friends, no favorite foods, and only emotions that Barney The Purple Dinosaur would approve of. Luke is able to let out a war cry, pound his father into submission, amputate his hand, and then say “Nah, see: rage and violence against abject evil while it’s actively trying to harm you, your friends and innocent civilans is something good people do, so I’m a good guy, QED.”

Then Vader goes “Like this?” and throws Monster Mash down the Lucas pit and his redemption is complete.

Moral of the story: Extremely hurt bad people.

Imagine you’re a fighter pilot, and you’re going to do a hull run to blow up some important part of some giant space ship. You have a mental map of the ship’s structure, and it’s probably “right side up”, so while navigating along the hull you’re probably going to orient your fighter to your mental model to take that much off your very heavy cognitive load.

They’re predators, but they’re the “I’m adapted to hunt in one environment but I hang out in another” kind of predator, so they’re these amazing fish seeking torpedoes in the water, but they’re these delightfully ridiculous footballs in dinner jackets waddling around on land. And they’re licensed under the GPL which is always cool.

Or a capybara that is just sick of that pelican’s shit.

When the fascists are taking over? Every man, woman and child.

I have an old Roku 3 that is, basically, a Raspberry Pi. Like, if you could swap out the OS it could do Raspberry Pi like things.

I was actually taught how to use spreadsheets in Microsoft Works. Which was the cheaper home alternative to the Office suite, that was good enough to run a small business out of.

I think on the Slate, the only part of the frame that is exposed as outer body are the A pillars. Everything else is a panel that bolts on.

My understanding is the Slate is kind of body-around-frame.

Not exactly a ladder chassis but I don’t know if you can call it a unibody.

The banning of CFCs due to their environmental impacts, retooling the aerosol and refrigerant industries, is what it looks like when we have a functioning world society.

There are adults now who were born after that and don’t remember a time when we could behave that way, so they have every right to be cynical.