solowingpixy
the resident car guy
No bio...
User ID: 410
I would say all of the above, plus the fact that non-domiciled CDLs/chameleon carriers were much less of an issue in Trump's first term.
Like many things to do with immigration, it seems that non-domiciled CDL requirements were systematically not enforced by certain states post-2020, resulting in rapid growth of a previously obscure category of license (A non-domiciled CDL is a CDL issued to someone who doesn't live in the issuing state.). Illinois, for example, went from issuing 300 non-domiciled CDLs in the year 2020 to issuing 5,000 of these per year in 2024 and 2025, with non-domiciled licenses comprising 40% of all licenses issued in 2025.
Toss in the vibecession and a handful of viral fatal accidents involving non-domiciled CDL holders and you suddenly have enough people aware of the issue and angry about it to lobby for a crackdown.
solowingpixy
the resident car guy
18d ago
My guess is old people doesn’t cut racial lines at all and every race has old people.
Not really. Old people are far whiter than the US as a whole and even the median black American is 12 years younger than their white counterpart. For Hispanics, that median is 19 years younger. One would expect the whiteness of 55+ communities to face DEI's ire, but then there's the argument that Boomer and Gen X whites were mostly exempted from DEI in the first place in exchange for cooperation.
solowingpixy
the resident car guy
23d ago
FWIW I went with Reta from a semi-sketchy source (I'll share in message, though the site I bought from has different sources now.) and it went fine. I picked a supplier that had respectable (but not the most amazing/expensive) reviews and COAs (too cheap and lazy to test the batch that I received) and it's been fine. If anything, the only issue I've had has been with inconsistent dosing (This was noted in the COAs; purity tends to be good from batch to batch but the suppliers have a habit of overdelivering on dosage.) and my own overly aggressive dosing schedule (I was aggressive and it worked, but I felt like shit a lot of the time before I reached a dose that I've stuck with. Most of that "feeling like shit" was just the result of a very aggressive calorie deficit. I didn't want to eat but I was tired AF and constantly cold.).
As for results, I lost 60lbs in 5 months and going on/off have hit a sort of plateau and not really been trying since then. I might go for another 10-15lbs but beyond that (and maybe then) I'd be venturing too far into "skinny nerd" territory. For reference, I'm currently 175lbs at 6'1.
solowingpixy
the resident car guy
23d ago
In my experience once you age out of college/grad school finding new roommates is hard. It's like dating but with a harder cutoff. After 30 they either can't pay or are intolerably insane.
I live by myself in a big two bedroom apartment and wouldn't mind a roommate but my luck with the last few has been bad and rent has gone up so much in the last 5 years (I'm grandfathered in with an old lady landlord.) that I wouldn't save any money downsizing to a smaller place (plus I'd have to spend time and money moving), so I have a spare bed and bath that collects dust.
solowingpixy
the resident car guy
23d ago
Speaking as a millennial who was out and about in the mid 2010s I ate out more then because I had a lot more free cash. I was kind of a loser and kind of broke but my base expenses were low.
Gen Zs today have a right to complain because in my experience a lot of base cost of living stuff is more expensive. I make more money than I did back then but I shop for groceries at Walmart now and mostly only eat out if the boss is paying for it because I'm somehow still broke.
solowingpixy
the resident car guy
27d ago
The "why" is relatively simple. "Old" at the time of Medicare's passing meant the Lost Generation, which was A. generally quite poor thanks to having spent their prime earning years in the Great Depression and B. didn't live all that long (My great grandfather of that generation died at the age of 70. His son, my grandfather, lived to see 86.).
Meanwhile, aside from free public education (which is in fact a large socialization of childrearing, albeit one done for the purpose of producing productive adults) I don't think childcare was something specifically on the radar at the time (as opposed to poverty in general) in large part because the standards of childrearing were quite a bit lower at the time (Another interesting question: Which has been subject to more expectation inflation? Parenting or eldercare?).
In the long term, this has become a problem due to demographics, inflation of expectations (in terms of Social Security benefits, but most acutely healthcare expenditures), and the emergence of a mass affluent upper-middle class of elderly capable of lobbying on its own behalf that arguably didn't exist before, say, the Silent Generation's retirement.
solowingpixy
the resident car guy
28d ago
It feels like we broke something that was working perfectly fine, and now we're trying to fix it with band-aids.
Low fertility and increased lifespan probably would've broken it on its own. Mass divorce and familial dysfunction just poured salt on the wound, transforming "part of life" into a potentially Sisyphean burden. What happens when it's not "sweet grandma" but a malingering, toxic trainwreck that the children have spent years doing their best to avoid?
solowingpixy
the resident car guy
28d ago
And for some reason young people seem completely oblivious as to how much of their taxes flow to the old, and suggesting you redistribute this somewhat triggers empathy and accusations of killing your sweet grandma.
People are irrational about it (mostly in the sense of being unaware that a mass-affluent elderly upper-middle class is very much a new thing) and old people are going to be the beneficiaries of a ton of idiotic slopulism as the median age marches ever higher, but boomer (and soon to be Gen X) luxury communism is an indirect subsidy to the working age who would otherwise be expected to care for/house their elderly/infirm relatives, an especially acute problem in an era of inverted population pyramids and increased lifespans. Imagine being an only child to parents who had you fairly old and both wind up dying of drawn out illnesses (This gets really fun if they're divorced and don't live near each other.) It would be hard to be a net loser in such a scenario as a Joe or Jane 30 to 40-something average taxpayer if the government is picking up the tab. Worse, while the old are collectively wealthy, that wealth is very unevenly distributed. For the under through lower-middle class Social Security/Medicare/Disability are the only reason most get to retire and maintain the polite fiction of being financially independent. For the upper-middle class, boomer luxury communism is a direct subsidy to expected inheritances.
Unfortunately, the expectation should be ever greater political pressure to increase welfare directed at the old.
solowingpixy
the resident car guy
1mo ago
Update on the motor pool:
The $500 Civic project has ground to a crawl, aside from replacing the battery (with Walmart's cheapest 51R) and confirming that the car does indeed run and drive, and the A/C works along with three of the four windows. The clutch pedal feels like shit (engagement is too low), but I'm confident that bleeding and adjusting the master cylinder will fix it. The old owner will be back in town this weekend at which point we'll do the needful with paperwork and see if he has to get a replacement title (The title exists and is legible but looks like a dog ate it.).
Speaking of titles, and actual work, I had to replace the starter on the other Civic. It was...not as bad a job as anticipated. I didn't have to pull the bumper, did have to pull the knock sensor, and did have spend $15 on washers to make the slightly different (case is thinner where it bolts to the engine) Amazon special fit the car, but at $60 from Amazon versus $80-$300 from Rock Auto and $325 from the parts store I can afford washers and the job was easy enough that I wouldn't hate myself if I had to do it again. I have a strong prospective buyer from this car, an old friend who fell in love with it (I let her drive it.) and is going to need a car in a few months.
The rational, but unwanted car may have a buyer (probably not, but I can probably sell the thing for five grand) if I choose to go all out and ditch all three for what I think I want (test drive pending).
What I think I want is a 10th gen Civic Si, preferably blue like this but I'd settle for silver, since I've seen one in person, thought it looked nice enough, and it looks like silver is easier to find than blue. Is it a Type R? No, but I don't have Type R money and these are allegedly easy enough to tune without much work as long as you're okay with settling for ~250HP before stuff starts breaking, and what the L15 lacks in top end power or K-series potential it makes up for with torque and gas mileage (My K24 Civic is fun but gets atrocious fuel mileage on premium by the standards of a Civic.).
solowingpixy
the resident car guy
1mo ago
No, the US and Iran were not at war since 1979. Reagan and everyone else involved in Iran-Contra would have been executed for treason if that were the case.
Words have definitions, and war is one of them. If you seriously believe that the United States and Iran have been at War for 47 years, Oliver North is still alive. I suggest we get that treason trial started.
solowingpixy
the resident car guy
1mo ago
I'd take my old job back, driving for a locally-owned Doordash (We were in business before Uber/Doordash where I live, but they eventually wiped us out.).
It was so easy that it barely felt like a job, literally being paid to drive around in circles listening to music, chat with bartenders, gossip with dispatch, and do some light auto repair on the side (I was the guy who got called before one of our drivers resorted to taking their car to a real shop.). Perfect barfly hours (start at 11AM, done when happy hour ends and the olds start going home), and when you're done for the day, you're done for the day, no responsibilities aside from maintaining a roadworthy car, not getting a DUI, and being ready by 11.
The kick in the ass is that adjusted for inflation I made the same to better money (more money but no health insurance; I made $50K/year back in 2016 which is roughly $70K a year now) driving around slinging Chinese and sushi 10 years ago than I do now at my real job (logistics coordinator at a trucking company). Covid, post-covid inflation, and competition from the big national companies ruined all that but it was a fun gravy train while it lasted. I'm hoping for a promotion soon or at least a fat bonus soon to fix or at least salve the money problem and I don't hate my current job, but God it sucks in comparison. Whiny/stupid drivers (Most of them are decent, but the stupid and whiny take most of your time.), insane/delusional customers, inconsistent freight levels, constantly getting fucked by tank washes, and reams of paperwork. I'm on call 24/7 and have been woken up before 7AM by a driver on four of the last seven days.
solowingpixy
the resident car guy
1mo ago
The only thing that would keep me from keeping this new Civic is that one of my other cars is that same Civic, but an Si model with a JDM K24 (the original engine cracked the block at 195K miles; it still ran for another 30K but I went ahead and did the motor swap when the original clutch died) and some other mild mods (intake/nice sounding exhaust, short shift kit). It's bad on gas by Civic standards and annoyingly expensive to insure but otherwise punchy/fun to drive and I don't have a long commute.
The third car is actually the nicest on paper but likely first on the chopping block because I never liked it that much (Hell, I sold it once and wound up inheriting it back.).
solowingpixy
the resident car guy
1mo ago
The one example that really stood out to me was College Football Playoffs. Championship game tickets were a 3k minimum ticket price watching team 1 and 2 play each other. The semifinal game say watching teams 2 and 3 play you could scalp tickets for $30.
It probably didn't help that both semifinal games were rather far away for the teams in question. Indiana v. Oregon was played in Atlanta while Miami v. Ole Miss was played in Phoenix.
solowingpixy
the resident car guy
2mo ago
I have no idea what I'm going to do with it. I already have an extra car that I need to sell but $500 was too good a deal to pass up. Depending on how well it cleans up and how much I like it I'll either flip it or sell one or potentially both of the other cars (I don't love either one of them.), pay off all my debt, and enjoy the beater/cheap insurance life for a year or few until something else I want comes along (I want a Civic Type R, but I don't have Civic Type R money.).
solowingpixy
the resident car guy
2mo ago
I looks like I might be the proud owner of the used car holy grail, an actual $500 Honda Civic (I think it's an '09...I know it's a non-Si sedan with a stick shift.). This is definitely a case of the friends and family discount (an old buddy of mine hasn't driven it in years, it's been sitting at our old boss's house, and he just wants to get rid of it) and a neat opportunity to either flip for profit or sell one of my nicer cars to net some cash, a fun little rehab project.
The good news is as follows: I almost bought the thing back in 2020/15K miles ago and did some work to it then, so I have reason to believe that the brakes are fine. It has enough miles on it (I think 210K.) that if the R18 in it was going to crack its block it most likely would've done so by now. I know that it runs and the A/C works. I think the battery is still good (It's sitting on a charger.) and believe that the clutch still works (I know that I replaced the clutch cylinder a few years ago, and it's getting long in the tooth, but it did work last I checked.). The paint is not bad by late oughts Honda standards, and I like the color. The things I know are wrong with it are relatively minor (It needs a bolt for one of the back shocks, a window switch and regulator, the tires are showing cords, and the interior is trashed and disgusting.).
The only real potential snag is that the title looks like his dog ate it, so if I can't sneak that past a disinterested county clerk I'll have to wait for a replacement.
solowingpixy
the resident car guy
2mo ago
I, uh, don't worry about my parents' health much. There's nothing I can do about it. They're both incredibly stubborn people who will (not) take care of themselves, bonus points for the stepmom.
I will say that I wasn't ready for the moment I felt compelled to protect my father (a big, imposing Marine veteran) in a physical altercation. He ran his mouth and picked a bar fight he couldn't win, the other guy fought dirty, and in a flash I went from being as annoyed with his drunken bullshit as everyone else in the bar to being willing to fuck that guy up or get my ass kicked trying if he wouldn't take my offer of "this is over; we're leaving". I was...32?
Funny enough, I must've made an impression (I can't fight for shit but I'm crazy and loud, inherited that from mom's side.) because that incident took on a fishing story-like life of its own where I allegedly brandished a chair in my father's defense.
solowingpixy
the resident car guy
2mo ago
I was car shopping back then and while I can't comment on the lightly used market the mid and low range were reasonable (I was at a food delivery company at the time, so that was the sort of shopping I did.) if you weren't looking for a truck or SUV. My goal was under 10 years old, 100k miles or less, and under $10K and there was a decent selection even accounting for my weird tastes (I wanted something not silver, white, or black, and it had to have a stick shift.). I was closing in on a Mazda 2, and early 2010s models were running for about $7500 at the time.
I actually blundered into a private party deal that I couldn't pass up, a loaded one year old Mazda 3 with 15K miles for $17K. It was retired lady's recently passed husband's car, a stick shift that she couldn't drive, had one minor scrape on the bumper, and the interior reeked of cigarettes but otherwise it was mint and I knew how to fix the cigarette smell so I offered her NADA "rough trade-in" and she took it. The bank had it valued at $21.5K, and on that note interest rates were lower then. I was able to put 20% down and finance the rest of it for 2% interest.
Funny enough, I never liked that car all that much (It's a perfectly nice car but doesn't feel particularly "fun" to drive. It's too SUV-like and the tall gearing makes it feel slow.) and sold it once but wound up getting it back (The guy I sold it to died and left it to me because he owed me a ton of money.). I will say that it's been perfectly reliable and if I was looking to recommend a compact car to someone who doesn't want to pay the Honda/Toyota tax I would go with a 2nd or 3rd Gen Mazda 3 without hesitation.
By contrast, the lightly used market for stuff I want now is mostly ridiculous. An 8-10 year old Civic Si with under 100K miles runs over $20K and even the cheapest Type-Rs are pushing $30K, with a lightly used example pushing $40K. Another issue for normies is that the mid-2010s had several "dud" cars that appear nice but have major problems that should be avoided and infest the "affordable" end of the used car market. I'm talking about Nissans with their CVTs, Ford Focuses with the Powershift automatic, Hyundai/Kia products with the Theta engines that blow up, GM SUVs with the Ecotec 4 cylinders, Fords with the 3.5 V6 that has the nightmare water pump, etc.
solowingpixy
the resident car guy
2mo ago
There really weren't a lot of old people around in 1926 period, let alone a government subsidized upper-middle class of retirees. In 1920 less than 1/20 Americans were over the age of 65. Now it's 1/6.
That there were bad years in the 70s and early 80s doesn't change the fact that no one under the age of 40 has experienced anything like the sustained economic growth we had from 1985-2005. The 1970s sucked compared to the 50s and 60s but still had faster growth than the 2000s, 2010s, or 2020s so far.
solowingpixy
the resident car guy
2mo ago
The Twitter generational war, be it over sandwiches or houses and cars, has been dumber than usual this week, and that's saying something.
My thoughts as a mid-millennial who mostly missed the crash (not being able to score even any variety of job as a freshman in college was irritating, but otherwise it wasn't that bad) but fucked around and failed to launch throughout his 20s (I delivered food with a side of dispatching for 14 years LMAO, but since that gravy train ended have managed to use those experiences to switch to an office job in trucking that appears to have potential to make a real career out of.) are otherwise as follows:
Used cars really are irritatingly expensive at any price level right now relative to the late 2010s, but it's not Cash for Clunkers that caused it, but the loss of production during the Great Recession and Covid years (along with inflation) making either 15 year old beaters or lightly used cars more expensive. That said, even if it feels a touch overpriced compared to the $2K shitboxes of the 2010s (Back then, my pick for best pizza delivery bang for the buck was a Bush era Ford Focus.), one can get a 15-20 year old Corolla on Marketplace for $3500-$5000 depending on one's tolerance for ugly and it'll probably work fine. If not, it's a Corolla. Get on Youtube, buy some tools from Walmart/Harbor Freight, and fix it, or find a friend who can and will (Car guys tend to identify themselves by talking about them all the time.). Don't want to pay the Toyota tax/want something nicer? Get a Mazda 3. In my experience they're very reliable and have depreciated more heavily (Mine has 100K miles on it and the only non-maintenance thing I've had to do to it was replace the belt tensioner, a pain in the ass but the part was $30 on Rock Auto.).
Pack a lunch to work or spend $28 on Doordash? Who the hell eats lunch at work anyway? Unless my boss is paying for it I don't eat lunch at work; I'd rather work through it and leave early or play on my phone. If I had to eat out and pay for it, there's an Italian place downtown that does a two slice or two Chicago dog and drink special for $7.
All that said, my broad take is that things really are worse than they were in the mid/late 2010s. I spent that decade as a drunk slinging burritos and sushi in a college town and never had money problems in spite of an outrageous bar budget and my only real quality of life sacrifice was living in various shitty apartments with cheap/freecycled furniture and having to do laundry at a laundromat. I have a real salaried job now and make more money than I did back then (and without beating the shit out of my car) but I still feel broke (and objectively am; that career change was brutal) in a way that I didn’t/wasn’t in the 2010s. Job hunting in ‘24/’25 was a miserable, hopelessness inducing experience and I doubt I’d have gotten the job I have now without knowing my current boss from my time bartending.
As for the Boomers/Xers and quality of life, I think their real privilege/crime isn’t so much a money or standard of living thing, but fertility related. Boomers and Gen X were the last to spend their younger years in an America with a relatively normal age distribution instead of the rapidly aging gerontocracy we’re in now. From 1930 to 1980 the median age in the US increased from 26.5 to 30 years old. From 1980 to the present that number increased from 30 to 40 years old, mostly from 1990-present.
In 1926 the median American was around 26 years old. Thanks to the baby boom, the median wasn't much older in 1970, 28, and was 30 in 1980. Today, it's 39, and will likely be over 40 by 2030. The old have never been so proportionately numerous.
This is aggravated by the fact that economic growth has been declining since the 1980s, and especially since the end of the 90s. Barring 2021, all but the oldest Millennials never experienced 4% GDP growth as a member of the labor force. All but the youngest of Gen Z have never experienced 3% GDP growth in the workforce, again barring 2021.
solowingpixy
the resident car guy
2mo ago
Honestly, I suspect that the drivers are right, and if it were up to me we'd buy manual transmissions and as little of that stuff as can be ordered. The non-safety electronics on these trucks are frequently unreliable trash, so why would the safety systems be any better? I say this as one of our brand new trucks with 30K miles on it randomly went into derate or something and had a sudden and complete loss of power going 65 miles an hour down the road this afternoon and is now dead on the side of the road waiting for a tow.
On a more broad perspective (including auto safety), I do find it discouraging that all this expensive technology has accomplished precisely nothing in terms of safety (at best, enabling keeping a worse class of driver on the road; I suppose one could argue that we'd have even more deaths without the new tech given the current state of drivers).
Speaking for myself, the only safety device I appreciate on newer cars is the backup cameras (They really do make parking a pickup truck easier.), and even that's compensating for the fact that cars are built like tanks these days with frequently poor outward visibility.
solowingpixy
the resident car guy
2mo ago
Driver facing cameras: We don't have them, but even rumors about us getting them causes drivers to look for other jobs.
Most generally, "safety scores" generated by the on-board ELD that penalizes for things like speeding (mostly problematic on not always correctly mapped rural roads), harsh braking, following too closely (This one can be a pain in major cities.), etc. The company recently tightened up the guidelines without notice, applied them retroactively (much to the chagrin of operations), and cost a bunch of drivers their quarterly safety bonuses.
Thirdly, collision avoidance/lane departure tech on company trucks. Apparently these have a false trigger rate somewhere above zero. Of course, most of the drivers I hear from wish we'd go back to manual transmissions (I guess the ones who don't care/like the automatics aren't as vocal about it, but our drivers are also a fairly old bunch for the most part.).
Finally, I don't think drivers are seriously opposed to ELDs as a concept, but many of them have trouble working with the (rather bug prone, in my experience) tablets.
solowingpixy
the resident car guy
2mo ago
The thing people don't realize is that music was expensive in the '90s, and less popular acts were hard to find, especially outside of major metro areas.
I know that I grew up under a rock by late '90s/early '00s standards (rural Alabama) but I had no idea that Metallica had an album other than the Black Album until 2006. Before then I didn't have access to high speed internet/a decent PC so I pretty much listened to whatever my father did (so, a lot of Eminem and System of a Down), with my contribution to the family's music collection being Kid Rock's Devil Without a Cause and Cocky. My sister bought more CDs but it was late 90s boy bands and then stuff like Pink and Avril Lavigne.
On that note, as a Gulf War baby I don't have much for 90s nostalgia. Okay, I remember Space Jam, but otherwise I remember the late 90s at best, movies like Blue Streak and Chill Factor. If I were to be nostalgic for a time it's more mid-aughts than the 90s, stuff like 2 Fast 2 Furious and Grand Theft Auto Vice City and San Andreas, the height of the Playstation 2 era.
Possibly, if I have time (which has been in short supply lately), but I would have to do research and anything I produce is going to be half-assed. I dispatch for a mid-sized trucking that's a subsidiary of a larger company (meaning that they're very risk averse, as anything trucking screws up exposes the company as a whole to liability). I don't handle brokering.
The company I work for exclusively does tanking and (limited) hazmat tanking, so we're not really exposed to competition from the cardboard nameplate crowd. That said, compliance and litigation costs have been brutal in the last 5 years, as have been the effects of our efforts to enhance safety on driver retention. Fatalities aside, trucking companies have also been subject to the same issues as the rest of the auto industry in terms of property damage liability (Everything is expensive and costs more to repair.).
Fatal truck accidents were up something like 30% in the last 10 years as of 2024, but it's worth noting that overall accident fatalities spiked from 2020-2024, and only now do we have early estimate data for 2025 suggesting that we're back to the pre-pandemic trend (I wasn't able to find truck fatality data for 2025.). That said, while truck fatalities did spike during the pandemic and have fallen some since peaking in 2022, they were also increasing before the pandemic at the same time that car fatalities were falling, so it seems that truck fatalities are something of their own issue not strictly correlated with traffic fatalities as a whole (Note, much of the increase in traffic fatalities concerning cars has been from pedestrian deaths.).
Non-domiciled CDL holders (aka. foreign drivers) have been involved in a rash of high profile accidents, prompting a crackdown on non-domiciled CDLs, but the federal government doesn't track accident rates based on CDL type, so there is no data that presents a smoking gun suggestion that non-domiciled CDL holders have a higher crash rate than US citizen drivers.
This Supreme Court ruling stabs at a related but different and potentially more meaningful problem, so-called "chameleon carriers" and companies like Super Ego that hire them.
It depends on the bar, but if I'm at my regular place during happy hour or the other place that can make it, a Hugo 75.
If it's my regular bar and the night bartenders are on (neither one knows how to make a Hugo 75, but then the happy hour bartenders can never get my house Collins right either), usually their house take on a Tom Collins (a Tom Collins with St. Germain instead of sugar and a few dashes of orange bitters).
If I'm a bar I don't know and/or at a work event where everyone else is drinking martinis I'll go for a Manhattan, fancy enough but hard to screw up. See also: the Negroni or Boulevardier.
Really though, it depends on context. If the bar is slammed or just a dive I'll order something easy like a shot and a beer.
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