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Cake day: June 17th, 2023

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  • Ah, I see where our misunderstandings are. Exterior blinds are pretty rare in the US, despite being flush with exterior shutter adornments. So in the US, any talk of blinds is going to be about interior things, which was my assumption. I have heard functioning exterior blinds/shutters are more common in parts of Europe. Meanwhile, the US does also use “curtain” and “blinds” to mean separate things: blinds are the adjustable slats (or accordion cellular styles) while curtains are the more decorative textiles usually pushed to the sides. So it still sounds like we were talking about the same thing, using curtains to cover the gaps in the blinds, while talking about entirely different blinds.

    How do you operate the exterior blinds? Are there controls going through the wall or do you reach out the window?

    Also of note, American homes tend to have pretty bad wall insulation. Wood frames, plywood+siding outside, sheet rock inside, and probably slouching thin insulation. A wall can exchange as much heat as a curtainless window


  • Interior blinds create a convection current around them. They catch the sunlight that makes it through the window, get hotter, cause the air between the blinds and glass to rise, and pull in cooler room air from underneath.

    Most modern windows have infrared-reflecting coatings, but it works both ways. If it reflects 90% of the infrared away, 10% gets in. Say you have polished aluminum blinds for 95% reflection, it’s reflecting 9.5% of the original light back to the window. But then the window reflects 90% back again, or 8.5%. Then the blinds reflect again… All the while, it’s finding any gap and heating the materials and air. So yes, blinds help, but it’s best if you can keep the heat outside entirely.

    I watch outside air temp closely and do open windows once ambient swings past what I want inside. Problem is, outside hasn’t dropped below 75f/24c in about 5 weeks here. Most of the inhabited world has this issue in the summer unless it’s a desert. Hell, that range is about what I saw in India during winter.







  • I hate being at my inlaws’ for an extended period of time (hours). My spouse hates being at my parents’ in the same time period. You can both have totally normal, comfortable nights at your own parents’ place but find the experience entirely foreign and unsettling at the others’. The type of soap, the number of towels, the default amount of noise, the temperature, the forced formal interactions, the TV shows, the time of dinner, the existence of any activity other than your usual quiet night in, everything. Not wanting to be a disturbance in someone else’s place. Being under a foreign set of rules. Just everything.

    Do you feel normal sleeping over an aunt/uncle’s place? A friend’s parents’ place? A hotel? A hostel?

    I lived WITH my inlaws for a year. Still can’t stand it. Grateful for the financial relief at the time, but still uncomfortable enough to keep me driven to in debt myself with my own place ASAP.









  • Lincoln LS. Jaguar S-type chassis under a Lincoln-badged homework-copied E39 body. Not an M5 clone, more like a 540 knockoff. It wasn’t far off when it was introduced in 2000, but it didn’t improve nearly as much as it needed to over its 7 year run to stay competitive. At all. Common sedans were getting comparable in acceleration and luxury was an American translation of a base 3 series, but at least it has a sweet double wishbone suspension front and back. There’s a dozen stylistic differences over the model years and trims you won’t see because it’s not your car and you don’t look at it every day

    I also don’t care about the hofmeister kink. It’s here or there. I like the little kick up you can see on the LS or 2010-2014 Mustang. It existed before Hofmeister did it to a BMW and is more of a BMW bro thing to mention than an absolute success in design. Audi doesn’t usually do it, looks just as mean.


  • Supercars are quite small. They have very low roofs and are often quite wide, so your sense of scale is thrown off.

    2025 corolla: 182"L x 70"W x 56"H
    2000 corolla: 174" x 67" x 55"
    2025 camry: 194 x 72 x 57
    2000 camry: 189 x 70 x 55
    2004 murcielago: 180" x 80" x 44"
    2006 gallardo: 169 x 75 x 46
    2018 huracan: 176 x 76 x 46 2024 296 gtb: 180 x 77 x 47
    2016 chiron: 179 x 80 x 47
    1987 F40: 172 x 78 x 44
    1995 F50: 176 x 78 x 44 Even the veyron, a sweaty potato on wheels: 176 x 79 x 47

    Totally agree on the perception point. BMW looks nice because it looks like a BMW which is nice. They’ve carried a fairly consistent design language from year to year. Design overhaul in these brands are somewhat rare, but they’ll carry it across the lineup. Look at Jaguar when they phased from 80s drug lord to whatever the XF look is called. (edit: Ian Callum designs?)

    The only thing I could say specifically to OP’s observation is it sounds like they’re always picking out the brands with squared bodies and condescending headlights. Mercedes might be pushing it with their jewel eyes, but there’s still a consistent air of importance around the bodies (please don’t mention the CLA). No nonsense, no happy eyes, defined body lines, chrome blended flat into the panels, stout wheels, and sportier rooflines (please don’t mention the 5 series GT).


  • Taste is subjective. I’m not a fan of how they rounded these out in this generation. I like them more when dressed up with sporty bits to add hard angles into this bloated design. But at least it’s not a Bengal 7? Still has his touch. Peak design was E39 for me. So much so, I own it’s American copycat that’s twice as reliable as an M5. But I’ll stick with the other person’s opinion: needlessly pretentious. You can describe all the lines that make it beautiful to you without being bringing such condescending tone about art degrees or classic BMW snobbery about a single car design being literally genius. You think it’s beautiful because you own it. It’s not the BMW I’d pick. But sure, yours looks better to me than whatever melted wax model they delivered in the latest design era.


  • Truck exhaust blows away. They can’t see it anymore. Contrails linger for a while. They can see that.

    They can see planes. They can’t see inside planes. Therefore, they can imagine anything they want inside because they can’t verify it themselves.

    The things they can’t see anymore are gone. The things they can’t see into contain the worst possible scenario.

    And that litter box in schools things for the kid identifying as a cat? The story is ALWAYS about someone else’s schools. They can picture a different school. They can imagine the worst scenario in there.

    This whole political ideology is an exercise in failed object permanence.


  • This is, unfortunately, the same observation I’ve made in all the chemtrail-beleiving people I know. I zig in discussion, they zag, I realize they’re taking small-scale cloud seeding operations as proof of both contrails being chemtrails and, often enough, humans fueling hurricanes for the leftist agenda. These people also tend to deny human ability to affect the planet’s climate. The underlying logical interpretation of these states’ bills is exactly why they’re upheld, meanwhile, their constituents are still thinking about contrails.