My wife’s electric car has been fine for us. It took about a month until we could get a level two charger installed at home. Until then, I had to drive her to a nearby town to leave her car for 6 hours to charge.

However, our experience when we went on a road trip was less than pleasant. The first 300 km of our trip there were only two charging stations. We checked at the first one, but there was one car charging and another waiting, so we continued on. We arrived at our destination with about 50 km to spare.

The next day we went to a level 3 charging station, but it was out of order. A nearby one had Tesla superchargers, but the other chargers only put out between 50 and 100 KV. It didn’t matter, because the company’s app refused to work for us.

The next closest charging stations were closed, because it was Sunday.

We managed to get to a station a little farther away, and it took about 90 minutes to charge the car.

We don’t live near a large city, so when there are charging stations, there is often a line of vehicles waiting, which puts the time to charge into hours. Equally bad, we never know until we get there how much time it will take.

We live in Canada, so in the winter a full charge drops from over 500 km to about 300. If we have to travel anywhere, we are going to have to rent a gasoline car.

Japan doesn’t even bother with street names, except the largest ones in big cities. If you want to find a house, they are also not necessarily numbered sequentially. Sometimes the houses in a neighborhood are numbered in the order they were built.

If you want to find a house, you go to the neighborhood map and look there. At least, that’s how it used to be. Now everything is GPS. I was using GPS in a car close to 30 years ago, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was the first place in the world to have consumer GPS, simply because they needed it.

500mg of salt is about 1/10 of a teaspoon, not very much.

Not to mention the confusion between an American gallon, which is 3.79 litres, and an imperial gallon, which is 4.55 litres. That’s a 20% difference.

I knew a woman who had two young (pre-teen) daughters. For whatever reason, she taught them to use the term “front butt” for their vaginas.

Maybe this kid’s mother had a hysterectomy and explained it as losing the front butt (although I know that’s not correct, it may have been a simple explanation for a small child).

After you accomplished some missions, you had enough money to buy a docking computer. From then on when you got close you just pressed a button and it would dock automatically, playing The Blue Danube waltz just like in 2001.

I wonder if he was allowed to kill himself, as an alternative to something much worse (e.g. being killed in a much more painful or gruesome way). It’s clear that the truly powerful people couldn’t let him testify against them.

This sounds horrific if true, but I would really need some hard evidence and not second or third hand accounts to believe it.

C’mon, weren’t you blown away by the (at the time) novel digitized voice? “He slimed me!”

Of course, escape from Castle Wolfenstein did it even earlier (“was ist los, was ist los” and “ach, mein leben!”).

My own experience going long distances in an electric car is less rosy. We drove from Ottawa to Toronto, about 500km, in two days. Our car is a Hyundai Ioniq 6, with a maximum range of just over 500km. However, in cold weather we are lucky to get 400 km.

On the first day, we drove about 200 km and there was only one charging station. That charging station could handle two vehicles, but one of them was not working. There were three cars waiting in line to use it. We kept going.

The next day, we drove another 50 km to get to a charging station. It had three days open, but the maximum charging speed was 100kW, and we managed less than that. It took almost 90 minutes to get a full charge. It could have gone faster if we had pre-conditioned the battery, but we were worried we wouldn’t be able to reach the charging station if we had done so.

Between Ottawa and Toronto, there wasn’t a single charger that could do more than 150kW. In ideal conditions, the ionic 6 can charge up to 80% in under 20 minutes, but in the winter, when there are no 350kW charging stations, that’s a dream. And there are so few charging stations that it’s common to have to wait for one or two cars to finish before you can even begin.

There is a Canadian company called Indigo, unrelated to the bookstore, that makes machines and CO2 canisters that can replace SodaStream. They are also significantly cheaper!

Around me, they are carried by Home Hardware and Giant Tiger stores.

I don’t know if it’s still true, but I believe that MySQL used to ignore anything after a semicolon in a single command. It’s obviously better to prevent SQL injections and used parameterized queries, though.

Sadly, the US system is not the same as imperial. As far as I know the main difference is the gallon.

1 gal. Imp. = 1.201 gal. U.S.

I also hate having lb.f. and lb.m (pounds force and pounds mass), which have different units and at sea level are different by a factor of about 32).

Unrelated to the bookstore, as far as I know. It’s different branding and everything.

One of our former neighbors had two of them. I think about 160lb each. They protected his beehives and would attack bears that tried to get in

I just went to the emergency room today (in Canada). I had slipped on ice and my knee was too painful to walk.

Arrive at 9:00 am. Small town, no charge for parking at the hospital.

Go into the emergency department, no one waiting there. I take a number, it’s #2.

Five minutes later, I’m with the triage nurse. She decides I should have an X-ray before seeing the doctor. That takes 30 minutes.

Wait 15 minutes for the doctor, she stays that nothing is torn or broken, I just have a sprain. Gives me a knee brace and prescription for an anti-inflammatory.

Walk out 90 minutes after I arrived. Total cost: $0.00 (plus $2.85 to fill the prescription).

Similar for SodaStream, which declared that it was an Israeli-Palestinian partnership, providing sorely-needed jobs. It was located in an illegal settlement, and now has moved to Israel proper.

I found Indigo, a Canadian company which makes SodaStream-compatible machines and CO2 bottles, and significantly cheaper too!

The Tyee provides tax receipts for any donations they receive over $5.

As I recall, the intercity trains in Germany are late something like 30% of the time.

I don’t know. I think the Constitution only matters if Trump and mega don’t control all three branches of the government.

After all, weren’t the search and seizure is everywhere. Disregarding habeas corpus. Disobeying court orders to release detainees. Bullying allies and doing his best to undermine NATO.

Now he wants the federal government to have control over National elections, and it seems pretty clear that if the Republicans look like they’re going to lose control of the house or senate, elections will be suspended completely.

Every time Trump crosses a red line, people, Democrats especially, just draw a new red line.