Within the "truck" class of vehicles, EPA fuel efficiency standards are based on weight. It's easier to build heavy trucks and SUVs that meet those standards, than light trucks.

Effectively, the US government legislated heavier trucks and SUVs.

Video that explains it.

This is going to seem minor, but it was a shock to me.

I grew up in Texas. I lived in very metropolitan places -- near downtown Dallas, and near the Houston medical center. So I never thought that I was culturally isolated or anything.

When I finally left the state for a job, I went to Los Angeles, circa 2007. In my first week there, a lady pulled up next to me on the street and asked me where the courthouse was. I had a vague idea, but explained that I was new to the area so my advice should be taken with a grain of salt. People familiar with the LAX area will know that the nearby courthouse is a tall building with something resembling a crown or halo, I pointed her toward that.

It wasn't until a couple of minutes later I realized what seemed strange about the encounter. The lady was of African-American descent.

I thought back on 3 decades of living in Texas, and I cannot once remember being approached by a black stranger and asked a question. Not one single time. Houston has a large homeless population, I had many encounters with panhandlers. I couldn't remember one single black person.

In fact, as I thought about it, a HUGE difference between Texas and California was that black folks on the street behaved very differently. In California, they looked you in the eye, they said "hello", etc. In Texas -- at least, up until I left in 2007 -- black folks were strictly "heads down, eyes on your own business". Even thinking back on some black friends and co-workers, I realized that they behaved very differently in public than my white friends did.

The whole thing made me sad for my black friends back in Texas. And now that we know how police treat black folks, I guess I can see why they behaved the way they did.

For what it's worth, this particular case happened 2 years ago, in Missouri:

https://www.usatoday.com/...

Odd that they put "Toyota-owned automaker" in the headline instead of Daihatsu. Or something like, :"Daihatsu, owned by Toyota".

Whether the problems go "up the chain" to the parent company is TBD, I guess.

Misinterpreting contextually appropriate diction is not pedantry.

Check the label before you drink it, especially if you're watching your sugar intake for medical reasons.

Umm. How would checking the label help? If the drinks were labelled correctly, there would be no reason for a recall.

Stephen Fry was once asked what he would say if, after death, he found himself trying to justify himself to God in front of the Pearly Gates. His response:

"Bone cancer, in babies? Seriously?"

That headline is... incredibly inaccurate. They've pledged to each other to avoid porn, and have software that throws an alarm (visible to each other) if they view it.

"Monitor Each Other's Porn Intake" implies that they are seeking out porn and sharing it with each other, which is not what is happening here.

I think there are plenty of legitimate concerns here, but father and son sharing porn links is not one of them.

Also, I imagine young Mr. Johnson has at least 1 Android tablet or other burner device that is unknown to Dad.

Let he who is without sin throw the first helicopter.

License to kill -9

Subreddits belong to the community of users...

Spez, read that again. Slower this time.

Oh, this is beyond meat, I assure you.

I guess I never used Twitter as "intended". I always just cultivated my follow list and watched the people I was following, and looked at the ppl they were replying to & retweeting to identify new people to follow.

For me, Mastodon has been much the same.

Is this controversial? You're paying for the storefront.

Well. He's gotten better.

I think he really struggled understanding that he was seen as a leader, and that people were modelling his behavior because he was setting the standard. Once he realized that, his criticisms became more... measured.

Where did he get a squirrel-sized spider costume?

Did Squirrel Girl make it for him? DID SHE ALREADY HAVE ONE JUST IN CASE?

So, if I'm reading this correctly, this is the Konigshovener Hohe wind farm which is built on the site of the Garzweiler open-pit lignite mine. According to this article, the site was inaugurated in 2015 with 21 Senvion turbines.

The problem is, Senvion went out of business in 2019, and customers have been struggling to support their turbines. Apparently the Senvion design is exceptionally dependent on software access. Siemens and others have stepped in to offer support contracts to Senvion turbines in good working order, but with the opportunity to mine more lignite at the site, maybe RWE felt that it was time to spin down the Senvion turbines.

It seems like there may be many factors in this decision.

Ken M... now there's a name I haven't heard in a long time.

Did we need Fauci to tell us that? Trump went on record to the press, several times, claiming that COVID would fade away in a few months. He was wrong, of course, and winter 2020-21 was one of the deadliest periods.