Always have a trusted mechanic who doesn't work for the dealer look it over before you buy. Usually new car dealerships are reputable and are looking to move their trade-in inventory, especially at the end of the year when they need to clear the lot for the next year's models. You can even find deals on vehicles that are only a year or two old like a returned lease, with a moderate number of miles on them and little to no wear and tear. Those are usually just as good as new but so much cheaper.
Be super cautious of the used car dealer chains, like Drivetime and Carvana, they have loads of customer complaints and legal problems in a couple of states (basically, if it seems too good to be true, it is). Do not ever buy a former rental car, unless it's true love at first sight or you're desperate... even then think about how people, who've only paid like $10-20 for rental insurance, have probably treated that vehicle and reconsider.
The newest and most expensive car I ever bought was a previous model year's dealer demo. A dealer demo is what it sounds like, it's the car the dealership displayed in the show room, used for test drives with unsure buyers, running office errands, and showing off at the mall or in parades.
Cons: There's only a few of them, they'll have a couple hundred miles on the odometer, and you don't get to pick the color or options.
Pros: They're usually at a decent trim level, in an agreeable color, and well maintained... for thousands less than brand new because they've already left the lot a whole bunch.
Left Samsung's ever more expensive Note and Galaxy S lines for Motorola's cheap ass G series like three or four years ago and haven't looked back. I buy a new phone once a year on my tax return for like $200-250. I gift my previous device to my younger cousins, nieces, nephews, and mother. Keeps everyone from having to pay off devices on their phone plans and the phones are still running rather well year over year. The only hold out, claiming to "need" the latest and greatest, is my older sister who insists she needs the new iPhone every two years.
I'll have to check that out. I help run a secular humanist group and we've been trying to get away from Facebook for event planning. More than a few of our members (myself included) aren't on Facebook and/or aren't active there anymore. Might be a good alternative.
Yeah, I've never gotten the "Biden is too old, let's elect a man four years younger than him" argument. Even if either isn't in mental decline, how's age a good argument in this case?
Most Texans don't support succession and understand that it would not be legal (see: Texas v White 1868 for why that is). If Abbott is serious about trying it, the Metro centers and suburbs would almost immediately counter-revolt against them.
Abbott is a jackass lashing out at a world leaving him and his ilk behind. Texas is going to flip purple in the next five to ten years; the hardcore MAGA's know that and it terrifies them. Not if but when Texas becomes a swing state, even if it is only slightly competitive, that will flip American politics at the national level on its head. Republicans haven't had to worry about and spend national campaign money in Texas since the 1980's... they may not even have the party infrastructure to take on such a task at the moment. Democrats could ignore campaigning in other swing states like Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and the like to focus all campaigning on Texas... meanwhile Republicans would still need to spend in those other states while also having to spend money to defend a no longer solid red Texas. For them, this is a party-ending nightmare scenario... a set back on their hold on power lasting at least a generation.
For a party that claims to love and respect the US Constitution, being filled to gills with "constitutional orginalists," I don't think any Republican has ever actually read the document. If they had even glanced over it, they would have looked at Article 6, Paragraph 2 also known as the "Federal Supremacy Clause." It's meaning is that law at the Federal level supercedes State laws and even state constitutions. The "Founding Fathers" intended for the Federal government to hold supremacy over the state governments... now it isn't written in plain English, but it is plain enough. Further, the end of our Civil War the court case Texas v White made it plain as day legally that no State may leave the union. Again, the party of "law and order" comes in clutch with that misunderstanding of what those words mean.
All that being said, succession isn't actually that popular (even in Texas). There would likely be a mass revolt against it in any state attempting it. Further, even a play at attempting it would be a political death sentence (as well as, perhaps, a literal one). Any insurrection against the federal government, even by a collection of contiguous states, would face a similar challenge the capitalists/monarchists (or Whites) of the Russian Civil War faced. The major population centers wouldn't recognize the authority of those in revolt and all they'd be left with would be the hinterlands and rural towns. Which is not a great position to be in strategically (again, see: the outcome of the Russian Civil War).
This is all not to mention, while States have their own National Guards, the insurrectionists would have to convince those troops to fire on troops who are wearing the same uniform. You'd have to convince their officers to break their oath to uphold both US law and face a possible death sentence if captured. I don't know Abbott's relationship with his National Guardsmen, but I highly doubt many officers will go in with him in this piece of political theater.
Best advice I have is to reach out in your local community to help where you can.
Doesn't matter if it's a municipal food bank, a church running a shelter, a charity helping battered spouses, or some kind of a mutual aid group getting people caught up on the bills... just working with others to help fix what you can does an amazing amount for your mental health. Volunteer to help shelter and feed migrants or the homeless. There's after school programs for kids in single parent households or who's parents have to work too much to be there for them. Cities across the US have citizens councils where local problems are brought and attempts to solve them are made.
I know it all sounds cliche and it's all a bandaid on the bigger picture's problems but, in terms of your own mental health it can do wonders... plus I guarantee groups local to you need an extra set of hands on a regular basis. When bad things are going around, we start to worry... when the bad things are enormous and out of any semblance of our control we think we can do nothing. That's not true, you can do something, just on a local or regional scale. Reach out and offer to help in any way you can.
They think they are getting a deal, then they are getting dragged down by an unreliable vehicle that they can't afford to fix.
If memory serves, the outliers here are Lexus and Audi which both score high on reliability ratings. I could be wrong though, is been a couple of years since I looked into owning a car.
Yeah, it does exist elsewhere; I think the point they're making is that it is apparent the United States was founded specifically for the interests of landowning (and slave owning) rich people. While not unique globally, the USA was probably the first country intentionally founded to protect the capitalist instead of the nobility or a religious group.
Part of it is an effect of capitalism. What we're seeing across the tech space is exactly what has happened to retail, airlines, automotive, and even utilities... a company is doing well enough, but the investors want more return for basically doing nothing. Then there's a hostile takeover or shareholder revolt, they install a board that is more compliant with value extraction at any cost to customers and/or their own workers, and presto! You've enshitifacated a company!
Shareholders (at least the big ones) don't care about worker safety or customer satisfaction... this is what happened to Sears. The CEO gutted the company and then took a golden parachute away from the dumpster fire he created.
Switched to Vivaldi last year and haven't looked back. Did some side by side with FireFox for a month or two on my phone. I have a cheap 2022 Moto G something or other, running whatever Android it shipped with.
I guess that like a lot of people, I don't like having apps tracking stuff, but my work requires me to have access to Facebook, Insta, Threads, and the like... so, I just use browser shortcut widgets for them instead (I should quit my job, I know, I know... working on it). Both Firefox and Vivaldi immediately figured out that I wanted to run them in containers so that was great. However, Vivaldi runs all of them so smooth where as Firefox just kind of stumbles around. Some of them would refuse to work some days, just bringing up the web browser container and then crash. Facebook dot com was the worst... there were issues with the UI not showing me the text input bubbles and latency with button presses was terrible... like needing a refresh to show a "like" or even that a notification was read. It was almost unusable. Bizarrely, Outlook was also bad on FireFox... like that's a fairly bog standard email client and "productivity" site, but on FireFox it would crash more than it worked. Vivaldi handles all of the sites/platforms I need like I'm running the apps.
Maybe it's something with my cheap ass phone and Motorola's bloatware, but Firefox crashed and burned more than it worked. I cannot recommend Vivaldi enough.
Kind of a "duh" thing but, only buy used cars.
Always have a trusted mechanic who doesn't work for the dealer look it over before you buy. Usually new car dealerships are reputable and are looking to move their trade-in inventory, especially at the end of the year when they need to clear the lot for the next year's models. You can even find deals on vehicles that are only a year or two old like a returned lease, with a moderate number of miles on them and little to no wear and tear. Those are usually just as good as new but so much cheaper.
Be super cautious of the used car dealer chains, like Drivetime and Carvana, they have loads of customer complaints and legal problems in a couple of states (basically, if it seems too good to be true, it is). Do not ever buy a former rental car, unless it's true love at first sight or you're desperate... even then think about how people, who've only paid like $10-20 for rental insurance, have probably treated that vehicle and reconsider.
The newest and most expensive car I ever bought was a previous model year's dealer demo. A dealer demo is what it sounds like, it's the car the dealership displayed in the show room, used for test drives with unsure buyers, running office errands, and showing off at the mall or in parades. Cons: There's only a few of them, they'll have a couple hundred miles on the odometer, and you don't get to pick the color or options. Pros: They're usually at a decent trim level, in an agreeable color, and well maintained... for thousands less than brand new because they've already left the lot a whole bunch.