Yes, Verstappen really comes across badly. I was actually starting to like him a bit because it seemed like he’d matured a lot and wasn’t just driving other people off the road like his early days. He’s clearly a massively talented driver, but now he seems to be back to the spoilt bratty stuff again.

It’s a cache issue with the posts count, it can occasionally take a short while to update.

Cougar posting too much and the hamsters getting tired?

LBS have every right to refuse the work (as do most businesses). And they can’t be arsed, as it’s not their problem and presumably something they have no knowledge of.

Herein are the perils of online shopping!

This is my view of it. I buy most stuff online on the assumption that I have to sort out any minor problems myself and return anything that has serious issues. It’s not reasonable to expect a local shop to want to deal with warranty hassles after you bought elsewhere.

Who could have seen this coming:

Just a friendly reminder that the man with the awkward funny movie is someone women warn one another about.

— Xeni Jardin (@xeni) October 24, 2020

The Chief of Staff of the head of the Coronavirus task force…
The failure is so pathetic it’s almost funny.
Almost.

— Jo (@JoJoFromJerz) October 25, 2020

let’s not walk right past the possibility pence had it and they got it from him and have just been lying about his tests https://t.co/mZZSefVRAI

— kilgore trout, biden wi-fi switchman (@KT_So_It_Goes) October 25, 2020

Just remember that grease will keep oozing out for a while so your shoes will probably pick it up, just in case you intend to walk on the nice patio of any anal-retentive types who get all wound up about greasy footprints.

Vettel being refreshingly candid about not being able to deal with the characteristics of the car.

Vettel: Leclerc in a “different class” after another Q2 exit

I remember Mark Webber saying that he felt he could beat Vettel in an old-school style car that rewarded carrying speed through fast corners, but Vettel really knew how to make the blown diffuser work. Vettel could get the car rotated and hit the gas early, with confidence that the rear end would stick due to the exhaust gas blowing meaning that more throttle = more rear downforce. When they introduced the turbos and Ricciardo moved up to Red Bull, they lost exhaust gas blowing and Vettel looked lost because Ricciardo was much more used to cars with less downforce. Now that Leclerc is the chosen one at Ferrari, there’s no incentive to design a car around Vettel’s preferences. Quite remarkable that he did look like a deserving multiple champion when the car worked in a very specific way but looks like a clown now that he has to adapt to a more conventional car.

Now they seem to be appearing, but the post count isn’t updating. For example, the Upshift/Downshift thread is showing with 2 posts on the forum page, but has 4 posts in the thread.

I’ve never noticed anyone using “downshift” to go to a higher gear.

#Wisconsin has one of the worst COVID outbreaks in the country right now. So, of course @realDonaldTrump is doing a rally tomorrow not far from a field hospital that's been set up in #Milwaukee. As always, we're up with billboards outside the event to warn WI families. pic.twitter.com/W0nNsD2CMz

— Rural America 2020 (@RuralUSA2020) October 23, 2020

draft legal response letter pic.twitter.com/qk5pLXc677

— George Conway (@gtconway3d) October 24, 2020

One of the German sites was selling Fox 34s at a ludicrously cheap price a few years back

A friend moved overseas and gave me his pile of old bikes and junk. One of them as his wife’s bike, which was a basic hardtail with Deore and below gear, but it had been parked out in the rain for years and not ridden so the forks were rusted solid. It had a fairly beefy head tube, so I just assumed it took tapered forks and ordered some of those cheap 27.5″ Fox 32s, thinking I would build a mullet bike for playing around. Of course, as soon as I pulled it apart I found that it was straight steerer only, so I got some second hand Psylos for that bike and gave it to my wife.

Having a perfectly good set of brand new 27.5″ forks sitting there that would not fit any frame I owned, I figured I might as well buy a cheap hardtail from on a closeout sale. Got that running with old 9 speed drivetrain and some 29″ wheels from my commuter. It was ok, but the tyre clearance was just too tight even with 2.0 tyres so I picked up some cheap 27.5″ wheels so I could fit in some bigger tyres. Then CRC did a nice discount on 11-speed XT drivetrains just around Christmas time so I figured I might as well make it into a decent bike instead of a hack. Then, of course, the pedals, saddle, bars, stem, and grips were old and tatty, so I figured I should sort that out so it looked like a decent bike.

Most expensive set of forks I’ve ever bought.

Chuck Norris movies (at least the ones I’ve seen) aren’t terrible movies, they’re B-movies. They’re entertaining enough if you’re into that sort of mindless action stuff, they’re not meant to compete with Kubrick etc.

With the exception of Top Gun all films with Tom Cruise in are near the top of my list

He has done some rubbish, but his best movies were pretty decent. , Jerry Maguire, Born on the Fourth of July, Magnolia, Minority Report were pretty solid.

https://twitter.com/robininny/status/1319833359825195008

I reckon if you’ve actually watched the whole film, you can’t say its the worst of anything.

I mostly agree, but then you get nonsense like Harry Kellerman which looks promising until you get to near the end and you realize that it’s just pretentious nonsense dressed up as art. Instead of all the bits being individually awful, it’s the totality of the thing that is awful. Quite an achievement, really.

Its just physics, less diameter will just mean slightly more stopping distance is needed. Assuming grip, weight and speed remain the same.

It won’t make any difference to stopping distance if you can lock up the wheel – the stopping distance comes down to your ability to modulate the brake in that case. I run 200 mm front and 160 mm rear on all my bikes. Locking up the rear tyre is no problem. A bigger rotor would just mean skidding with less pressure on the lever, but less modulation.

I think some people are struggling with the concept of “worst film ever”.

Yep. Although I think it’s extremely good, I can understand people not being into Bladerunner, for example. It’s well, made with a very good cast, and the plot makes sense. It’s just that many people aren’t into that genre of film. I personally think Saving Private Ryan is overrated, the assault on the beach was generally excellent but the rest of it was cliched and predictable. It’s not terrible though, just a bit predictable. Truly horrible films (Reefer Madness, for example) are just terrible in every way – ridiculous script, crap acting, nonsensical concept.

Edit. I just remembered that I once rented Who Is Harry Kellerman and Why Is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me? because it had Dustin Hoffman in it so I assumed it would be a safe bet. My god, WTF were they thinking? Pretty sure that’s the worst film I’ve seen by people who should be able to make a good film.

“The smears don’t need to make sense.”

The Hunter Biden plot line is as much about Fox News programming needs post-election as it is an attempt to influence voting in 2020

It also is a way for Fox News to screen "left wing" contributors. Will they validate the plot line? If yes – the booker will call. https://t.co/ep4thcrGMI

— David Frum (@davidfrum) October 23, 2020

Problem is that most people don’t watch truly awful films, so if you ask someone, they will usually list something mediocre rather than truly awful. I went through the Wikipedia list of worst films to check whether I’d actually seen any, I’ve only seen Reefer Madness, which is hilariously silly.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_films_considered_the_worst

However, Bat Pussy sounds intriguing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_Pussy

The largest area of criticism was placed on Bat Pussy’s sex scenes, which have been heavily derided for their uniquely unappealing and unerotic qualities, as well as Buddy’s visible impotence.[6][17] Multiple reviewers have labeled Bat Pussy “anti-porn” for its “unarousing” depiction of sex and nudity. Brad Jones of The Cinema Snob called it both “anti-porn” and “anti-sexy”, while AV Maniacs not only agreed with the “anti-porn” title but also contested its categorization as pornography, as “there is no discernible ‘****ing’ in it” and it “completely and utterly fails to elicit even the minutest amount of arousal in its viewers”

But, my award goes to United Passions on the grounds that it’s not even a heroic failure, just an utterly cynical attempt at propaganda by people who should have known better. With a budget in the $25 million region, it grossed $319 on its opening day.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Passions

With these mirrors, there's no way Stroll saw Verstappen. Verstappen should have backed out

— Gary Anderson (@GaryAndersonF1) October 23, 2020

Hamilton isn’t going anywhere. They haven’t hammered out the details of the contract, but that’s just details, not whether each party is looking at alternatives. Merc don’t want to lose Hamilton and Hamilton doesn’t want to lose them. He’s already massively wealthy and they don’t mind paying him zillions for the marketing stuff, so it’s just about sorting out the details. Absolutely 100% chance Hamilton will be lining up in a Merc next year.

I often write “acunts” instead of “accounts”.

I once typed “public spending cu*ts” instead of “public spending cuts” when I was writing an undergraduate essay back in the days of manual typewriters. I couldn’t be arsed to correct it seeing as it nicely summed up my opinion. Professor was slightly amused.

I actually wish Borat had left it a bit later cos I reckon Giuliani was about to grab her or at least do something really inappropriate.

If Cohen was a serious documentarian, he should have let it keep rolling as long as the interviewer is comfortable with what’s happening and isn’t in danger. Problem is, he’s not, he’s a comedian who works very close to the line between what’s acceptable and what’s not. I think guys like Giuliani are fair game, they’re public figures and sleazy as hell. The people in the first movie that had him for dinner, where he came back with a bag of shit actually seemed really decent to me and I don’t think they deserved to be treated like that.

Anyway, Giuliani did enough to suggest that he had very inappropriate intentions. If they’d let the camera keep rolling, he might have actually redeemed himself so that was a good spot to stop. If they’d let it keep rolling and cut it, it would have allowed Giuliani to claim (reasonably) that it had been deceptively edited.

Giuliani and guys like him deserve what they get, but I’m a bit ambivalent about Cohen and his methods sometimes.

That’s not how I always imagined Vimes, but guess it could work (kinda like Begby in Trainspotting or Murphy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – the film characters didn’t quite match the books, but they worked out fine). Just hope they don’t **** it up. Always disappointing when you realize that the only good scenes in the thing were in the trailer and the rest of it is just nonsense.

The presidents free lawyer strikes again

pic.twitter.com/l40usQxB2G

— Molly Jong-Fast (@MollyJongFast) October 23, 2020

Let me put it this way: Trump needs the biggest third-debate bounce ever to leverage tonight into a ~6+ point swing in the polls. Ask yourself if you really think anything tonight is going to change the minds of 5m+ Americans (more when you factor in banked early votes).

— G. Elliott Morris (@gelliottmorris) October 23, 2020

BREAKING: Based on our snap poll of 772 likely voters who watched tonight's debate, 52% say Joe Biden won the debate overall. 39% say Donald Trump won tonight's debate, and 9% said it ended in a tie. pic.twitter.com/vViHx5gXfM

— US Politics Polls (@USPoliticsPoll) October 23, 2020

Well that was quite a comedown from the first debate. Trump performed much better and generally behaved himself but still got plenty of personal digs in

I haven’t watched any of them, but the general consensus from the first one seemed to be that the Tangarine Shitgibbon display only appealed to his core voters, but drove moderates away from him. Apparently his advisors were trying to tell him to tone it down on the theory that constantly interrupting Biden made it all about Trump’s rudeness instead of Biden’s fitness for office. Problem for Trump is that he needed a huge win in this debate to turn the race around. A draw just cements Biden’s lead.

The simplest way for Trump to win would be to win Pennsylvania and all the states below it in this list, while the simplest way for Biden to win would be to win Pennsylvania and all the states above it (i.e. Pennsylvania is the tipping point). So Trump needs a pretty solid swing in his favor across multiple states to just squeak out a bare win, whereas Biden just needs these polls to be in the ballpark in some states to win comfortably. Trump absolutely has to win both Florida and Pennsylvania to have a realistic chance, whereas Biden is pretty much guaranteed to win if he takes one of those two states.

Quick snapshot of how the polls have changed since the first debate. pic.twitter.com/AlOBLTrTin

— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) October 23, 2020

Here’s an example of potential confusion. It’s obvious this is a typo, “chanced” should be “changed”, because the Tweet corrects it, but the story is related to statistics and odds (i.e. chances) so there’s always a possibility that “chance” is used in some technical sense that laypeople aren’t familiar with. Distracting when someone who makes their living as a writer is sloppy like this.

Quick snapshot of how the polls have changed since the first debate. pic.twitter.com/AlOBLTrTin

— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) October 23, 2020

This explains why we’ve mixtures of words with different etymologies and therefore multiple ways to spell them (bow, bough etc). But not why one way of spelling something is better than another

It’s not better in the sense of being of a higher functional quality, it’s just that it conforms to the conventions that other people use. It’s like whether you drive on the left or the right – both work fine but they rely on everyone following the same convention. Minor transgressions aren’t usually a problem – not indicating a left turn, for example – but if everyone just ignores the conventions, the system does start to break down. Employers want employees who can write formal correspondence, so being able to spell and punctuate is important if you want a white-collar job.

Isn’t he Emilio Estevez’s dad?

Ramon Estevez?

I don’t know why Leslie Stahl even gives Trump the time of day pic.twitter.com/X6MPM5uyYJ

— Sarah Cooper (@sarahcpr) October 22, 2020

The Hummer is coming back as GM's first full-electric vehicle. And it's going to be expensive: The first model's suggested price will be $112,595.https://t.co/6kO8eQbKWI

— NPR (@NPR) October 22, 2020

The GMC Hummer EV will have three electric motors generating 1,000 horsepower and can run 350 miles on a full charge. It can go from 0 MPH to 60 MPH in about three seconds.

The truck will have a suspension height that can be raised about 6 inches for off-road situations. Its tires can drive diagonally in a feature called “Crab Mode.”

This will be GMC’s first full-electric vehicle and is set to enter production in late 2021.

99% of the strategic guidance from Rs toward Trump is rooted in the notion he'll have a miraculous personality transplant.
The advantage Ds have is simple: they know that's impossible.
This @maggieNYT @katieglueck joint on final debate sums it up:https://t.co/8hJR1UHTks pic.twitter.com/OqTy3BXLMA

— Kevin Madden (@KevinMaddenDC) October 21, 2020

Surely replacing Latifi with Perez would be the more logical choice.

I had the same reaction – that Russell is an important asset. Thing is, Perez would bring solid financial backing and is a pretty decent driver and has a lot of experience developing cars on a shoestring budget. Latifi also brings money. When you think about it, Russell has no experience of developing a car into something competitive (not his fault, obviously) and will probably be off to join Merc in a few years so Williams might as well go with Perez and his money.

Russell won’t go to Haas…he’s a Mercedes man.

So is/was Ocon.

Is it economically viable to fix up and make profit?

In general, unless you know what you are doing and can do most of the work yourself, you are better off just setting fire to a pile of money than trying to fix old junk in the hope of selling it at a profit.

Must be dyslexic, I misread that as “Hot Milf Method”.