There’s a difference between summer and winter fuel for gasoline engines in some areas. It’s usually to do with smog restrictions.

The same octane can be reached with different blends of hydrocarbons. So instead of just ‘pure’ gasoline to hit a desired octane, refineries can mix together higher and lower octane fuels to reach the same overall octane rating. This increases the amount of refinery products that can be used to blend gasoline, so it can be made more cheaply. The trade off is that it’s less pure, and most importantly for this comment - that some components of of these cheaper blends may evaporate more readily, leading to smog.

In summer, when it’s warmer, some areas mandate gasoline must meet certain standards for evaporation. In winter, those standards are decreased, because it’s cooler.

Ethanol has a relatively low evaporation point. I don’t know the specifics of the commenter’s location, but I could see ‘summer gas’ having no ethanol to meet these standards.

More info: The Vapor Rub: Summer versus Winter Gasoline Explained — Car and Driver

Scary.

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Ugh. Yup.

I learned that after buying my house. My furnace is 3x what my house needs and is expected to be an expensive repair someday.

So you’re not describing the issue where internet connected EV chargers can be easily hacked, and potentially told to dump the charge of the connected vehicle’s battery on the grid en masse, causing overloads and transformer explosions.

But a slow moving issue like that sounds like a frequency or voltage issue - something goes under or over enough and isn’t detected via monitoring, causing premature equipment degradation, and potential system collapse. Definitely a lot of expensive damage, though.
(Basically, a stuxnet-style attack on the utility grid - and we’ve already seen evidence that SCADA/PLC’s can be hacked in the water supply system.)

A destabilizing push, rather than a hit with a hammer.

I’m not very physically affectionate with anyone anymore and I don’t know why, but I used to be very affectionate. Now, like, when I want to hug someone, throw my arm around them, or… anything, I freeze up and internally panic unless I know the person pretty well and they invite the contact first.

With that said, meh. I don’t care if it’s a man. I don’t enjoy wrestling, but other forms of affection or physical contact are fine. I have no sexual interest in men, so I guess I don’t even think about it that way.

Brazilian Jaw Job?

I’ve been watching Bridgerton lately and it took me too long to realize that “offering their hand” meant handshake.
Like, how is proposing less familiar than hugging?

I’d keep working for a few years and use every single penny to generate additional passive income. Once I was not just comfortable, but nicely appointed, I’d split my time between working part time, doing stuff to help other people, and being a gigantic slut.

I am running out of time to type up a comment right now, so I apologize for just link dumping, but if you have time, I encourage you to check these out:

• The Brookings Institute – Five reasons to oppose congressional term limits

• NPR – Term limits for Congress are wildly popular. But most experts say they’d be a bad idea

Sorry, this is one of those issues I go die on a hill for, like hating DST. (And everyone downvotes me!)

Term limits have been shown to create ‘brain drain’, and ultimately what winds up happening is that that legislators must focus on career growth - either spending their time in office campaigning for the next elected position, or looking to opportunities beyond politics. It takes time and experience to become skilled in crafting bills that don’t have adverse effects and cannot be overturned or lawyered to do things they aren’t intended to do.
The net result is that it creates a slew of amateur legislators, and professional lobbyists, as legislators are forced to retire just as they become skilled at the job.

An alternative to a retirement age is mental/physical fitness reviews, but that’s also tricky. If there isn’t a defined process then unscrupulous people will just use a doctor of choice to get the results they want, but if there is a process, politicizing that process to serve one party or the other could mean using mandatory retirement to force key vacancies.

I do think that at some point we need to pry the hands of people off the levers of power, and I can’t think of a way that is as ‘non-corruptible’ as a set age limit. It would not always be personally fair, but it would probably be for the greater good.

It’s not bad. I’m like, 5’9”, but I have a 29” inseam. I’m all torso, so I got these short legs that are pretty thick. So, I got that curvy booty.

Technically, I baited her into it. I told her I had just sent butt pictures for a friend - explaining that it was a quirk of our otherwise normal friendship (my friend and I had quasi dated for awhile until she moved out of state, and she liked my butt).
My now-wife said I should send her photos next time I took some. I sent my butt, she sent her butt, and somehow we wound up with pets.

It’s cool. We’re all different. Back in my day we used to say things were fetch.

I don’t know what that means, but yes. To all of it.

You’re overthinking it.

As the other person said with the quote about the ship and the birds.

Throwing my personal story out there: I’ve only dated a few people ‘on purpose.’ I’ve only had one relationship that emerged from a dating app. But I’ve dated folks because I went to local geek conventions. I sparked up something casual with someone I met via a Pokémon Go-like game, who later invited me to the house of a guy she was trying to bang at the time, and I wound up dating one of his girlfriends (open relationships, no drama). Met a burlesque performer while I was helping out at a show and we dated. Met a woman through a board game night. I met this chick through an online chat, where I was actually trying not to meet anyone - I was intentionally avoiding her because she was beautiful. Apparently she dug that I was funny and didn’t try to chat her up, so she asked for photos of my butt, then sold her house and moved 800 miles to marry me. (Some details have been simplified.)

The point is, you just go out, do what you enjoy. Don’t tromp through the forest looking for wildlife. Go sing in a meadow and let the rabbits, birds and deer come to you, you magnificent Disney princess.

Only when it’s traumatizing.

Things that seem to go well and then later need intervention are the worst.
Suddenly I’m Gandalf: “I have no memory of this place.”

Ooh. I made a New/Classic/Diet/Zero joke with my colleagues last week.
I wish I’d thought of Halo, rather than soda. Your version is much better.

Well, I hope your cake looks really delicious!
And that the Mayonnaise clinic helps you out.

My dad was my age in 1989. He was a pretty horrible person, but was actually doing alright. My mom’s father had retired and bequeathed a plumbing company onto him a few years prior, which my parents had managed to grow quite a bit. But he was an alcoholic, smoked a lot of pot, and did enough coke to be considered an addict. I’m pretty sure this happened when he was 40 - I was 6 at the time, I think. I remember he took me to the store with his girlfriend to get cigarettes. Mom was at work - this was before they divorced. He had me in the bed of his truck, and he swerved off the road to drive up ‘the back way’ to our house. I wasn’t braced for the sudden maneuver, and I slid and hit my face, getting a nose bleed. A moment later, a police officer pulled into our driveway and saw him standing over me (who was crying), and said they’d followed him from the convenience store - I assume because he was drunk and had a kid in the back of his truck. He got so belligerent that by the end of it, 6 cops showed up and beat him in our driveway before arresting him. His girlfriend slunk off, and my mom had to spring him from jail. After my parents divorced, he lived in a trailer park with a new woman who seemed nice, and he died a few years later of a suspected heart attack in his sleep. I’ve got about 2 1/2 years before I’m older than he was.

My mom was 40 in ‘92. She had divorced my dad, and she told us a lot of things that we probably should have been shielded from. The plumbing business failed - a lot of equipment ‘went missing’ and some of the vehicles started having random maintenance issues. Our own family minivan stopped running after the fuel was tampered with. And a bunch of our pets started dying or disappearing (cats and dogs disappeared, rabbits just had broken necks in the coop, one horse was shot, another poisoned with antifreeze in their water). She had also began using drugs, or at least, was using them at a level where her addiction was obvious. She got a job halfway across the country, and we moved. We were living in a small farmhouse in the middle of nowhere, and she moved her boyfriend in, who happened to be her drug dealer. And then one day she was gone. The school truancy officer managed to contact family, who arranged to have us rescued before we wound up in foster care. About a year later, she reappeared in a battered women’s shelter, in rehab, and we moved in with her at the shelter.
What I now know - after having gone through her things a few years ago, after her death - is that she got pregnant, ran away, brought the child (a boy) to term, and gave the kid up for adoption before reappearing and keeping this secret from her family the rest of her life.

So, you know. Fun times all around.
(I’m fine, just a bit weird.)

A hairy network issue!

Switch, wig out

The switch (that I’m returning today, after it failed completely yesterday evening) is a bit fancier than your average switch. It kept reverting to default settings, including its default IP address - which meant it was not using the same set of networking instructions as my router, preventing everything it was connected to from accessing the internet.