Came here to post this and you beat me by 8 hours.

Never named any of my cars until we got an ID4. It is called Heidi.

Some of the very first ones were great; Trevor the vampire, and the one that birthed Homsar (possibly the very first one?). Stuck with it for all the classics; lightswitch rave, Trogdor, teen girl squad, 20X6, Sweet Cuppin’ Cakes (I still bring up Eh, Steve! to this day).

Eventually they started getting longer and longer and lost a lot of the punchiness and I stopped watching.

I think my favourite is probably Trogdor. The way Strong Mad has just carved ‘DAGRON’ into the table always makes me chuckle for some reason.

My inner monologue is an asshole that literally never shuts up unless I’m asleep. If I’m not actively thinking about something and conversing with him or keeping him otherwise distracted, he’s singing a snippet of the last catchy song he heard, over and over, until a new one takes its place. Sometimes it’s the same song for days on end.

This is the correct answer. Due to wear levelling, a traditional drive wipe program isn’t going to work reliably, whereas most (all?) SSDs have some sort of secure erase function.

It’s been a while since I read up on it but I think it works due to the drive encrypting everything that’s written to it, though you wouldn’t know it’s happening. When you call the secure erase function it just forgets the key and cycles in a new one, rendering everything previously written to it irrecoverable. The bonus is that it’s an incredibly quick operation.

Failing that, smash it to bits.

There’s the Mazda MX-30 if that’s what you mean? But it’s yet another SUV.

There are some options now that I think about it, but whether any of them are available in your country is another matter.

Renault Zoe - probably what I’d choose if I wanted something Mazda 2-esque.

Homda E - Really expensive for the limited range. Maybe good deals to be had second hand?

VW ID3 - Golf sized. Possibly your best bet in terms of availability.

Fiat 500e - Or the nutty Abarth 500e with its fake (and very loud) engine noise.

Mini electric - Anything but mini.

MG4 - Very popular in the UK. Cheap, decent range, albeit a little ugly.

In the UK there’s also the Vauxhall Corsa E. Might be available elsewhere under the Opel brand?

I think that’s about it. It’s such a shame that the EV market is still very much dominated by SUVs.

The thing with a manual is that they’re great when the road is twisting away in front of you and you can really engage with the experience, but let’s face it, most of the time you’re stuck in traffic with an aching left foot. I’ve also driven many different kinds of autos, some great and some truly terrible. Even the best automatics are in no way comparable to driving an EV.

Sure, sometimes I do miss the feel and engagement of a manual when the conditions are but I stick the EV into sports mode, which gives a decent approximation of engine braking, and use the instant torque that you only get with electric to make my own fun through the corners.

The rest of the time, when I am stuck in traffic or just going from A to B, it’s so relaxing and smooth and so much less stressful than anything else. I wouldn’t go back.

The only issue I can foresee is that unless you want an SUV your choice of EVs is very limited. I certainly can’t think of anything Mazda 2 sized.

Yes, I always called them catapults as a kid and I guess it stuck!

I don’t know if this counts but I was always disappointed that real life pea shooters and water pistols were nothing like their comic representations, that worked like machine guns and hoses respectively. I suppose the closest we ever got was the Super Soaker.

Oh, and I’ve never seen a catapult made from a Y shaped stick.

Aw man, yeah, the ending of AC1 where Desmond uses the eagle vision and discovers the code on the wall, it gave me chills at the time. I was so hyped for where they were going to go with the story and for a modern day assassin arc.

But I guess they realised they had near infinite points of history they could stretch the franchise out to, and keeping the Desmond story going was only going to limit their cash cow’s potential.

I checked out half way through the Ezio arc that seemed to go on forever and only went back because everyone was raving about Black Flag. By then the modern day story made zero sense to me and was just a slog.

My kids are of the age where they’re starting to think critically about it. We’ve never directly lied and said that he’s real and have instead answered their questions with a “do you think he’s real?”, and then they have a think and conclude that he is.

When they come to us with more of a statement than a question, for example “Santa isn’t real, is he?”, then we will let them in on the ruse.

Also people with 0 legs bring the average down even further.

You need to keep the floor clear and empty its bin, sure, but it’s way less effort than actually vacuuming. We’ve only had it for a couple of weeks but have got into the habit of doing a quick run around picking up toys and other obstacles before we go to bed (though I did specifically buy a model that can avoid those things).

Anything that takes away shitty chores. People take washing machines for granted these days, but a decent dishwasher is a godsend. Modern ones don’t need anything more than a basic scrape of the dishes as “prep” and loading it before bed to then wake up to a load of sparkling clean dishes is amazing.

In a similar vein we’ve just got a robot vacuum cleaner that we’ve set to run every night. The amount of dog fur in its bin every morning is eye opening, and other than for the stairs there’s almost no need to do vacuuming ourselves now.

Likewise trackballs. Took me all of a day to get used to using a thumb ball (Logitech MX Ergo), my wrist pain cleared right up and I haven’t looked back.

Yeah, they’re not great for twitch gaming, but on the flip side it’s highly amusing to watch people’s brains crash when they try to push it around like a mouse.

Do audiobooks count? I’m on chapter 27 of The Stand with about 38 hours to go. It’s been quite the experience in this post-Covid world.

The Trip. I thought it would be hard to find because there’s another much more recent, much more popular, but entirely unrelated show with the same name, but it turns out some legend made a playlist of them!

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzivW1Rnct6_lMstFHmw9XC8MG47-cFYG

Hats. It used to be that people wouldn’t be seen dead outside without a hat but these days, unless you’re a big fan of baseball hats, your options are sorely limited.

This is great. Reminds me of a late night show that used to be on in the UK featuring minimalist techno played against a backdrop of stock 60s and 70s space race footage. It was called The Trip for those that remember it.