So far, no ghosts yet! Only haunted by the vague odor of the church it was in before, so it kind of smells like an old lady’s house, but it’s going away pretty quickly.

I went on the low side since it’s not in perfect shape and is an older (1985) Young-Chang built Wurlitzer. It was a church piano so it has some bushing wear in the keys, but still very playable, and had a broken string on D2 that was an easy $50 fix. I think after moving, tuning, the string, and eventually rebushing it in the next year or so, I’ll have about $900-1000 into it all said and done. Still definitely a pretty inexpensive piano overall, but understandable why they might not have wanted to put money into something that was probably a donation to begin with.

A $1 grand piano off of eBay. I had been looking around on stuff like FB Marketplace for a “real” piano after learning with a really basic keyboard for a while, and happened across a gorgeous 6’1" grand piano on eBay. It was reasonably close, the ad said it was in good working order, and they took very detailed pictures of basically every single flaw in the case. I called up a piano mover, and had them pick it up from the church, sight unseen. I was so worried that I’d made a mistake, given that the moving was still about $400, but I got insanely lucky, with a beautiful looking and sounding piano worth about $5k for basically just the cost of moving it.

Spirit/Frontier, he’s not allowed to buy a single upgrade in advance, and the employees are required to harass him about the size of his personal item and upcharge him for a carry-on on every single flight.

Okay, I’m going to go against the grain here and say “Don’t go with the really cheap online glasses”.

I used eyebuydirect, Zenni, and a couple of others for many years, and was pretty happy with them, especially for the price. However, one thing I’d always noticed is that they’d wind up being pretty beat up with some large scratches in the coatings, or they’d just fail and start flaking off by around the 1 year mark (I’m pretty hard on my glasses, tbf) and I absolutely had to get new ones. I just kind of accepted that I was very hard on my glasses, and that’s what happens.

However, I started going to Costco just because my insurance wouldn’t cover any of the online places, and the quality of the lenses and coatings are absolutely night and day. I’ve had 10 pairs now (sunglasses and normal lenses), and only had one with a single scratch in the lenses, after having them go flying across a cement floor due to me doing something quite stupid.

I don’t think you need a membership for their optical center either, but I’m not 100% sure.

World War Z is phenomenal as an audio book. Absolute all-star cast of readers with a great story, 1000x more entertaining than the movie.

This just makes it even dumber. Some of these at least have some interesting ties to the state’s history. Eugene Stoner isn’t even from Michigan, and ArmaLite was based in California and now in Arizona.

If people REALLY gave a shit and just couldn’t stand for not having a state firearm, I’d argue the M1 Carbine would be a far better choice given the historical ties to our automotive manufacturing base and its transition to wartime manufacturing, with General Motors being the single largest producer during WWII.

Alternatively, Hi-Point has some manufacting here, so I’d be willing to consider making the Yeet Cannon the official state firearm.

It pretty clearly has nothing to do with any sort of ties to manufacturers or state history though, and is 100% a “tRiGgEr tHe LiBs” move, which makes it incredibly frustrating as someone who is actually interested in firearms for their history and engineering, instead of as an inadequacy compensator.

Torgo’s Executive Powder!

Definitely a C6 Corvette, which is appropriate for a man so old he’s on his deathbed.

I mean, you can’t just not tell us some of the top-10

Oh man, I sure would have loved to live nowhere near my job and forgone most of my hobbies for nearly 3 years. There’s definitely no reason why anyone would ever need to rent a SFH ever.

You should take a look at SteveMRE1989 on YouTube to see how long those packaged foods can last. He’s eaten rations from the early 1900s without issue usually. It’s pretty wild how well packaged some of that stuff was

It definitely sucks, but there are an increasing number of people like Ian of Forgotten Weapons getting people interested for the same reasons I am, really only getting into the politics from the historical or design perspectives, and always in a very objective manner. I’m also now in a far more liberal area and the local ranges are very inclusive, so that helps immensely.

Try being someone on the liberal side of the political spectrum who is primarily into the history and engineering of firearms, rather than the power fantasy of “gubmint and libruls better fear muh guns”.

It’s an absolute hellscape and it’s extremely disheartening to start talking with someone and sharing in a common interest, then seeing “FJB” and 1488 bumper stickers. I refuse to let bigots ruin my hobby though, and make an effort to make the hobby as inclusive as possible.

Oh, for sure. Likely, it’s not even going to be a “better” car, it’s going to be a much slower car, but with a better driver. That would be even more galling, to have his flashy sports car passed by some dude in a Miata.

This was explained to me as being a car person vs a “car person” by a friend who mentioned what giant douchebags car people are, in a group chat with her best friends who are extreme car nerds.

I know it’s getting into a sort of strawman/“No True Scotsman” realm, but I’ve definitely noticed it at a lot of car meets unfortunately. There are a lot of people who are very much attracted purely to the idea that “fast loud vroom car will make me attractive as a person”, and those tend to be the assholes who buy a $100k sports car that they won’t even take to a local autocross, and will use it solely to terrorize people in surrounding neighborhoods.

On the other hand, there are people who get excited seeing basically any interesting car. It doesn’t matter if it’s slow and cheap and isn’t flashy, it’s just a unique car and that should always be exciting to see.

My stepfather very much falls into the 1st category, and going to Woodward (absolutely massive car show/cruise in Detroit) was absolutely painful. He would shit on basically every car that went by, and on the rare occasion a flashy supercar drove by, would be like “I bet my car is just as fast”. He’s had multiple very nice sports cars, and I’ve invited him numerous times to autocross/track events, but he refuses it every time questioning why he’d want to. He’d much rather be an idiot doing 3x the speed limit on backroads than just take it to any one of the many nearby track events. Absolute numpty

I hate this was my initial thought too. I feel like such a degenerate uwu

I can’t imagine that people will keep shoveling money in for another ten years

See, that’s what I thought after the first hundred million with basically nothing to show other than being able to walk around your spaceship. Yet here we are.

Because it grabs attention and sounds scary, which really what media outlets care about. My other favorite is when they talk about someone having being caught with “hundreds of rounds of ammunition”, which clearly indicates that’s how many people they were planning on murdering, and isn’t just a pretty typical range day, or in the case of reallly common stuff like 9mm, 22LR, or even 223, can literally be a single box of ammo.

But that really makes no sense. Unless you have them all set up in a row pointed exactly where you want, you’re probably not even saving half a second vs reloading. The old “switching is faster than reloading” thing doesn’t apply nearly as much when you’re at a static position and can have all your mags out in the open at arm’s reach.