GraniteM

Honest question: Assume that I do in fact need a car. I've been driving Toyota since college on account of it hitting pretty much the sweet spot of affordability and reliability. Is there another car company that hits around that same realm that is less morally compromised?

Routines is our friend. Routines takes care of us.

Just in case anyone needs this important resource.

I rip CDs to 320 kbps mp3s, and my ear is good enough to say that it sounds good compared to older, lower-quality mp3s that I've still got rattling around in my collection. I have no complaints, but I bow to the serious audiophiles who know their hardware better than me.

The Constitution is also the only ship in the current U.S. fleet to have sunk an enemy vessel, having defeated and burnt HMS Java in 1813.

Her nearest competition was decommissioned in 2015.

I use mine virtually every single day, albeit for playing music and podcasts and a little bit of web browsing and not much else. If the camera were better it would have become my primary phone.

Yup!

• Coca-Cola: Founded 1888

• Nintendo: Founded 1889

• Dracula, by Bram Stoker: Published 1897

It would have been historically accurate for the vampire hunters who killed Dracula to celebrate by having a Coke and playing Nintendo.

When they gave him the job, they gave him a gun. The Deliverator never deals in cash, but someone might come after him anyway—might want his car, or his cargo. The gun is tiny, aero-styled, lightweight, the kind of a gun a fashion designer would carry; it fires teensy darts that fly at five times the velocity of an SR-71 spy plane, and when you get done using it, you have to plug it into the cigarette lighter, because it runs on electricity.

The Deliverator never pulled that gun in anger, or in fear. He pulled it once in Gila Highlands. Some punks in Gila Highlands, a fancy Burbclave, wanted themselves a delivery, and they didn't want to pay for it. Thought they would impress the Deliverator with a baseball bat. The Deliverator took out his gun, centered its laser doohickey on that poised Louisville Slugger, fired it. The recoil was immense, as though the weapon had blown up in his hand. The middle third of the baseball bat turned into a column of burning sawdust accelerating in all directions like a bursting star. Punk ended up holding this bat handle with milky smoke pouring out the end. Stupid look on his face. Didn't get nothing but trouble from the Deliverator.

Since then the Deliverator has kept the gun in the glove compartment and relied, instead, on a matched set of samurai swords, which have always been his weapon of choice anyhow. The punks in Gila Highlands weren't afraid of the gun, so the Deliverator was forced to use it. But swords need no demonstrations.

--Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson

And the guy in the middle is arguably the most powerful SCP in the room. Whenever he is killed, he regenerates a new body to replace the old one, and he also might be host to some even more appalling eldritch abomination.

I fuckin LOVE the Jelly Star! I use it as my music player. Expandable memory, headphone jack, runs BlackPlayer and Podcast Addict. Don't need it to do anything else in the world. Wonderful device.