bmj

I disagree. Can you expand on your claim?

YouTube and TikTok are not countercultural, even if some users are using those platforms for genuine countercultural creative acts. By definition, a social media "influencer" with millions of followers is not countercultural.

In the darkest days of the pandemic, this same group got together outside nearly weekly, weather-be-damned.

To propose a list of rules for writers is probably a very presumptuous thing to do. The only authority it can possibly have is one’s own example, and so offering it to the world is something of a gamble. One has to assume that one’s own writing is impressive enough to most readers to provide one with the necessary credentials for the task. If one is wrong on this score, issuing those rules will invite only ridicule. I mean, for goodness’ sake, Steven Pinker (of all people) published a book on style. How can anyone take that seriously?

Few writers do such a fine of job of puffing themselves up while at the same time cutting others down.

But, he is a gifted thinker and, at times, pleasant writer. For example: https://www.firstthings.com/article/2010/08/a-perfect-game

Related: Nick Cave (Australian musician) and his own issues: https://www.theredhandfiles.com/do-you-have-tinnitus/

That said, environmental scrupulosity is a thing. Would it be better for the environment if I didn't buy stuff from Amazon, and maybe just bought locally made goods and food? And maybe I shouldn't buy new clothes, but just continually repair what I have? And maybe I shouldn't use computers or smartphones because the raw materials are damaging to extract from the Earth?

But, to answer your question, I think we can most effectively blame an economic system that rewards continuous production and consumption, with emphasis on disposable, rather than repairable, items. Amazon helps facilitate that with free shipping and impossibly low prices. Yet, instead of asking us, as consumers, to reexamine our habits of consumption, we are asked to feel guilty about how much we recycle, or how much we drive. I could not own a car, and walk everywhere, but if I purchase nearly everything I need from Amazon, I suspect my "environmental impact" is no different from a person who drives to work everyday.

[Edit: formatting]

EGR valves -> DPFs -> DEF

I understand the necessity of these systems, but it seems like they are incredible fragile (the DPFs on VWs are prone to cracking and new ones are more than the average cat). I also understand why people do DPF deletes...

Last summer, I accompanied my son when he went across the state line to purchase a truck from a private seller. Said state has no inspection requirements. One of the seller's other trucks was a diesel conversion, and the exhaust was just routed up through the bonnet. Definitely no cat on that vehicle!

I suspect it has something to do with the perceptions around always returning a new thing from a function rather than the mutated input to the function. For example, if you need to mutate the property of an object based on other inputs, the perception is you would clone that object, modify the property appropriately, and then return the cloned object.

[Edit: formatting]

I had two previous "tech" interviews prior to that. The first was for a Perl shop. All Perl-specific questions, and the interviewer even gave me a copy of the Camel Book to thumb through if necessary. The second was for an MS-based web shop. They sat me down at a computer and told me write a relatively simple C#-based CRUD app. I was allowed to Google whatever I needed. The Perl interview was fairly challenging (I knew parts of the language, but was not an expert), the C# one not so much, but I'm sure it weeded out a lot of applicants.

I've also had three other jobs where there was not a "tech" interview at all, mostly just chatting about projects and whatnot.

That said, we've used about two dozen Airbnbs over the years, all in the U.S., and have never stayed in a place that was not exactly what we expected based on the listing.