Welcome to The Cruelest Day: Tuesday, May 12, 2026, and National Odometer Day. My 2000 Honda Civic, now 26 years old, has only about 83,000 miles on it, as I’m a little old man who drives it only on weekends. Feel free to give us your own odometer reading, especially if it shows your car has been intrepid (give the year and model).
It’s also International Nurses Day and National Nutty Fudge Day. Here’s a short but mouthwatering video about how chocolate-walnut fudge is made in one store on the Jersey Shore:
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the May 12 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*Iran has publicized Trump’s demands for ending the war—demands that the Islamic Republic deems unacceptable (article archived here).
Iran defended its demands in negotiations to end the war with the United States and Israel on Monday, hours after President Trump had denounced the latest Iranian position as “TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE” on social media.
Esmail Baghaei, the Iranian foreign ministry spokesman, told reporters that Iran did not “demand any concessions” but rather asserted the country’s “legitimate rights.” He added that Iran’s proposal would have ensured safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran has effectively blockaded since the U.S.-Israeli attacked Iran in late February.
Mr. Baghaei’s said that Iran had made “generous” and “reasonable and responsible” requests. But Iran’s own state broadcaster recounted a series of uncompromising conditions on Monday.
According to Iranian state media, Iran had called for the U.S. to pay “war damages” to Tehran and recognize Iranian sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz. Both are likely non-starters for the United States, which has called for an end to Iran’s grip over the strait, a critical passage for oil and gas.
Mr. Trump had initially conditioned the ongoing temporary cease-fire with Iran, which began last month, on free transit for ships through the strait. But Iran still insists that any ships that traverse the Persian Gulf waterway do so in coordination with its forces, and Mr. Trump has repeatedly pulled back from his threats to attack Iran in protest.
Last week, Mr. Trump announced a U.S. military effort to free ships trapped in the maritime bottleneck by the war, dubbed “Project Freedom.” But roughly a day later, the effort was abruptly suspended to allow for further negotiations and has not resumed.
The Iranian counterproposal also demanded that the U.S. end its punishing economic sanctions against Iran, Iranian state media said. Analysts said that it was unlikely unless U.S. officials received major concessions on Iran’s nuclear program in exchange, compromises which Iran has so far ruled out.
The U.S. will not pay reparations to Iran, nor will they recognize Iranian sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz—sovereignty it didn’t have before. As for the U.S. offering major concession on Iran’s nukes, I don’t see that happening, either, despite Americans’ lack of support for the war. In the meantime, Iran is suffering big time inflation and other economic damage, so we’re seeing a game of political chicken going on. And, as usual, I’m not going to prognosticate about this one.
*Will Rahn at the Free Press analyzes Trump’s latest dump of UFO data, and finds it a big nothingburger.
Will the Trump administration’s release of secret UFO documents prove more soap opera than space opera?
The first tranche of materials landed with a thud on Friday, with UFO believers and skeptics alike claiming to find support for their respective positions. True believers, underwhelmed though they were by the actual contents, called Friday’s files an important first step on the road to full disclosure. That road, however, appears to be a long one, stretching beyond the horizon and perhaps, as skeptics argue, leading nowhere.
The 162 released files are housed on a Defense Department website with a minimalist and vaguely cyberpunk aesthetic reminiscent of The X-Files. They include dozens of testimonials from civilians, federal agents, diplomats, and astronauts who reported seeing UFOs. Much of the material comprises redacted information. But there is some interesting stuff: What, for example, was the “bogey” Gemini VII astronaut Frank Borman reported seeing during his space flight? Or the “Eye of Sauron” witnessed by several federal agents in 2023 somewhere in the Western U.S.? (The files offer no conclusive answer.)
Well, was there anything in them? Nothing substantial, as far as I can see:
. . .Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, one of the leading lawmakers pushing for disclosure, said the release proved that Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, the former head of the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), is “a documented liar” because he has said he never found proof of aliens. Kirkpatrick, who many UFO believers see as an agent of a massive cover-up, responded by telling reporter and UFO skeptic Steven Greenstreet that Luna should “stop inflicting her willful ignorance on the rest of us.”
We’ll see if future disclosures give us the long-promised hard evidence that we are not alone. But for now, we are where we’ve been all along: just guessing and groping for answers in the dark of the cosmos. The aliens may very well be out there. They might even come here on occasion. But for the time being, anyway, the ongoing saga of mainstream governmental UFO intrigue remains a distinctly human drama characterized by sweeping claims and few hard facts.
. . .If there’s one person holding this ragtag band of UFO boosters together, it’s probably the Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb. When he isn’t teaching science in Cambridge, Loeb searches for alien technology through the sensors and telescopes of his Harvard-sanctioned Galileo Project.
The project’s list of affiliates includes everyone from Gallaudet, a sincere believer in extraterrestrial visitation, to Michael Shermer, the country’s leading UFO skeptic. He counts Luna, of whom he always speaks highly, as a comrade of sorts, but has also co-written a paper with her nemesis, Dr. Kirkpatrick, on the need for hard evidence before we believe UFOs are visitors from somewhere else.
So what did Loeb find in this latest release? He told me he and his team took Trump’s advice and had fun with it. Always an optimist, he said, “The best is yet to come, because higher quality data will take more vetting by layers of government bureaucracy before it is released.”
“The biggest impact of today’s release is psychological: This topic deserves to be within the mainstream of public or scientific discourse,” he told me. “Like any detective story, the mystery can be resolved with high-quality evidence.”
But of course we’re still waiting for that high-quality evidence to emerge, as Loeb freely admits.
There’s a Yiddish word for the contents of this report: bupkes. And supposedly the “high-quality evidence” already exists, in the form of wrecked UFOs and even bodies of aliens, sequestered somewhere secret in the northwest U.S. Or so the conspiracy theorists say.
*I’m quoting at length below from Amit Segal’s new post on It’s Noon in Israel, as I haven’t posted much on the West Bank. Here Segal talks about “the myth of settler violence,” which isn’t really a myth but, according to Segal, an exaggeration:
Ask 100 people to name the primary accusation leveled against Israel, and “genocide” would likely top the list, with “settler violence” a close second. Much like the first, it is a shame that an issue of such weight is so often defined by mistruths and exaggerations.
Before proceeding, it is important to state clearly: settler violence does exist, it is a serious problem, and it must be dealt with accordingly. However, as with much in the region, the reality and the narrative are simply miles apart.
Let’s begin with the data. The most often cited number comes from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, which recorded 2,047 incidents of violence against Israelis and 6,285 against Palestinians between April 2023 and January 2026. A closer examination of these numbers reveals that the majority of the latter do not actually involve violence, and many don’t even include settlers.
Of the 6,285 alleged incidents against Palestinians, 1,704 occurred in Jerusalem, not in settlements. Another 1,361 relate either to Jewish visits to the Temple Mount or to clashes there between security forces and rioting Muslim worshipers. Neither settlers nor violence feature in these instances. Yet, in the UN’s ledger, a Jewish visit to Judaism’s holiest site is automatically classified as settler violence.
Of the remaining 3,220 reported incidents in Judea and Samaria, many consist of generalized complaints—such as “trespassing” during tours or hikes—involving no assault or damage to persons or property. Another 96 cases relate to state projects, like road and infrastructure construction, which involve neither violence nor settlers. 2,039 of the complaints allege property damage or assault without bodily harm; while unacceptable, this hardly aligns with the violent image frequently depicted in the media.
Beyond these questionable classifications, there is a fundamental problem with how data on these incidents is collected. This was highlighted in a 2024 defamation case involving the left-wing NGO B’Tselem. According to the testimony of a B’Tselem field researcher with 20 years of experience, the organization operates under a protocol where Palestinian accounts are not independently verified beyond a site visit and discussions with additional “eyewitnesses” (who may or may not have actually seen the event). In the specific episode at the center of the case, the “facts” published by B’Tselem were directly refuted by the victim’s medical files and contemporaneous IDF reports.
In this regard, B’Tselem is not unique. Most NGOs and UN agencies claiming to perform fact-finding in the Arab-Israeli conflict operate similarly. They frequently base their publications on hearsay and second-hand accounts without properly verifying the allegations. (Even if they intended to, these NGOs generally lack the tools, expertise, and access required for rigorous verification.)
Israel Police data shows that between 2014 and 2024, approximately 1,356 complaints of “Jewish violence” in Judea and Samaria were filed. Only about 40 percent (roughly 537 cases) met the threshold to open an investigation. Furthermore, a substantial share of these cases involved property offenses, vehicle theft, drug possession, and other criminal incidents entirely unrelated to nationalist violence.
A clear example of a false complaint generating headlines occurred in February 2026 regarding a fire in a sheep pen. The media widely reported that “settlers burned a sheep pen, killing dozens of animals,” and politicians leveraged these reports to make serious accusations that were amplified internationally. Within a day, Israel Police released its findings: the fire was actually caused by an illegal electrical connection installed by the owner himself.
Similarly, in 2024, the central investigator for Judea and Samaria testified that in the South Hebron Hills, roughly 90 out of 191 cases filed since the start of the October 7 war (nearly 50 percent) were found to be false complaints. In the Jordan Valley, a comparable half of all complaints proved to be false.
When exaggerations eclipse the facts, we sacrifice truth for impact. This does not solve the issue; it merely weaponizes it. It alienates those in the middle seeking practical change, while handing extremists on the fringes the perfect excuse to further entrench themselves. Ultimately, we cannot address a problem if we are fighting a narrative instead of reality.
As I always say, I don’t keep up with West Bank stuff, simply because I don’t have time. Unprovoked attacks against Palestinians are unconscionable, and clearly some occur. Segal above says they’re exaggerated, and the figures can be looked up. All I can say is that some Israelis are behaving abhorrently, and I am not sure how much of this, if any, is promoted by the government.
*On the debit site, the Times of Israel reports that a mother of one of the three Jewish hostages shot by the IDF while carrying white flags said this: the IDF was ordered to “open fire on sight.” This is in contrast to what the IDF itself says, calling the deaths a “tragic accident.”
When three Israeli hostages were killed in Gaza by Israel Defense Forces gunfire in December 2023, the military described it as a “tragic accident.” But in a recent interview, the mother of one of the hostages said the troops involved were given orders to shoot on sight, which ultimately resulted in her son’s death.
Speaking to Channel 13, Iris Haim, mother of Yotam, 28 — who was killed alongside Alon Shamriz, 26, and Samar Talalka, 25, during “intense fighting” in Gaza City’s Shejaiya neighborhood — recounted conversations she had with soldiers involved in the incident. She was interviewed for Channel 13’s investigative program HaMakor (The Source), which broadcast an hour-long documentary, “The truth behind the shooting of the hostages,” on Thursday.
“I heard this from every soldier who spoke to me… They received an unequivocal order: Everything you see — and you will not hesitate, even if they’re civilians — you shoot to kill,” she told the television station.
According to one of those soldiers, Talalka, an Arab hostage from the Bedouin town of Hura, had led the group of three in approaching Israeli forces.
“The moment you recognize an Arab face in Gaza, the first intuition is that these are Hamas terrorists trying to carry out an attack,” the soldier said in a recording published by the news outlet.
The soldiers then opened fire on the three, despite the fact that they were shirtless and one was waving a makeshift white flag.
Haim recounted a conversation with another soldier, in which he said he shot and wounded Yotam after Talalka and Shamriz had already been killed by gunfire from other troops, before his gun jammed. At that point another soldier shot and killed her son.
The soldier who spoke with Haim told her that he suffers from severe post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of the incident.
This is clearly a “tragic error,” almost certainly reflecting the IDF’s experience that apparent Israelis might be either Hamas people under cover or real Israelis being used as bait by Hamas. Still, given the white flag, and the hostages speaking Hebrew, the soldiers should have held their fire. I think we can understand why they were scared, but it was a tragic mistake and certainly not an order by IDF to kill hostages, which would be something the IDF would never order. Saying “these things happen” will provide no consolation for the families and loved ones of the Israeli hostages, but yes, show me a war in which nobody is killed by friendly fire.
*Did you wonder, like I did, what happened to Spirit Airlines’ airplanes after the company went belly-up? I thought they’d be sold to other airlines, but the WSJ says that REPO MEN took them!
The first call came to Bob Allen’s phone at 6 p.m. ET on a Friday. The message: Get the repo men ready.
Spirit Airlines was still in operation and planes were in the air. But the aircraft leasing firms that own dozens of its bright yellow jets were getting anxious as Spirit barreled toward liquidation. They wanted their planes back.
“I had six hours to find 20 pilots,” Allen said.
Nomadic Aviation Group, his company, had been standing by for months as Spirit teetered closer to the brink. Allen and co-founder Steve Giordano quickly assembled a roster of pilots, most of whom had worked for Spirit. They made a WhatsApp group, which swelled to 40 pilots. One had just landed.
“He said, ‘can I fly in shorts?’” Giordano recalled. Not a problem. “We generally go khakis and polos, but you know, you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do,” he told him.
By 9 a.m. the next day, with Spirit’s death now official, they were ready to go. Pilots had fanned out to airports in South Florida, Charlotte, Houston and Columbus, Ohio, to go pick up the stranded jets. Some were still at the gates where they’d parked after their final flights.
. . . . Nomadic operates like a miniature airline that ferries jets around the world for aircraft lessors, so it’s in high demand when airlines are both expanding and shrinking their fleets. In 2024 Giordano flew to Harbin, China—known for its ice festival—to collect a plane for a client who wanted its engines. The trip took over 24 hours on commercial flights. Their route to deliver the plane in Wales included stops in Calcutta, Muscat and Cairo.
“When things are bad we’re extremely busy,” Giordano said. “When things are good we’re extremely busy.”
ChatGPT says that even major airlines lease some planes (the bot’s bolding):
Major airlines like United Airlines and American Airlines use a mix of owned aircraft and leased aircraft. Most large airlines do both.
Here’s the basic picture:
- Owned planes: The airline buys the aircraft outright (usually financed with debt). These become assets on the airline’s balance sheet.
- Leased planes: The airline rents the aircraft from a leasing company for a long period, often 6–12 years or more.
Today, leasing is extremely common. Globally, roughly half of commercial airliners are leased rather than directly owned by the airline. Large leasing firms such as AerCap, Air Lease Corporation, and SMBC Aviation Capital own huge fleets and rent them to airlines.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, neither Hili nor Szaron have any use for the upstairs d*g:
Hili: Beautiful day, and there’s a dog in the garden.
Szaron: Maybe someone will finally take pity and shut him in a cage.
In Polish:
Hili: Piękna pogoda, a w ogrodzie pies.
Szaron: Może ktoś się zlituje i go wreszcie zamknie w klatce.
*******************
From Bad Spelling or Grammar on Signs and Notices:
From The Dodo Pet:
Masih talks about her mom on Mother’s Day. She hasn’t seen her mom in ages, but there’s some video of them together here:
My illiterate mother has been my role model. The regime forced her to disown me on state TV. She refused.
I haven’t seen her in more than a decade. Not because I committed a crime. Because I spoke.
Happy Mother’s Day 🌻💔— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) May 11, 2026
From Luana; two examples of the moral arc bending upwards. Be sure to watch the video in the first tweet:
Arguably the 2nd most pic.twitter.com/XdeT2o7VwJ
— Hunter📈🌈📊 (@StatisticUrban) May 10, 2026
From Bryan: I read this easily, but I don’t understand why the younger folk can’t:
fun fact nobody born past 1995 can read this
it’s basically cryptography to them pic.twitter.com/EDYtZOIhin— Heart (@heart_) May 9, 2026
Larry the cat disses America, and he should, at least where holidays are concerned. The standard American two-week vacation is simply ludicrous.
A good question for all Europeans to ponder at some stage during five weeks of paid holiday https://t.co/iaUrAGpxRb
— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) May 6, 2026
Ricky Gervais posted about a white donkey foal in Israel named after him:
Beautiful foal Gervais, named after comedian Ricky Gervais, says hello from our sanctuary in Israel where she was born to Deborah, rescued when heavily pregnant. Thank you for helping our donkeys have a safe home for life! pic.twitter.com/Bm0hZkSsFs
— Safe Haven for Donkeys (@safehaven4donks) May 11, 2026
From my feed; I particularly love this one:
— VixenInTheCity (@NikitaCatSpeaks) May 10, 2026
One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:
This Dutch Jewish boy was gassed as soon as he arrived in Auschwitz. He was fourteen years old. https://t.co/pjuCmFPw57
— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) May 12, 2026
. . and one from Doctor Cobb; note that there’s no audible sound here but see the seismograph recording below. This was taken by a drone.
Wait for it …. 11 seconds and BOOM! Some breathtaking footage from Fuego 🇬🇹 and @boisestate.bsky.social scientists in this great science update on infrasound sensors. eos.org/science-upda…
And buy request of the first commenter below:
Goodness, the AI prompts almost write themselves:
“Robot, please draw Professor Jerry Coyne as Mr. Magoo in a 26 year old Honda, driving though a post-apocalyptic Chicago – with Palestine protesters yelling – on the way to Costco.”
AI techies out there…? This is your mission, should you accept.
🙂
D.A.
NYC 🗽
See the bottom of this post.
I love the pic! The Sears Tower survived, and the pro-Palestinian play is appropriately staged outside the Chicago Theatre!
On May 20, 1991, I bought a Mazda Miata. I still have it, but only use it half the year, as it isn’t much good in snow. I have just reached 50,000km (31,000 miles). It’s had a respray, a new soft top, wooden steering wheel, new wheels, lights upgraded to LEDs, and an upgraded instrument cluster, but is otherwise stock. Looks and drives like new, and gives me face ache with smiling so much each spring.
Congratulations on the longevity! Keeping it garaged in winter surely helped, at least it would in any jurisdiction that used salt on the highways.
My current ride recently passed five years of age and has barely 28,000 miles—most of those highway miles to visit grandkids as local errands are all quite nearby. That 2021 replaced a 1993 Volvo 240, which in turn was paired with a 1987 240. Both lasted 28 years. One gave us 212K miles and the other 169K, but I can’t remember which was which! I hated parting with either, especially since the 1993 was the final production year. Finally, nature forced my hand. Parts were getting harder to find, and the last few times I used the car I would find chunks and scraps of metal in my parking space. The inevitable consequences of many northern US winters and salted roads.
Memories fond and not-so-fond of numerous cross-country trips in those cars. The not-so-fond are of a much younger man who now wishes he had had today’s relatively-higher patience with the inevitable raucousness of backseat kids and squabbling siblings. I miss those cars and those kids, the former gone, the latter grown.
I don’t typically look at Masih’s video clips, but I did this time and it was incredibly moving.
It seems pretty clear to me that Trump releasing UFO “data” is a lame attempt at distracting the media and news away from real problems.
1977 VW bus, 180,000 miles on the original engine. Compression still 95%. Change the oil and filters, keep it out of the weather.
1971 VW bus. Sucked a valve about 4 years later, apparently a common failure mode of its 4 cylinder air cooled engine. The valve stem sticking up out of a hole the piston was impressive. I thought of having it cleaned and mounted with an appropriate plaque as a memento mori; but I was young and never got around to it….
When I first got to the NASA Langley Laboratory in the 70’s, my mentor told me that I might see the Center Director (or Laboratory Director, formerly called Engineer in Charge) from time to time by looking for the oldest car around. Because clearly the Engineer in Charge must be the best engineer and thus the one who can keep his car running the longest.
Around 15 years ago, we had Israeli neighbors here in DC that we’ve stayed friends with over the years. The husband was the IDF liaison to Quantico (and has since gone on to very senior positions). He decided to buy a Miata, which he was quite proud of, so I sent him a photo of two grinning guys sitting in a Miata, with the tagline “Miata: for those friends who still don’t know you’re gay.” He loved it. ;-J
Upon reflection I am not surprised by the data on the West Bank “settler violence,” just saddened.
I heard that Avi Loeb speculated recently that what looked like an interstellar comet might be an alien craft. But from what I gather it did not come to anything. Nothing wrong with speculating. It’s a big place.
I hope the aliens, if they exist, settle the matter by turning up and saying hello for all to see and hear. Even more so for god. Being omnipotent he has what it takes to put the issue beyond doubt. I’m sure even the pope would be surprised.
From the point of view of the believers, god did turn up two thousand years ago. But another visit would help 🙂
UFOs: nonsense. I’ve watched Avi Loeb in interviews many times. He’s on fairly regularly on NewsNation. He’s always charming in his optimism and enthusiasm, but he’s also always vague. Vagueness keeps this whole thing alive.
2010 Toyota RAV4: ~76K miles, mostly to and from the gym.
I wonder how much of the US productivity advantage is in the real economy and how much is tied up in just wall street going crazy over AI until the bubble pops.
Maybe it would be a good idea to reduce debt while “line go up stronk”
Maybe, in retrospect. But during the apparently limitless growth, FOMO rules. FWIW, my best case scenario is that the inevitable crash happens soon, which leads to more cautious views and policies regarding AI, which give us a better chance to avoid some of the more disastrous social consequences of the path we are currently on.
Thanks for the excerpt from Segal about settler violence. Data data data..
I follow this issue very closely. The only reliable data set is that of the IDF, which certainly does not minimize the issue, as it complicates their mission enormously. (In addition, those same settlers who attack Palestinians also attack Israeli security personnel, as they see our own security services, including the IDF, as contrary to their messianic vision.) And while the incidents are far too frequent for my comfort, they are orders of magnitude lower than the numbers reported by the NGOs, UN, etc.
My understanding is that the total number of violent deaths is also quite small relative to devoted attention, of O(25) over the past six months. Does that line up with what you know?
Next time I am in an IDF office that deals with such matters, I will try to get exact numbers. (This is not sarcasm.)
The numbers of deaths over the past six months are low indeed—not sure if it is zero. Several Palestinians have been hospitalized (not life threatening) and at least one has been in a coma—which well may be a fatality.
The main attacks are on property. Olive trees, some many decades old, have been cut down. Sheep are stolen. The attacks are on villages, whose people make their living by agriculture, which is difficult enough to maintain.
So yeah, by the standards of the Middle East, the damage is light. By the standards of a civilized society, which is what I want Israel to be, the damage is severe. Yes, I know that there are far more cases where the Palestinians attack Jews, which sometimes result in murder. As an Israeli living here, I take that very seriously. But that does not mean that I cannot condemn terror in all its forms, and demand that equal punishment be doled out for crimes committed by terrorists on both sides.
Regarding old cars: how do car years translate to human years? Let’s say that someone (not me) has an 1960s Datsun. Would it’s car age be it’s chronological age, or can we come up with an estimate based on the life expectancy of a car and a human?
Yes, I am a nerd. There is a reason that ~I chose to spend my life shut up in a laboratory instead of becoming a human clinician.
John Spencer has a new update on the war in Iran: https://x.com/SpencerGuard/status/2053527380615139421.
Loved the AI picture! The only thing missing are ducks in the passenger seat because they’re headed to Costco for more feed.
I have no miles on my odometer because I don’t have a car. I live in the ideal location for carless living – within walking distance of every conceivable shop and most offices (including doctors and hospital), and less than a mile away from a subway stop. When walking or taking the bus/subway isn’t feasible, I get an Uber, and about 3 or 4 times a year, I rent a car.
Re aliens and UFOs:
This article by Eugene Koonin convinced me that alien life doesn’t exist anywhere in the observable universe. And if alien life doesn’t exist, it’s a slam dunk that UFOs aren’t aliens. But even if I believed aliens exist (and I sincerely wish they did), every single piece of evidence for the supposed extraterrestrial origin of UFOs that I’ve ever seen has proven to be nothing more than evidence of wishful thinking.
That article is from 2007 so rather outdated. Space telescopes have since revealed that planets in habitable zones of other stars are commonplace. I am a Copernican in that I don’t subscribe to the “Earth is the only place where life could have evolved” thesis. Earth is probably not all that special in the scheme of things – I suspect we may soon find out. But the evolution of technological civilizations seems a long shot compared to the evolution of life, and any advanced technological civilizations that do develop may be inherently short-lived for various reasons. That, combined with the apparent impossibility of interstellar travel, makes the idea UFOs are alien visitations very unlikely to be true IMO.
Ah, but that’s what They want you to believe. Clearly US Rep. Luna is a starchild. And organising useful idiots into supporting Their vastest ever conspiracy is easy enough with Their advanced mind-control technology.
And re those alleged wrecked UFOs, does anyone seriously think that They are so inept? That They travel for vast distances over many thousands of years and yet somehow crash here? What, they ran out of interstellar plasma or forgot to check the suspension or something? This surely is not Their first rodeo (or harvest — Their intentions are still unclear).
…………
I bought my Element at a Largo Honda tent sale at Key West in 2005, after Hurricane Wilma killed my Chevy Tracker (and thousands of other cars in the Keys). It’s now showing almost 132000 miles; I still drive it almost daily and use it to tow my Snipe to regattas all over the East. Man, I wish Honda still made Elements, because it’s getting harder to find parts!
The calligraphic “cryptography” is reasonably spot on. I have students (calc 3 and linear algebra) that can’t differentiate between a u and a v when hand written, unless the u is exaggerated and the v looks more like a (script, not romanized which are often the same glyph as a lower case v) lower case nu. Nor can they write them distinctly enough that they can tell them apart on the next line. Not to mention S vs 5, Z (zed) vs 2 (two), 1 (one) vs l, or…. I am not yelling at clouds, but, as horrid as my penmanship is, by the standard of the 1960’s, it is still better than most all of my students.
One of my coworkers has the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution posted in his office (Physicist, former military) as facsimiles and the students have been known to ask what language they are in.
current vehicle: 2016 compact pickup w/ 160KKm. Likely make 300+, barring accidents. Prior: 2002 compact pickup scrapped in 2017 at just under 300KKm with even the original clutch, rusted off door skin, and enough leaks to grow plants inside. and the 1949 John Deere, that still nearly pays its keep. Unfortunately, no public transit here and, for one of my careers, as well as life, if I only have one roadable vehicle, it’ll be a truck.
My 2013 Chrysler Town and Country Minivan has 288, 587 miles on the odometer! I use that vehicle for my driving business, but I’ve only been working part time for quite some time. If I had worked full time since I purchased that vehicle, I would have driven between 500k and 600k miles ! The minivan would have gone to Chrysler Heaven a long time ago, and the vehicle I purchase to replace it would be on its last legs.
My 2014 Town & Country minivan (bought used in ‘16) has a little over 33,000 miles on it. It would be even less if my kids hadn’t borrowed it a couple times to move some of their stuff across several states and back.
I plan on it being the last car I ever own.
Yeah, I bought a Nissan Leaf in 2023, the first new car I purchased for my self. I declared that at age 65, it would be the last car I ever buy. The gods laughed and two years later an inattentive driver on highway H1 delivered the punch line.
2004 Nissan Patrol 3 litre turbo diesel. 470,593kms before the engine sprung terminal coolant leaks. Had a reco unit installed just a few weeks ago. Transmission bits front to rear still humming along nicely. Bought it brand new.
Paid time off? How much people have depends on where they work and how long they’ve been with their current employer. When I started work at AT&T in 1984 I got 2 weeks of paid vacation and no personal days per year. When I retired from AT&T (formerly Bell) Labs in 2011 with the same pay grade I had 30 days of vacation and 5 days of personal time per year. My French friends baited me about my measly 10 days of annual leave until I explained my reality to them.
This reminds of my days in the Army. In addition to my normal leave I was granted a week off to go on tour with orchestra of the town I was stationed in and another week off to attend a seminar at UniKonstanz. Neither week off counted against my annual leave. Community relations …
I had a 2004 Jeep liberty with only 79,000 on the clock when when the engine “blew up” 18 months ago and was going to cost $6000 to repair, so I had to sell it. I don’t have a car now. I wish I’d bought a Honda!
Did your mechanic tell you hat the problem was? Just wondering, since that is not very many miles for an engine to go, despite the age.
2014 Honda Civic, 76,000 miles, has had a sheltered life, mint condition, driven by little old lady. I’ve been asked by four different people to please get in touch with them as soon as I decide to give it up. I’m going on 87 now.
Late to this today. Am I the only reader with an electric? 2024 Hyundai Ioniq5, giant battery, level 2 charger in my basement garage, hardly anything on it to break (except, well, the brakes), huge cargo area, comfiest seats, goes like the wind if you ask it to. Best vehicle I ever owned, planning to buy one replacement battery pack some day, and make this my last car.
Mike
See my comment under #17 about the ‘last car’.
Ha yes famous last words I’m sure. I miss my old Leaf too. And I hope you were ok?!
I climbed Fuego Volcano in 1986 during a period when it was not erupting. I certainly would not climb it now!
I’ve had my first car, a 2021 Nissan Kicks SV for about two years now.
The mileage is up to 71,000 up from 59,000 when I first bought it.
Usually, in a trip to the dealership, the people there keep my car overnight because they don’t have the service parts, so they have to backorder or there was an issue with the engine or brake control.
When they took it in today, the labor crew started the usual oil change and rotated the tires. They also replaced the air and cabin filters plus the back windshield wipers, which took about an hour which surprised me. The entire service also cost me about $350 which is a lot lower than my past business visits with them, so I’ll take it.
I like the video of the eruption.