And by reading, half is a actual book. The other half is a audiobook while doing chores, working out, or general crafting.
I can honestly say reading non-fiction books about various subjects helped me a lot in life. From social issues and self-help, to finances, to dating. I grew up poor in a pretty rough environment, and climbed out of it because of reading.
Wife and I got a Mazda CX-90 PHEV and last mileage at fill up it on a 1/4 tank it had gone 600+ miles. She goes 45 min one way once a week. If it weren’t for that she’d get well over 1000 miles on a tank as she almost always drives it in EV only around town. It goes 26 miles on the battery. 2.5kWhs (not the best) and 36mpg on gas at the moment (that can go a lot higher depending on how you drive it).
Get a hybrid or PHEV for sure. EV really depends on how far you need to drive and how much electricity costs. During peak hours (4p-8p here) our rate (33¢/kWh) for our vehicle is equivalent to gas at $3.98/gal (not cheap in the US). Off peak the rate is $11¢/kWh and is much cheaper.
Just wish the battery was larger at ~50 miles and didn’t cost so much. Other than that, it’s an incredibly fun vehicle to drive, has a great interior, and has an easy to navigate and use infotainment system.
Some sort of strike. Either a general labor strike, or a debt strike. A general strike of laborers will be hard to organize, and there will always be scabs.
But a debt strike ia easier. Although I should probably say “Bill strike”. It goes like this: don’t pay four or five figure medical bills. Just put them in the shredder. If a significant portion of the population does this, it will force change. Just like the courts getting backed up because there were too many evictions, they will get backed up by all the wage garnishment cases that I’m sure someone is typing a reply about. If nobody pays, there isn’t much of a way to enforce it.
This works well in principle. One of many problems here is healthcare need is not spread around uniformly. In your example you just consider number of people and number of providers. This is ok of you are just thinking of primary care (it works like this in many places). It breaks down when there are surges. What happens during flu season? What happens if there is a fire and 30 people need treatment for smoke inhalation. What happens when the doctor needs to take a vacation or gets COVID during flu season? There is redundancy built into a larger healthcare system which makes access more robust over a wider range of conditions.
Also, doctor’s don’t always want to work in all places.it can be harder to recruit doctors to some areas.
There are a whole host of issues here. I agree though that having a middlman take a large cut of money to “grease the system” does contribute to it’s inefficiency. The healthcare system is broken on so many levels that any one change like this would be set up to fail. We need a major overhaul.
Thanks for commenting! Having experienced the difficulty in getting traction on a state level campaign for an unrelated issue, I’m discouraged about the prospects for a nationwide overhaul of our health system, although that’s what I’d prefer to see.
Do you have any thoughts on what the pathway for such an overhaul would look like?
The system we have is built like an unsteady house of cards which is cemented together using ridiculous amounts of money. To dismantle and rebuild it without having to close inner city and rural hospitals would take a decade or more. This means the first step is campaign finance reform and overturn citizens united since the change would have to outlast more than one political regime. Then maybe work one single payor and universal medical record. Many steps from there.
I don’t like how my 2014 Hyundai Elantra turns on the air conditioner all the time. Something is wrong with the controls, and it keeps engaging the AC when I turn on the car, no matter what the climate controls are set to.
I used to. Moved to more rural area of Canada where there aren’t public transportation options. It’s been eye opening actually having to rely on a vehicle, starting to worry about tires and winter and blah blah blah. Not to mention the cost and overall environmental impact. Gross.
If someone’s spending $500/mo in gas, let’s just say public transport probably isn’t an option. Also, in the US, public transport is practically non-existent outside of urban centers. We kinda suck at stuff like that.
Lucky. It's $3.20 a gallon (around $0.85 a liter), were I live in the southeast US, drive around 60 miles a day at 25mpg, so a generally around $7-8 day (I drive an older car, and don't live too close to work), or $40-50 a week. Plus around 5-7hrs worth of driving a week.
The US both pretty heavily subsidizes gas and we produce the most. It's required to get around in all but a few places in the US after all. A lot of us would actually kinda prefer trains and trams, but most of the US is rural or semi rural, so that isn't often an option.
I am about 1 hour drive from NYC and the bus from here costs $620 per month if you buy in bulk. Otherwise, it’s a $40 round trip. There’s also a trains and ferry, and those are even more expensive than the bus. $500 in gas is cheaper than working in the city.
I’m driving transit, and I love not burning a(nother, nowadays there are many different holes) hole in my bank account, and also being able to fuck around on Lemmy or my steam deck on my way to work and back
Con: gas mileage, body damage, rust everywhere, air vents don’t change and only spew hot air, gas mileage, interior is falling apart, every other month it’s refusing to hot restart for a couple days, it’s cramped in the foot and head space, gas mileage, and there rods are going to need replaced soon.
And honestly the gas mileage kind of sucks.
If I could get an EV, wall battery, and solar/wind combo I’d be content.
I've a wee 2016 1.2tsi manual skoda fabia. I really like it, think the dashboards layed out perfectly, everything intuitive to use, the AC is simple to adjust, its reasonably efficient, and is the right size for me.
I'd prefer insurance companies to stop taking the piss with the prices, I've never hit anything or got any points, its literally just because I'm a young man. I'd also prefer there to be a little more space between the clutch and side wall in the footwell as I have wide feet and its easy to clip the clutch when putting my left foot on the foot rest.
I bought a 2020 Honda Accord, and I have absolutely zero (meaningful) complaints.
Things I like about it so much that they are requirements for future car purchases:
Adaptive cruise control
Brake-holding
Tactile inputs for media, cruise control, or climate control (almost wasn’t going to mention this, but new cars are shifting away from this, which I can’t stand)
A respectably-snappy infotainment system that supports CarPlay
Little things:
Adaptive cruise control is always ready to be set, so I can just head out and immediately start using it (I’m one of those people who likes to use cruise control at every possible opportunity)
I think they’re referring to Hill Assist. In manual cars if you let your foot off the brake you start to roll down hill. This is dangerous if you’re parked or stopped facing uphill with another car close behind you.
For generations, this was a problem that people had to deal with, and it took some skill. About 15ish years ago manufacturers started putting a feature on that would automatically hold the brakes until your foot hit the gas.
Brake hold is a feature where when you are stopped and in drive, the car will hold the brake until you hit the accelerator. The idea is that in stop and go traffic, or at a red light, you can stop the car and then remove your foot from the brake and the car will hold it’s position rather than creep forward.
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