u/jhsu802701

Has Toyota or Honda ever acquired a pre-existing vehicle brand ever? It seems to me that only the very worst automakers acquire more brands.

In 1999, Nissan was acquired by Renault and has been careening downhill ever since. Renault had left the US market in the 1980s because it couldn't even compete with Vegas, Pintos, Citations, Aspens, and other Malaise Era junk from Detroit. I'm sure that there are plenty of stories of people who bought a 1980s or 1990s Nissan that provided many years of trouble-free service and then replaced it with a much newer Nissan product that proved to be an unreliable money pit.

Jeep has a long history of being acquired by automakers with increasingly lax attitudes about quality control. I understand that Jeeps were once solid and dependable vehicles. In 1987, Jeep (previously owned by AMC) was acquired by Chrysler. Then the DaimlerChrysler Era began in 1998, which didn't pan out for either Chrysler or Daimler. In 2007, Daimler sold Chrysler to Cerberus (private equity). In 2009, Chrysler went bankrupt and was acquired by Fiat. Like Renault, Fiat had left the US market in the 1980s because it couldn't even compete with Detroit's worst Malaise Era junk. Then in 2021, Fiat merged with a French company called PSA Group, and the resulting company was called Stellantis. PSA Group consisted of several French automaker brands. One of them was Peugeot, which pulled out of the US market in 1991 because it couldn't even compete with 1980s Cadillac. That was Cadillac's worst era, because its products were burdened with a series of bad engines - the V8-6-4 engine, the diesel engine, and the HT4100 engine. All those bad engines ended up sending numerous Cadillac buyers to Lincoln, Mercedes, BMW, Infiniti, Acura, and Lexus but not Peugeot.

So why didn't Toyota or Honda acquire Jeep instead of Chrysler? Why didn't Toyota or Honda acquire Chrysler instead of Fiat? Why didn't Toyota or Honda acquire Nissan instead of Renault?

How common or rare is air filtration in buildings? Based on what I saw from my IKEA air quality monitor, the hotel I stayed in didn't appear to have air filtration. Or if it did have air filtration, it was too anemic for the size of the building to keep up with the wildfire smoke outside.

I was in Chicago a month ago during the very worst of the bout of wildfire smoke from Canada. It was so bad that when I took my 3M Aura (N95) mask off to take a few sips of water that morning (and that was before the very worst smoke that came later in the day), I could easily smell the stench from the smoke. My 3M Aura, on the other hand, fully protected me from the smoke. I have great confidence in the 3M Aura mask, because I know from my cheap and informal mask fit testing (sweet or bitter spray of water from a nano-mister device) that it fully protects me from the taste of both the sweetened spray AND the bitter spray.

There were a LOT fewer people out and about than had been the case when the air was cleaner. A significant minority of the people were wearing a mask outside, though I wish that everyone had worn a mask outside.

I hadn't anticipated this nasty bout of smoke, but I was still well prepared, because the same precautions for avoiding infectious airborne diseases also provide protection from smoke. (I didn't have time to be sick, and I definitely do NOT have time to deal with Long COVID.) I had brought plenty of my 3M Aura masks with me on this trip, because I never dropped the habit of wearing a mask when sharing indoor air with others. (However, I have ditched the ear loop masks. Every ear loop mask I ever wore hurt my ears and/or was prone to falling off.) The first thing I did after I checked into my hotel room several days earlier was make a beeline to a nearby Ace Hardware store to buy a Lasko 20-inch box fan and a 20"x20" furnace air filter in order to build a box fan air purifier. I made sure to run it full blast after entering my hotel room. Except when I was using my phone to talk/listen to someone, I made sure to keep my box fan air purifier running full blast.

I had brought my IKEA brand VINDSTYRKA air quality monitor on my trip to Chicago. In the days before the wildfire smoke struck, running my box fan air purifier full blast in my hotel room would lower the PM2.5 particle count from 10 to around 1 or 2 in a matter of minutes. When the wildfire smoke rolled in, the PM2.5 figure was up around 100 even though I had kept my box fan air purifier running all night long. The PM2.5 figure was in the 300s in the hallway outside my hotel room, at around 500 in the hotel lobby, and around 600 outdoors. So my trusty box fan air purifier was working hard but had difficulty keeping up with the smoke.

What do you all make of all this? Did my hotel lack an air filtration system, or was it simply too weak to keep up with the wildfire smoke making its way inside? Do most buildings out there have air filtration systems? Do most of the air filtration systems work well, or are most not effective enough for such a severe bout of wildfire smoke?

How common or rare is air filtration in buildings? Based on what I saw from my IKEA air quality monitor, the hotel I stayed in didn't appear to have air filtration. Or if it did have air filtration, it was too anemic for the size of the building to keep up with the wildfire smoke outside.

I was in Chicago a month ago during the very worst of the bout of wildfire smoke from Canada. It was so bad that when I took my 3M Aura (N95) mask off to take a few sips of water that morning (and that was before the very worst smoke that came later in the day), I could easily smell the stench from the smoke. My 3M Aura, on the other hand, fully protected me from the smoke. I have great confidence in the 3M Aura mask, because I know from my cheap and informal mask fit testing (sweet or bitter spray of water from a nano-mister device) that it fully protects me from the taste of both the sweetened spray AND the bitter spray.

There were a LOT fewer people out and about than had been the case when the air was cleaner. A significant minority of the people were wearing a mask outside, though I wish that everyone had worn a mask outside.

I hadn't anticipated this nasty bout of smoke, but I was still well prepared, because the same precautions for avoiding infectious airborne diseases also provide protection from smoke. (I didn't have time to be sick, and I definitely do NOT have time to deal with Long COVID.) I had brought plenty of my 3M Aura masks with me on this trip, because I never dropped the habit of wearing a mask when sharing indoor air with others. (However, I have ditched the ear loop masks. Every ear loop mask I ever wore hurt my ears and/or was prone to falling off.) The first thing I did after I checked into my hotel room several days earlier was make a beeline to a nearby Ace Hardware store to buy a Lasko 20-inch box fan and a 20"x20" furnace air filter in order to build a box fan air purifier. I made sure to run it full blast after entering my hotel room. Except when I was using my phone to talk/listen to someone, I made sure to keep my box fan air purifier running full blast.

I had brought my IKEA brand VINDSTYRKA air quality monitor on my trip to Chicago. In the days before the wildfire smoke struck, running my box fan air purifier full blast in my hotel room would lower the PM2.5 particle count from 10 to around 1 or 2 in a matter of minutes. When the wildfire smoke rolled in, the PM2.5 figure was up around 100 even though I had kept my box fan air purifier running all night long. The PM2.5 figure was in the 300s in the hallway outside my hotel room, at around 500 in the hotel lobby, and around 600 outdoors. So my trusty box fan air purifier was working hard but had difficulty keeping up with the smoke.

What do you all make of all this? Did my hotel lack an air filtration system, or was it simply too weak to keep up with the wildfire smoke making its way inside? Do most buildings out there have air filtration systems? Do most of the air filtration systems work well, or are most not effective enough for such a severe bout of wildfire smoke?

In iCarly, Victoria Justice played the role of teen boxing champion Shelby Marx. She had a disproportionate amount of strength for her size, just like Sam Puckett and Chuck Chambers.

In the spirit of Chuck Norris facts, here are some Shelby Marx facts:

• When Shelby Marx does a push-up, she isn't pushing herself up. She's pushing the Earth down.
• Shelby Marx had actually been dead for a year before her appearance in the episode "iFight Shelby Marx". However, the Grim Reaper was too afraid to tell her this.
• Shelby Marx can stuff her face at Kentucky Fried Cholesterol as often as she wants to. Her heart knows better than to attack her.
• God created the world. Shelby Marx created God.
• Sheriff Buford T. Diet pulled over Shelby Marx for eating 44 grams of sugar per day in a 25 grams per day zone. She let him off with a warning.
• A cobra once bit Shelby Marx. After a week of excruciating pain, the cobra died.
• Shelby Marx counted to infinity. Twice.
• Shelby Marx CAN divide by zero.
• Shelby Marx is the reason Waldo is hiding.
• Before the Boogeyman goes to sleep every night, he checks his closet and checks under his bed for Shelby Marx.
• Shelby Marx doesn't have to wear a watch, because SHE decides what time it is.
• When Shelby Marx was born, she drove her mother home from the hospital.
• Shelby Marx can cut a hot knife with butter.
• Shelby Marx doesn't actually have a chin - just another fist.
• The chief export of Shelby Marx is pain.
• Paper beats rock, rock beats scissors, and scissors beats paper. Shelby Marx beats all three at the same time.
• Shelby Marx can dribble a bowling ball.
• Shelby Marx can beat you at Connect Four in only three moves.
• Shelby Marx makes raw onions cry.
• The universe is expanding because it's afraid of Shelby Marx and is trying to run away from her.
• The average living room has one thousand objects that Shelby Marx can use to kill you, including the room itself.

I'm not building one of these just yet, but I plan to build some later this year. There's a larger version and a smaller version.

The basic elements are:

• Four Filtrete MERV 13 filters (common and high quality)
• Five PC fans (140 mm or 120 mm)
• Two rectangles of foam core board (cut to the appropriate size for the filters and fans)
• PC fan to barrel pin adapter
• Strain relief grommet
• Barrel pin to wall plug
• PC fan hub (which you can skip if using PST fans for daisy chaining)

The adapters I linked to above are the ones used in the Clean Air Charlottesville design. The reason for five PC fans is to take advantage of the better deals on a 5-pack of Arctic fans. In the interest of optimizing for cheapness, I'm recommending ONLY PC fans available in packages of 5.

I recommend using clear packing tape around the edges of the foam core board pieces. I also recommend covering the cardboard edges of the filters with clear packing tape. These layers of tape allow you to see through but also protect these parts of the air purifier when it's time to take apart the air purifier for any reason (such as replacing the filters or moving the air purifier). As you'll read when I describe the design, two of the filters in the smaller version of this air purifier are NOT replaced.

The larger design uses five 140 mm PC fans, two 16"x25"x1" MERV 13 filters, and two 20"x25"x1" MERV 13 filters. 16 inches and 20 inches are the widths of the cheapest and most widely available filters. The 140 mm PC fans and fan grills cost more, but a space-hogging design might as well take advantage of the extra space to use more powerful fans. Remember that the PC fans and fan grills are a one-time expense but replacement filters are a recurring expense.

For the larger design, the most obvious choice for the five 140 mm PC fans is copying the Rob Wissman playbook by using his preferred fans ($48.99, 72.8 cfm, 1.44 watts each, 7.2 watts total, 0.12 Amps each, 0.60 Amps total). You get the skip the PC fan hub.

If you want the larger design and a more powerful set of fans, another option is to use a more powerful set of P14 Pro fans ($22.29, 110 cfm, 4.2 watts each, 21 watts total, 0.35 Amps each, 1.75 Amps total). Because these fans are louder, you'll need a fan controller so that you can run them at full blast when you need the extra air cleaning power and at a lower power level at other times. You'll also need beefier components between your fans and the wall outlet due to the substantially higher power consumption, which also adds to your electricity bill over time. Given the added complexity, I'd rather go with Rob Wissman's playbook and use his preferred fans.

The smaller design uses five 120 mm PC fans, two 12"x25"x1" MERV 13 filters, and two 20"x25"x1" MERV 13 filters. When it's time for new filters because the current ones are extremely filthy, save money by KEEPING the narrower 12-inch filters and changing just the wider 20-inch filters. (If the filthy appearance of the narrower filters is too unsightly, you can use cardboard or foam core board to cover them up.) This is an option, because the wider 20-inch-wide filters that you do replace provide plenty of airflow by themselves. That's 1000 square inches of filter for 87.65 square inches of fan for a generous FFSAR of 11.4.

For the smaller design, the most obvious choice for the five 120 mm fans is copying Clean Air Charlottesville's playbook by using their preferred fans ($23.99, 56.3 cfm, 1.92 watts each, 9.6 watts total, 0.16 Amps each, 0.80 Amps total). You need the PC fan hub, because daisy chaining is an option only for PST fans.

For the smaller design, other options for the five 120 mm fans are:

• ARCTIC P12 Pro LN ($19.59, 49 cfm, 1.32 watts each, 6.60 watts total, 0.11 Amps each, 0.55 Amps total): This option is slightly less powerful but is cheaper and more energy efficient than the design from Clean Air Charlottesville. You still need the PC fan hub.
• ARCTIC P12 Pro PST LN ($17.29, 49 cfm, same specs as the above fan): This option is even cheaper than the above two 120 mm fans. Because the fan is PST, you can skip the PC fan hub and save even more money. This may be an even better value than the set of fans used by Clean Air Charlottesville.
• ARCTIC P12 PWM PST ($42.99, 56.3 cfm, 1.2 watts each, 6.0 watts total, 0.10 Amps each, 0.50 Amps total): Because this fan is PST, you can skip the PC fan hub. It's more energy efficient than the design from Clean Air Charlottesville (same cfm but fewer watts). The drawback is that the fans are substantially more expensive.

I recently bought a used locked smartphone on eBay to make use of wifi capabilities. I was unable to do anything with it, even after buying and installing a SIM card for the appropriate carrier. The smartphone kept insisting that it was locked, and I would have to convince the carrier to unlock it before I would be allowed to do anything. So I ended up having to return the otherwise nice and working used smartphone.

For what kind of person does it make sense to buy a used smartphone?

DIY versions of the Luggable product from Clean Air Kits contain four narrow strips of material surrounding both of the large furnace air filters.

If you are using foam board for those four narrow strips, exactly what holds them together?

Both the Brisk Box and Luggable products from Clean Air Kits use designs with the PC fans perpendicular to the filters. The four-filter design of the Brisk Box is easier to build but is a space hog. The two-filter design of the Luggable is more space efficient but is trickier to build because of the precision required. I bet that's why the Luggable is more expensive than the Brisk Box.

It seems to me that a design with the fans parallel to the filter could be as space efficient as the Luggable design but nearly as easy to construct as the Brisk Box design. It could be a quieter version of the single-filter box fan air purifier (Lasko 20-inch box fan with one filter taped to the back). Having the fans parallel to the filter means that you can use the air purifier in an upright position (like the single-filter box fan air purifier), or you can arrange it horizontally and prop it up so that the fans can pull in air from below.

Have any of you built or seen such a PC fan air purifier? Is there a good reason I'm having difficulty finding examples?

One 120 mm PC fan occupies a surface area of 17.53 square inches. Five of them in tandem occupy a total surface area of 87.65 square inches. Using one 20"x20" filter means a FFSAR of 4.56, just slightly less than that of the classic 4-filter Corsi Rosenthal box with a box fan. Using one 16"x20" filter means a FFSAR of 3.65. You might not even need furnace air filters. If you use some kind of mesh screening material on the filter side, you can just use cut-to-fit MERV 13 filter paper (available on Amazon), and this would make it even cheaper to use this air purifier.

TLDR: If you want to save money on filters for the new Brisk Box from Clean Air Kits, this post is for you. You can use 16-inch wide filters instead of the more expensive and harder to find 12-inch-wide filters by adding two square/rectangular foam core board pieces.

I bought a Brisk Box from Clean Air Kits last fall, and I highly recommend it. This was the old six-fan design. One thing I like is that it uses four 16-inch-wide air filters. 16"x20"x1" and 16"x25"x1" are some of the most common filter sizes. So I can count on local retailers to have the right size in stock. Because of the competition among manufacturers and the economies of scale due to the high production volume, filters of these size are cheaper than the filters of most other sizes.

Clean Air Kits has since changed the Brisk Box design to use four PC fans (instead of six). While it's nice that the new Brisk Box takes up less space than the old one, the drawback is that the 12-inch-wide air filters are more expensive and less widely available than the 16-inch wide filters.

Fortunately, there is an option available for those who prefer the cheaper and more widely available 16-inch wide filters. Just start off building a Corsi Rosenthal box out of four 16"x25"x1" filters (or four 16"x20"x1" filters). Cut out foam core boards of the proper sizes for this. Use one of these square/rectangular pieces for the bottom section and one for the top section. Cut a hole out of the top section that's just large enough to accommodate the four fans and the power connection but smaller than the coroplast piece that you received from Clean Air Kits. Use tape to attach the coroplast piece on top of the top foam core board piece.

Now you have a nice quiet Corsi Rosenthal box that not only saves your lungs and health but also saves you money on air filters.

I plan to build multiple PC-fan-based Corsi Rosenthal boxes. I want to build something similar to a 4-filter Brisk Box from Clean Air Kits (but with foam core board instead of coroplast for easier construction). It seems to be easier to build than something similar to the 2-filter Luggable from Clean Air Kits. I also intend to size my air purifiers to match the sizes of the cheapest and most widely available filters. (These have the shorter dimension at 16 inches or 20 inches.)

I plan to use 5 PC fans in each air purifier, because one can get better deals when buying a 5-pack. I'll set up the PC fans like a 2x3 array but replace one of the corner fans with the power connection.

While the 140 mm PC fans have their advantages, I'm leaning towards 120 mm PC fans. Because 120 mm PC fans are much more common than 140 mm PC fans, the 120 mm PC fans and their associated accessories (like fan grills) are cheaper due to competition and economies of scale.

While the CFM is slightly lower for the 120 mm PC fans, there is one advantage - the same total cross-sectional area of the air filters goes a longer way with a lower CFM. Thus, one can go longer without having to replace them, and static pressure is less important. (Longer life is important if the air quality reaches the "hazardous" level, which did happen recently in Chicago, Detroit, and other places downwind of the wildfires in western Ontario. The filters get dirty much more quickly, AND the stores may be out of replacements.) So I don't have to replace the filters until they're extremely filthy.

Which 120 mm PC fans do you recommend? I'm looking for a fan that is cheap and quiet.

The Spice Girls song "Wannabe" is featured in the 2004 tween movie Sleepover. In one scene in the beginning of the movie, the four girls are singing and dancing to "Wannabe". Then the doorbell rings, and they all go downstairs and find that it's their new power-tripping neighborhood rent-a-cop Sherman Shiner, who accuses them of causing excessive noise.

I was recently reminded of this scene recently during a road trip. I was driving on Interstate 94 in rural western Wisconsin when the song "Wannabe" started playing on the radio. Before the song was over, I saw a classic speed trap in place. Yes, there was a police vehicle parked in the median. Although I wasn't over the speed limit, and the police vehicle didn't move while I was passing by, I was reminded of that Sleepover scene.

It seems to me that if humanity can learn to colonize space, it will survive for billions of years.

A civilization that can become independent of its home planet can continue on if its home planet is made uninhabitable due to nuclear war or an asteroid strike. Better yet, a civilization that advanced has learned to live with itself and thus would not have nuclear wars. It would also be able to avoid asteroid impacts by destroying or by changing the orbits of such asteroids (much like NASA's DART project did). Thus, such a civilization can last until its sun expands into a red giant at the end of its life.

If a civilization can become independent of its home star, then it will be effectively immortal and can outlast even the dimmest class M red dwarf stars. The constraint on the lifetime of such a civilization will be the breakdown of matter itself.

What do you think?

You can accuse the Woovians and Baguettes (and followers of the various other vloggers discussed here) of anything BUT being impatient and having short attention spans. In a world where people complain about impatient people with short attention spans, the Woovians and Baguettes have bucked this trend by having long attention spans. It takes a lot of patience and a long attention span to actually give one's full and undivided attention to an entire vlog by Adam the Woo, Papa Woo, Mermaid Woo, Carpetbagger, Jordan the Lion, Tampa Jay, Kyle Pallo, Cris the Girl, Justin Scarred, or any of the other vloggers discusssed in this sub.

General Motors could have used someone like a Woovian back in the 1970s and 1980s. Perhaps it would have avoided its numerous fiascos of that era. A Woovian or Baguette actually harbored the attention to detail that too many of the employees and managers lacked. While I'm sure that the process of putting together a Chevrolet, Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Buick, or Cadillac was repetitious, the same is true for keeping up with Adam the Woo or any of his vlogger wannabes.

Only someone with the patience, time, and attention span of a Woovian could read the book War and Peace. Only someone with the patience and attention span of a Woovian could become functionally literate at reading an entire Shakespearean play without peeking at CliffsNotes, SparkNotes, or other popular study aids. Only someone with the patience and attention span of a Woovian could read an entire technical or scientific paper.

So the Woovians often derided here have some real potential. They could actually teach something useful to the rest of us, get things done, and become some of the most intelligent people out there.

Supermodel Kate Moss was infamous for having a skeletal figure at the height of heroin chic in the 1990s. Fortunately, she has since put on weight and is still alive at age 52. While I wouldn't expect her to make it to age 100 (especially given that she's a smoker), Kate Moss has already made it 19 years beyond Atrophyana Grande's current age.

Actress Calista Flockhart was infamous for having a skeletal figure when she played the title role in the 1997-2002 TV show Ally McBeal. Fortunately, she appears to have recovered and is still alive at age 61, 28 years beyond Atrophyana Grande's current age.

Taylor Swift had an eating disorder around 2014-2015. You can tell because she was clearly too skinny. Fortunately, she has since gained back weight and is healthier now. I know I shouldn't be shocked by what she went through, but a man with the same Body Mass Index that she had at her "heaviest" would have difficulty finding pants and belts that fit and would have had to drill extra holes in the wristbands of some of the watches he has owned.

Sadly, the list of celebrities who have been through eating disorders is a long one. Others include Jennette McCurdy (who wrote the book I'm Glad My Mom Died), Jane Fonda, Candace Cameron Bure, Hilary Duff, Jessica Alba, Sean Johnson East, Kate Winslet, Alanis Morissette, Alexa PeneVega, Kate Beckinsale, all 5 members of the Spice Girls, and Laura Prepon.

Is there any hope at all for Atrophyana Grande? Or is she too far gone already?

Are there any Android apps, databases, or web sites that have lists of restaurants that cook from scratch instead of ordering pre-salted food from a factory? I'd like to be able to just enter a location and have a list of all such restaurants in the area.