Unfortunately you can’t just recuse yourself from society. You’re still impacted by who the president is even if you don’t vote for them.

You’re still using public utilities. Driving on public roads. Interacting with people who went to public schools.

Acting like both choices are the same because they will always eventually do something you don’t like is disingenuous and you know it.

Diamine Autumn Oak, Montblanc Corn Poppy Red, Montblanc Golden Yellow. I’m not sure which if any of these are still being made though, probably not the yellow.

In the USA licenses are not contingent upon manual vs. automatic. No one checks what car you drive. So you would have to learn somewhere - someone around you has to own a manual car in order for you to learn how to drive one, and here simply no one does. No one in my entire extended family, none of my friends, none of my coworkers I’m friendly with, none of the 50+ cars I have any tangential access to are manual. So even if I wanted to learn, what are my options? Buy an entire car just to learn? Services like Turo won’t let you rent one unless you can drive one already.

We have Driver’s Education in high school but it involves no actual driving - there are separate paid/private courses you can take that might involve defensive driving or learning stick. I did one on controlling skids on wet or snowy pavement and demonstrating e.g. turning under braking with and without ABS. But nothing about manual.

This thread is an amusing display of sample bias. Only people that want to respond yes and brag about it bothering to respond.

In reality only about 2/3rds of people in the US can drive stick and almost no one owns manual cars.

I’ve never driven a manual car. I’ve had people be like “You can’t drive manual?!” and then I would respond “So are you going to teach me?” The answer is always No, of course not, not in their car (assuming they even owned a manual, which none do anymore). My parents had manual cars but sold them 10+ years before having me.

I understand how a clutch works. It wouldn’t be difficult to learn. But what reason or motivation is there to learn when almost no cars are manual? They total something like 2% of new car sales. If you’re buying something like a 718 GT4 RS or a 911 GT3 RS for maximum driving engagement that’s great, but those cars are priced for the 1% of the 1%.

Even if you had a fun car, which I do, the drive to work is stop-and-go, roads are full, even the fun country backroads are filled with traffic on weekends, forests are burned down, gas is eye-watteringly expensive if you have a slightly performant vehicle. The time to have fun driving cars was 40 years ago.

Nice! I just picked up my first Sailor pen (Profit Black Luster) and the trim is very pretty. Enjoying the 21k nib quite a bit.

Quality of knock-off brands like Jinhao and Wing Sung is going to be pretty universally shit. You can usually buy a handful and one will be at least decent though.

One thing you could check - any moisture present in the cap can tend to draw more moisture out of the pen. You could dry rinsing and then thoroughly drying (Q-tip, compressed air, whatever) the inside of the cap, dab the section and nib to make sure it’s fully clean, let it dry for a bit (you can shield the nib from air with a cloth to keep it from fully drying out) and then try writing with it and capping it again to see if it sorts itself. If not it might just be way too wet and dumping ink in the cap, or you’re knocking the pen around too much causing ink to leak from the feed. This is all of course assuming it’s otherwise properly tuned.

I’ll be significantly cleaner than average I expect… I don’t like cases, but a long time ago, circa when shiny black plastic was making its way in to touch screen phone design for the first time, a friend and I discovered if you keep your phone in a microfiber bag (like some sunglasses come with, particularly Oakleys we bought together at the time) it effectively cleans itself in your pocket. I still do, and I cycle those out and clean the bag once a year or so, or if it falls on the ground or gets something spilled on it. I have more now from different sets of sunglasses, laser goggles, etc.

I also happen to work in a clean room where you’re expected to wipe anything you bring in, including phone, laptop, etc., with isopropanol-soaked wipes before entering so that’s like disinfecting and taking off the oil every day or every other day.

No one else I know ever cleans their phone beyond wiping it with a shirt or something when the oil & smudges becomes too noticeable.

By trying to present themselves as the center instead of the far-right, they slowly move people’s’ conception of what the “center” is further and further right. It’s been happening for decades.