This is great. I've added it to my list to give it a try. Thank you!

But the owl has spent several years steadily building up an immunity to iocane powder.

Which didn't help it. But it's neat that the owl bothered.

Every time I put cheese on a food, I know a bald eagle crows proudly somewhere.

My country has a lot to be ashamed of, but we damn well will put cheese in a dish in an unexpected/unreasonable/unnecessary way, and it will somehow still taste good.

The best part of the joke is that I looked for an instigating remark, like there even needed to be one...

Ask for receipts as well of previous work that has been done to the car helps as well.

To elaborate here for any newbies reading along, I want to see records of:

• Regular oil changes (near appropriate mileage)
• Regular brake maintenance (brake pads aren't magic, they need replaced)
• A change of tires every 5-10 years
• A few random other things are nice to see, as evidence that the driver didn't ignore strange sounds

Records of addressing any known issues common to that car are a nice plus. In OPs case, a recent transmission repair could mean the expected trouble has already been dealt with. It could come back, but the odds are better on a machine that at least had a mechanic attempt to correct the issue.

My Honda Accord was the most reliable lowest maintenance vehicle I ever owned.

I'm always looking for one when I'm car shopping.

And the ones I find for sale are usually a scam.

Beware if you've come across it online - a used Honda Accord is the most common car to create a scam sales listing online for, (because people like me like them so much).

Honda Accord is a famously reliable vehicle.

An older Accord in working condition is more common than many vehicles, but I have found that people rarely sell a working condition used Honda Accord. I sold mine to a relative to keep all that lovely reliability in the family.

There are two main ways to spot the scam:

• The car is usually priced substantially below the bluebook value.
• The seller promises things that rational people would never promise. My favorite that I have seen is "my brother will drive it three hours to a city near you to let you test drive it". Nobody's brother likes them "drive 6 hours to lose money on selling a car too cheap to an online stranger". My own brother doesn't like me that much.
• CarFax reports will often contain a warning "this vehicle VIN has been reported as being used in scams".

Here's some resources for not getting scammed when car shopping: These might be really important. The last thing you need is to lose $2,000.00 right now.

• More tips on avoiding car sale scams.
• Precautions to always take when buying a used car

And to be really clear, there is no actual car to sell at all, in these scams. The scam isn't selling a bad car or a different car. They're just lying about being willing to sell the car, to get money through unreversable financial transactions.

I hope you follow safe practices, and get a great little Honda. I've had so many people attempt to steal money from me just because I wanted a used Honda Accord.

Edit: Assuming no scam:

• I've had very old Honda Accords drive quite reliabily with little maintenance.
• I've felt like every 21 year old car I've ever driven was at risk of needing $3,000.00 of transmission work. That's just very old for a car.
• The Consumer Reports link I put above puts the functional life of a Honda Accord at 200,000 to 250,000 miles. The mileage of this car for sale is a hint. If it's down near 150,000, I wouldn't be worried. If it's up past 200,000, I wouldn't want to risk it. I can't imagine a car this old having mileage below 200,000, though. Back to scams, a scammer will tell you any mileage you want to hear. The CarFax report will have last recorded mileage each time the vehicle sold.
• If you need to risk it, listen to the engine carefully during your test drive. If I heard anything unusual whatsoever, I would walk away at the speed of "I don't have a spare $3,000.00, today."
• And if you need to risk it, drive it to a nearby mechanic during your test drive. (Tell the owner you plan to, of course.) Call the mechanic ahead to make sure they have time, but most will do an assessment for less than $100, and many do it free, particularly if you're polite and act thankful and catch them at a low business hour (earlier in the day, usually).

Source: Buying new cars is for suckers. I only buy used. I had to learn a bunch about how to buy safely, but I get my cars for so much cheaper than people who buy new.

When I'm a billionaire (and no longer temporarily embarrassed), I'm going to fund so much tasteless art. And by art I mean mostly pornography. But I'll hire the best advisors to make sure it's a classy positive influence on society.

It may not be true but it's accurate.

Yeah. I'm sure it predates Rust by the simple evidence that it doesn't take any cheap shots at Rust.

Shit. You got me. Well played!

But for anyone looking for an answer: Is this loss

It does make sense to setup the carrier first on stock Android to prevent GrapheneOS security from causing headaches.

But I have setup my phone service after installing GrapheneOS.

I just had to be aware of all the necessary permissions my phone carrier's app needed, and grant them all.

Basically, I granted it all the available permissions, to get through my phone carrier setup. Then I let GrapheneOS' automatic removal of unused permissions take all the permissions back. (And it removed basically all the permissions. It seems like my carrier's app does extremely little or nothing, after initial setup, unless I open it to check my billing information.)

Edit: I also have not see the rejected call situation, except maybe once on a weird public wifi network. I think I recall I forced my wifi list to forget and never reuse that wifi, to correct/prevent the issue.

• You can change the default icons color (black and gray-ish in the image) or is based on the wallpaper

Sort of. There's a selectable "highlight color" that sets the vibe for the phone. I enable the feature that makes it pick a prominent color from my current phone background image, and I find it really nice.

• The camera app is good. Not going to make professional pics or videos but I still want to use it to take pics and a good quality is important. Tried their camera on a phone and the bottom menu to switch mode (picture/video/night mode/etc) was buggy

The camera app is the least buggy, and fastest to load, that I've had on Android in a long time. The picture quality is fine. The features are pretty standard - nothing fancy.

• Battery life is better/worse than stock Android (if anyone tried that)

My battery life on GrapheneOS is waaaay better. I assume this is thanks to GrapheneOS having great defaults for restricting apps from running in the background without explicitly getting my permission.

• How the sandboxed play services work

I have more idea than a lot of folks, but I'm not in the headspace to articulate that today, sorry. Fundamentally, it just dumps the "phone home to Google" calls into nowhere, while telling (lying to) the app that the call was a success. Annecdotaly, this works perfectly for 80% of apps I care about, including my bank app.

• Anything else that I should know about. Some people say it's good, some it's bad so I'm curious to know.

Profiles were still clumsy last time I used them, and overkill for most users. In my informed non-expert opinion, many folks underestimate how much the default permissions scheme in GrapheneOS protects them without enabling profiles. That said, if I absolutely had to use a work nanny app with extensive permissions, I would enable profiles for that, if I was somehow absolutely unable to buy a dedicated separate phone to install it on. Otherwise, I think profiles cause a lot of folks to give up on running GrapheneOS, in cases where they would have been fine without profiles.

Yeah. We're not all long distance sharp shooters. I'll pee in one that fits my size before I pee around one that doesn't. Lol.

I think it's both, and they're both into that.

Lol. Yeah. If there's free urinals, I'm gonna take a piss.

If there's no free urinals, it's tradition in my country to all take two steps back and share each urinal among three users.

Okay. It's not, but it should be.

Relief from needing to pee should be a fundamental human right, held more dearly than our squeemishness about each other's genitals.

Context: I've written several games that no one cares about (anymore). My free games have had small happy player bases in the past. I have no real idea their reach, because last time I had a runaway hit it was passed around on physical media copies.

My tip is to play the game until you find it fun, while developing it.

Like any art, you can only be 100% sure you can please one person - yourself.

To take more advantage of the work of others, I'm now learning Lua to allow me to modify existing Luanti plugins, then eventually create my own, then eventually port some of my past games to the engine.

So there's that option as well, if you don't know where to start.

Yeah. Tomb Raider is wayup there.

I remember being relieved when I survived the encounter with the bear, knowing that it was definitely going to be the scariest creature I would encounter. Lol.

Only downside is Microsoft’s greedy ass owns it

I feel compelled to mention Luanti here, just in case it's not on your radar. Also VoxLibre.

It's uh, well it's done.

And it's fully open source so it continues to grow.

And it's lighter and faster and has cleaner network code than MineCraft.

And it doesn't have M$ enshitifying it.

Disclaimer: I love this game and want to see the community grow and grow forever. It's so good and I want to keep playing it until I die.

Edit: I forgot to mention it's completely free and runs great on Windows, Linux, SteamDeck and Android.

They think we're ignorant of how the world works, condescending, and irrationally judgemental.

Lol. Yep Though in fairness, I am genuinely judging them so fucking hard.

Yeah, seems like "woke" is anything we're not supposed to approve of this month.

I do find the word "woke" incredibly useful.

The moment the word exits someone's mouth (as a complaint), I save a ton of energy on how to handle any further information they share (highly suspect).

Edit: I've actually discovered some great art and culture by being warned away from it's "wokeness", too.