Calico Jack – different and sadly shittier historical figure, but the rum is damned drinkable for the price.

As a car enthusiast and backyard mechanic, this is precisely why I prefer to own older vehicles. If something goes wrong with my '06, I can handle that. My friends/family members with newer cars, by and large, can’t even handle their own basic maintenance because of the way things are designed now. It’s worse than planned obsolescence, it’s engineered difficulty.

As far as I’ve been able to tell after poking around on the various “new Twitters,” Bluesky looks to be the best spiritual successor. The whole “invite only” thing was a bit of a pill but it’s easy enough to get a code these days that that’s not really a roadblock.