Diagnosing info:

I usually find this in YouTube videos or on auto forums, but every now and then they are written in the manuals.

If you feel a wobble (push in and out) on your brakes, then your drum is warped. If it feels mushy, then there is probably air in the fluid system that needs to be bled.

The manuals and third-party books mentioned are great resources, but YouTube videos and old auto forums are also very helpful. There’s nothing quite like watching someone do the process on video.

Another resource that’s helpful is online auto part wholesale stores like rockauto.com where you can often get parts cheaper. The problem with fixing your own car isn’t usually the parts, but the tools. They are a big up front coat, but pay off in the long run. I like AutoZone tools because they have a lifetime warranty, but they aren’t always the best.

For your squeaky brakes, you can probably fix everything for less than $100 in parts (maybe less than 50 if it’s just the pads that need to be replaced). To do this, you’ll need the following.

Tools (none of these are suggestions, they are random links I grabbed as examples):

• a Jack/lift, a hydraulic trolley jack works well

• jack stands and wheel chocks (for safety)

• a socket wrench and appropriately sized sockets or one of these. One that rachets and extends is nice. Do not get universal sockets, they are garbage. Get 1/2 inch or thicker connections or they will break.

• a breaker bar (long connector for sockets). Optional, but very helpful in turning very tight nuts on the wheels.

• a big c-clamp to compress the caliper piston (you can get a piston compression clamp, but this is much cheaper)

• gloves

• calipers (if you want to measure brake drums to see if they need to be replaced)

Parts:

• brake pads and hardware (usually some included metal clips) example

• drums (rarely need to be replaced, based on thickness measurement)

• brake cleaner (only if replacing drums)

• if you get into changing the brake fluid, you will need fluid and potentially hoses/attachment parts as those wear down. You don’t usually need anything fancy to bleed them, I use a piece of silicone tubing and a plastic bottle.

Start small and work up in complexity. It sounds like your pads need to be replaced. There is a piece of metal on the pad that starts grinding on the drum when the pads get low, this means just the pad and pad hardware need replaced unless you ignored it for too long. If you ignored it, the drums may need to be replaced too. It’s typical for the brakes to squeak a bit (different sound than the low-pad scraping) after you put new pads and hardware on. There are tricks to fix this if it even happens, but it’s more annoying than harmful and will go away on its own. I won’t tell them here, because it involves grease and I don’t want you to accidentally grease your brakes so they don’t work.

Normal brake service cost from 15 years ago before I started doing it myself: $300-400. Cost from doing it on my own: $30-50 and ~15-30 minutes.

Cost to replace my broken radiator at a shop: $600. At home: $80 and 1 hour outside in frigid winter weather.

Long-term, I think it’s worth learning to do the service yourself, but I’d stay away from more dangerous work like changing your suspension (springs under tension).

General brake pad changing procedure:

1. put on parking brake, emergency brake/handle brake

2. put chucks behind tires on opposite side of where you will be lifting. Kick them into the tire so they are snug.

3. loosen wheel nuts

4. lift car and place on jack stands (look up how to do this properly)

5. remove wheel nuts, remove wheel and set aside

6. loosen caliper nut, lift so it sits out of way (caliper is on a hinge)

7. remove old brake pad, replace with new pad and hardware

8. inspect drum and replace if necessary (new drums are greased, you will need brake cleaner to remove this if you are replacing drums)

9. open hood, unscrew cap to brake fluid reservoir

10. use c-clamp to depress caliper piston, retighten cap to brake fluid reservoir

11. reassemble in reverse. When you put the wheel on, get the nuts finger-tight, then lower the car.

12. right wheel nuts. This needs to be done in a star pattern like you are drawing a five-point star. Do not tighten one and then the one next to it, tighten one, then skip a nut and tighten every other nut. Continue until all are tight while the wheel is on the ground (or it will rotate)

I had this exact experience with creative cloud about 10 years ago. Adobe is actual malware and I will not allow it on my computers any longer.

I refused to log in…because I didn’t actually have one, I was just wanting to try it or something. Ended up having to go mess with the registry and use a tool from git to remove all traces of it.

Side-note: I used to use CCleaner too and I believe there was something that happened a while back (I don’t remember what, but it was related to security) and you shouldn’t use it any longer. I haven’t kept up with it, so maybe that’s not true any longer.

Using windows is just so tiring. I shouldn’t have to actively fight with the OS to do the things I need to do. Not even power user shit, it’s just that the windows experience gets more and more hostile every year.

Meanwhile, Linux quietly does what needs to be done, and offers to make it even easier to do those things, but only if I want that help.

I want to live in a better world. You can’t change the world (win) by giving up. You can’t change the status quo easily and I can’t live with myself if I do nothing.

I don’t think of them as “losing causes”. While it’s important to be realistic about the current state of your cause, framing it this way assumes they have already and permanently lost, so nothing can ever change. Assuming a mindset of defeatism is demoralizing even if it is only in the language you use.

I know you just copied the headline of the article, but that headline is doing some serious heavy lifting in terms of saying the US has no control over its actions.

“Oh no, we bumbled our way into a war again! Couldn’t be helped, not our faults. Whatever are we to do?”

You give too much credit. I think it’s pretty safe to assume no one but socialists and historians care (or know) enough about Deng and Zhao outside of China so they aren’t likely to weigh in. Now if the question included the tinyman trigger-word, you’d have people jumping all over this post saying China bad and quoting Wikipedia until their fingers bled.

Therefore they can continue to extract more from people than before. When you default, the amount owed increases significantly (doubles?).

This means more people are stuck with high payments and are required to work to continue to survive, less people getting retirement or other benefits, a larger workforce that is essentially captive to their debt and can be more easily manipulated because they are worried about making ends meet more than other things.

I see plenty of benefits for capitalists in a wide variety of industries if more people are beholden to more student debt.

There are entire industries that profit from people being imprisoned. The more people incarcerated in a location, the more that location can charge.

All other things aside, there is very much a profit motive.

Or join an instance they don’t like and they curate themselves for you. :)

Join a different instance, there are ones that are more curated for different regions in the world. Lemmy.world is very US centric and essentially a carbon cut-out of reddit. Lots of redditors migrate there and try to maintain that type of culture on the instance, so they also got many of the most toxic complainers condensed from mass reddit exoduses.

The fediverse is meant to be explored and it may take you a month or two to find where you like best.

At least one company made a soylent, it’s just not soylent green. Not sure if it contains soy or lentils.

I was in the same boat.

Spent all day cooking and listening to podcasts/music. Invited a friend over for dinner like usual and she said she couldn’t come until it was late and well past dark, which was very unusual. Then she told me she was at a Superbowl party and that was how I found out what was going on.

Only way things could have been better is if I had D&D with the food.

And your body is the “collateral damage” in that war.

I think it’s just missing a bit of specificity.

Building more bike lanes will reduce traffic. Building more bus lanes will reduce traffic. Building more tram lines will reduce traffic. Building more car lanes will reduce induce traffic.

Not perfect, but solid logic within reason (Building 100 more bus lanes will reduce traffic).

I’ve seen those orange ones, but was never much of a fan. The demonstrators are beautiful though. There’s nothing quite like seeing a beautiful ink sloshing around inside.

I slept on the kaweco sport, but when I finally got one, it quickly became my everyday. I got a transparent body and fill the body directly with ink like an oil tanker ready to defile the ocean within my pocket, then lube the threads with petroleum jelly. Not a single leak.

Iconic style, affordable, ink lasts forever, one of the most reliable, smoothest gold bibs came with it, and it’s comfortable to write with. I love that pen and wish I had as many chances to use it these days as I did in the past. Unfortunately, my writing at work is almost entirely digital now.

What the fuck, that had to be a trip! Either watch order would suck: ruin your mood before Totoro or get blindsided by the second feature.

It happens constantly in the US too.

They teach us about roundabouts in driver’s education or at least the written tests to get a license. Most of us just shouldn’t be allowed to drive without additional training at this point. Laws are suggestions and when the car can’t go straight and fast without inhibition, it breaks our brains.

It’s doing something for someone else vs doing it for you. For some people, it can serve as a “hack” to engage the hyperfocus.

Aside from stimulants and therapy, learning to live with ADHD is about developing seemingly abnormal coping skills to overcome the barriers it presents. Looks weird from the outside, but it makes total sense to that person because they know it engages something within them that won’t engage under normal circumstances.

It sucks to use and I hate it, but if someone starts doing the thing I’ve been struggling to do, that can engage my ability to do it because I’m doing it so they don’t have to…such as cleaning up one of my messes. Maybe you can use this too?