Good article, but “Java deprecated their Date way back in 1997” is not exactly true. They deprecated a lot of methods and constructors in JDK1.1 when Calendar was introduced, but the class itself was never deprecated and it was the preferred way to represent a point in time until the “modern” approach was provided in java.time in JDK8 (c2014)

Not exactly true, but they deprecated absolutely everything that made it a date. It expresses deep regret in the medium of annotations:

https://javaalmanac.io/jdk/1.2/api/java/util/Date.html

(I can't find the 1.1 docs, but they were the same)

It's one of my favourite examples of how languages pretty much always get date and time hopelessly wrong initially. Java now has one of the best temporal APIs.

Yeah, it effectively became a typed wrapper of a long epoch millis value. Generally treated as immutable by convention in my experience, although of course it technically wasn't as the setters were never removed.

It was hopelessly wrong initially, and got even worse when they added the horrible sql Date/Timestamp/etc classes.

With java.time though, it is the gold standard as far as I've seen.

Java's time and duration representations, heavily based on Joda, should be the standard that every language works towards.

It's just about perfect in every way. It makes it easy to do the right thing and it's very pleasant to read.

Curses, I was close. Also: yikes to the design.

In this case the candidate they voted for was a convicted criminal and pathological liar.

Dishonesty is the through line of Trump’s entire life. There was no reasonable expectation his second term would bring anything else. Anyone expressing buyer’s remorse at this point is impossibly naive.

If there was ever a quintessential American quality, "impossibly naive" would be it.

GDP is not a great measure of quality of life.

What are your Mom's thoughts on the US's poor life expectancy compared to Australia, Canada, etc?

Why would she have thoughts about that? South Asian Americans like us have a life expectancy of 84.4 years, just a hair short of Japan.

12-15k miles in a Ford SuperDuty is equivalent to how far in a gas Civic? I suspect that driver isn't being charged accordingly.

Registration fees are likely the same or close but when you factor in gas taxes (the original comparison here), the Ford is definitely paying more both based on fuel type and mpg.

More, sure. But not remotely proportional to the increased wear and tear from vehicle weight.

Possible. How far off is it?

Pretty far?

According to your link, an EV that is 700lb heavier => 2.24x damage

Civic: ~2900lb SuperDuty: ~5700-7600lb

What is the difference in taxes paid for an equivalent amount of damage?

I understand the point you're trying to make - and you may be right - but you're leaving out the math to demonstrate it.

Civic fuel economy is about 2x an unloaded SuperDuty, so the SuperDuty owner likely pays maybe a bit more than 2x in gas tax + registration.

+700lb (+25%) => 2.25x damage +2800lb (+100%) => ???x damage

Your story doesn't provide a formula, but seems obvious it is much, much greater than 2 - this isn't a linear relationship

And that's the very lightest SuperDuty model, unloaded.

Excellent, much more useful.

Not sure where you are but in Indiana, gas tax for unleaded is 36c while diesel is 62c so on a per-gallon basis, that's an additional +72% in taxes. Back of the envelope: Civic at 30mpg pays 1.2c/mile vs SuperDuty at 15mpg pays 4.13c/mile so the multiple is closer to 3.4 vs 2

So yes - assuming registration fees are comparable and mileage is comparable - the SuperDuty should pay more.

The lightest SuperDuty has a gas engine. Diesel SuperDuty fuel economy is a bit better, but the vehicle also weighs more and is likely to be carrying/pulling more. But regardless of whether the multiple is 2 or 3.4 or somewhere in between, it is a small fraction of the added road wear.

By the fourth power law, an unloaded diesel Superduty creates ~22x the road wear of a honda civic. Loaded can be 100x more.

Seems unlikely.

55 miles/day, 365 days a year? Also, look at lease mileage limits.