Half as serious as to the subject or details of current wars, political corruption, environmental collapse, etc.
It’s becoming very difficult to get good car parts. Many of the companies making them have just given up on quality. There’s a good chance now that a brand new part you just bought and put in is faulty or defective in some way.
It’s a nightmare.
Needed a fuel pump on my 90’s jeep, but the only options only had bad reviews. Bought one and the fuel pressure regulator on the new one failed in like 3 months. (Jeep decided in that year to put the regulator on the pump assembly instead of under the hood, and never sold them separately so you had to replace the whole unit, or try to frankenstein something together with a different pump and regulator, but the tank had to come off the car regardless.).
I’ve heard its pretty bad, esp if you’re a shop trying to fix customer vehicles. Can’t fix old cars, and new cars aren’t built to last nearly as long and are so expensive.
I’m very concerned about this. Does anyone have any idea why this is happening? Tarrifs? Or run-of-the-mill billionaire MBA driven enshittification?
Any hope this situation may improve in the future? It simply doesn’t seem sustainable to me. Plenty of people are avoiding new vehicles so there is enough demand to get better suppliers in the game.
Yes, I got a re-manufactured brake caliper from a chain auto parts shop last autumn. It leaked, so I let a shop deal with it when I took the vehicle in for other work. They couldn’t stop the leak, so they got another, identical one. It also leaked.
They had to get a caliper from NAPA, instead, so I have mismatched brake parts. (Not a real big deal; they work.)
There’s a bunch of fakes out there now, especially on Amazon and eBay. Look up Bosch fuel injectors on eBay and you’ll find a bunch of suspiciously cheap listings from accounts with very little feedback.
Bought a new oil cooler for one of my cars not long ago. Couldn’t find a single one that was free of complaints - that it leaked or the body cracked after a couple hundred miles. Ultimately went with the one recommended by GM, and I still feel the need to check it every few days.
Electric bike regulations are getting out of hand, largely because lawmakers don’t seem to grasp the difference between pedelecs (e-assist for pedals) and e-mopeds (with a throttle control and sometimes pedals that are merely vestigal).
The social media giants have an end goal of tailoring each individual’s perception of reality on a granular level, person by person
Kind of hard to find something exactly half as serious. Less than. Sure.
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Pugs/etc bred to have unhealthy short snouts
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The way new movies/tv have been written for split attention viewers instead of making media more captivating.
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How video games are all live service making them unplayable once support ends.
3: one of my favorite games is live service and only live service. They can’t keep it going forever. It’s not actually played on their servers though, as it’s P2P inatancing in an open world (open galaxy), but there’s some political/faction background systems you can influence, so it all syncs up. I just hope when they’re done, they update it to play solo local they way the first 2 titles were. Will I even care then? I don’t know. I’ve been playing 6 years and it’s been out for 12, but did just get some great updates after a lull. (Elite:Dangerous)
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