I totaled it at 200k miles.

I hope the shopping cart that dinged your bumper was okay…

Fair; I guess I should have run some data. I just used gasbuddy.com to run a similar track for what would have been my rather lengthy commute if my employer had asked us to return to office (and kept the lease on that building). Apart from a couple of outliers just outside the Dallas-Fort Worth airport, I’m only getting an 8% variance (about USD 0.23/gallon, versus your 25% and AUD 0.55/litre – is that right?).

That said, Iwill admit that $0.10/gallon suboptimal average price is probably more likely than I thought, though with a less intense driving situation one would still be well under the $260/year “convenience premium.” Outside the US and other oil-subsidizing countries, the numbers clearly work out very differently.

Not particularly helpful for you, but this seemed like the thread to chime in that in general with pizza, it’s always MUCH better to go big. Pi*r², folks. A single 14" Dominos is already pretty much identical to two 10" mediums, and that’s only if you like to eat the crust. Always do your math by dollars per area, not diameter.

People are weird about gasoline. They’ll drive around looking for the cheapest option, to save 2 cents/gallon. Even with a huge tank, that’s less than 50 cents of total savings.

Bless 'em for keeping the price pressure on, but this is so very true. Once I ran a couple of mental hypotheticals, I stopped giving a shit, beyond avoiding places right by airports that jack it up a dollar or more (Las Vegas and especially Orlando, with lots of tourists in rentals, are the worst offenders I’ve seen).

For a pretty extreme example consider, as you say, a large 25-gal tank, and filling up from dry twice a week, at an average of $0.10/gal non-optimal price: you pay an annual premium of $260 bucks not to drive yourself batty hunting for pennies, and burning at least a tiny bit more fuel to do it. Most people will pay far less. It’s just this weird thing that stuck in people’s brains long past the point where a cent increase was any significant percentage of the fuel purchase.

Honorable and dishonorable are official designations for the US military, and a dishonorable discharge is tantamount to a criminal conviction for many professional purposes and veterans benefits.

My brother was a huge fuckup in the Marines, but they waited until he sprained his knee and then gave him a medical discharge, which doesn’t carry the same stigma as a dishonorable.

I don’t think I’ve ever had to show my registration card, but both states send them out. Since Voter ID passed in Texas, though, I have had to bring my Drivers License, which given the shitty way the state runs the DL offices is another bullshit voter suppression tactic.

The voter registration card. Here’s a sample from a few years ago in a different county, but the one I had twenty years ago was similar.

It depends on the state. When I lived in Florida, there was a party on my id card. In Texas, there isn’t, though you can only vote in one party’s primary (including any runoffs) per election.

Counterpoint: If people from Europe love the metric system so much, why are their musicians using eighth notes instead of tenth notes?