I rented a 3 for a couple days using Turo, just to try it out. The one I had was the performance version. Pic related is me enjoying a beautiful Colorado sunrise while zooming down an empty road. Here are my impressions of the car:

Pros

• It's fast as hell
• It's really quiet, and the sound it does make when accelerating is like a sci-fi spaceship
• Its clutter-free interior has a certain zen to it
• The regenerative breaking is very weird at first, but once you learn how to use it it's a nice way of conserving range. Often I don't need to use the break pedal at all until the car is basically stopped and I just want to go into "Hold" mode. It makes a lot of sense for driving in town.
• The ability to configure driver profiles with things like steering, acceleration, "creep", is really nice
• You can idle guilt-free
• You just feel cool driving it

Cons

• When going 60mph+ the dash sometimes makes creeky noises that indicate something is loose; it feels a bit cheap
• "Easy entry" is, in my opinion, awkward and annoying... and I'm 6ft tall. I guess it's more for people like Shaq.
• I did miss having physical buttons for certain things, like climate controls and opening the trunk. I think they took the touch screen thing too far. It's not possible to use the screen without looking at it. You can't just use tactile feedback + muscle memory.
• The car allows equally strong acceleration when in reverse; this surprised me when I was parallel parking and I almost went onto the curb. I guess this isn't an issue if you're not a noob. It only stunned me because the car had "creep" disabled so I had to use the accelerator.

I suppose some of these points apply to all of the Tesla models (or even all electric cars), but this was my first experience with any of them.

I was considering buying a Model 3, but after lugging two kids in car seats around in it my conclusion is it's not a good family car. It's perfect for a commuter, or perhaps a couple with older kids. For us, since we're aiming to be a single-car family I think it would have to be Model X (or perhaps Model Y, depending on what that turns out to be).

I saw a thread on Hacker News recently where people were discussing how they would rank the "big 5" in order of how much they trust them. The big 5 being:

• Facebook
• Apple
• Amazon
• Google
• Microsoft

Everyone agreed Facebook was dead last, there wasn't even a discussion about that. Fuck Facebook. And that was the only consistency; the order of the rest of them basically varied from comment to comment and there was some decent debate about it.

That discussion got me exploring how I feel about these companies for the last few weeks and as my feelings have become clearer I noticed that my stock trading choices have subconsciously (or consciously?) reflected those feelings. Of these big 5, I have easily put the most money into $AMZN. And it's because, I have come to realize, I fucking love Amazon.

I love Amazon because they don't try to pretend to be something they're not. Of the big 5, they are the most comfortable with who they are and what they do. It's simple: "We sell you whatever you want, and mail it to your house really fast. And we have a massive cloud computing platform."

You don't get nearly as much cheesy over-dramatized advertising, through-the-teeth lying, or dystopian corporate propaganda from Amazon that you do from Microsoft, Apple, Google, and Facebook. Hell, Amazon doesn't even try to pretend it treats its employees well. Everyone knows it's practically a first world sweat shop. But of all of these companies, I think Amazon is the first place I'd consider interviewing for a job. Because I know they wouldn't try to bull shit me.

Amazon's corporate PR strategy amounts to, "Yeah, we do x y and z, we do them better than anyone else, and we expect people to work their ass off. Want a nap pod, unlimited La Croix, and free hand jobs at your desk? Go work at Facebook or Google you pussy. Oh and by the way our stock goes up 50% like every 6 months. Fuck off."

I'm not even holding stocks right now, I could care less if theirs keeps going up. I am just constantly amazed by how much of a machine that company is. Never change, Bezos.

Fucking hell. I can't believe it. Just like that it's gone. I went all cash this morning but later in the day I almost bought some of this shit. Seemed like a bargain. Luckily I'm about to buy a house and imagined what my wife would say if I did that and lost our down payment. Crypto has made me expect the worst, and I'm grateful for that. RIP you crazy fucking over-leveraged piece of shit.