Remember my high school teacher making us act out that opening scene. I played Nick and had to say "I'm inclined to reserve all judgments" with a straight face while another kid read the part where Nick calls his dad snobbish. The whole class started laughing because the lie was so obvious when you heard it out loud. It wasn't about bias, it was about him being a hypocrite from sentence one. That performance changed how I saw the whole book.

Reminds me of old car manuals promising insane gas mileage. They'd print those numbers under perfect lab conditions with a feather-footed driver. My grandpa's lawnmower manual from the 80s said it could cut an acre in an hour, but you'd have to run it flat out over a putting green. I bet that dredge number is the same, a best-case scenario with ideal material and zero downtime. They just don't build the real world into those specs.

That Dame's Rocket thing is wild, I'd have just thought it was a nice flower.

My old Toshiba Satellite went through three adapters in two years. The last one started buzzing like a hornet's nest before it quit for good. I finally just taped the cord at a specific angle to keep it working. That laptop was held together by hope and packing tape by the end.

Oh man, a buddy of mine just spent three weekends on his old truck. It would randomly die at stop lights, then start right back up. No codes, nothing. He replaced the fuel pump, the relay, the whole deal. Turns out it was the wiring harness rubbing on the frame under the dash, just a single wire with the insulation worn through. The vibration from the engine at idle was enough to short it out. He said he almost sold the thing for parts.