cymbal_king

Seconding Center for American Progress. There are also a ton of issue specific organizations and professional societies that are non partisan, but focus on improving policies that tend to be left leaning. For example Planned Parenthood is technically a nonpartisan nonprofit, but many other health or environment related non-profits have a policy team that tries to advance their cause the best they know how. Being nonpartisan means they aren't limited to speaking with one side or the other and can keep a drum beat going on their issues regardless of the political winds. These orgs could use your donations now more than ever.

There is plenty of space for passengers and storage. We traded in a Ford Fusion sedan and the Ioniq 5 has much more storage space than that did. One of the long road trips I mentioned was a camping trip. We were able to bring two big tote bins, a big cooler, a canopy tent for the picnic table, folding chairs, sleeping bags, air mattresses, extra blankets, and two dogs on the back seat. As a bonus, we got an adapter that plugs into the charging port and can power a hotplate for boiling water faster than a camp fire (also serves as back up power for my house if the power goes out, can run an extension cord down to the freezer). There is a small frunk, we mostly use that for emergency supplies.

I'm above average height and can fully extend my legs in both front seats and never have issues with head clearance. I like the space between the two front seats as well being mostly open concept as opposed to the closed spaces in Teslas. Feels spacious for every day driving and on road trips can fit a soft sided cooler as well as a food bag.

My Hyundai Ioniq 5 is my favorite car ever! We've taken it on two long road trips with very few issues. The biggest issue was one charging station in a rural area had a 2 hr wait to use it. But we typically only take 15-20 mins to charge from 10%-80% on road trips.

Not sure where the top commenter is getting their range issues from. Our level 2 charger at home adds ~250 miles of range in 4 hours. In hindsight probably would have gone a cheaper route of a simple exterior 240V outlet on the wall and a compatible cord to save a few hundred dollars.

Otherwise there's very minimal maintenance and the car is super easy/fun to drive. Love the 1-pedal driving mode after a short learning period, it's so responsive that the car feels like it reads my mind on where I want to go/how far to be behind the next car.

Edit: the 2025 Ioniq 5 models are coming with the Tesla charging port, so that will open up a lot more charging stations!

I have a desk job. The combination of a rowing machine and sit-stand desk has been a game changer for my spine health

PSA: "nutritionist" is not a term that describes a medical professional and does not infer a level of quality of training, pretty much anyone can call themselves a nutritionist. "Registered Dietician" (RD) is a medical professional who specializes in diets and nutrition to support health.

For science-based nutrition information I highly recommend Harvard's Nutrition Source, and it uses pretty accessible language.

Yeah and my rationale for deciding how much is a little involved... Essentially, carbon offset markets are either straight up scams or over hyping the impact. Instead I donate directly to charities doing good work related to the environment or the fall out from the climate crisis. The U.S. EPA estimates that each metric ton of CO2 emitted costs society and the environment around $200 in damage from things like natural disasters, civil unrest from displacement, extinction of species, etc. the average US household emits about 17 MT/year.

So around tax return season I go to FootprintCalculator.org and estimate how many MT of CO2 our household emitted the year prior. Then I set monthly recurring donations to the charities to roughly equal the amount of $200 times MT spread across the year. So it's fairly automated/low effort, and just comes out a little bit each month.

The types of charities vary, but they're all doing incredible work, here's some of them:

Coalition for Rainforest Nations (the operate globally with indigenous and local communities to do everything possible to protect rainforests and reforest areas. The donations really stretch far because they predominantly work in low income areas)

ProPublica (no paywall investigative news organization that has really hard hitting reporting that holds polluters accountable by government agencies)

Lahaina Community Land Trust (supporting Native Hawaiian victims of the Lahaina fire and trying to prevent their land from being bought up by private equity and billionaires)

World Wildlife Foundation (great work with preserving biodiversity and raising awareness of nature with the public. It's hard to care about something if you don't know about it)

Union of Concerned Scientists (political advocacy org)

Local food bank, urban green space advocates, and housing support orgs (the most vulnerable people in our communities experience extreme weather much differently than those of us with AC and a solid roof)

Also agree with the other commenter about giving time

Amen!

My gas stove was leaky and could have blown up my house. So we replaced that with an induction stove, and it's all around a better experience. Same with the water heater and the EV. All of these things plus insulating the attic have been improvements to our lives with the added benefit of reducing natural gas consumption more than 20% over the past year and saving about $100/month on utilities and gasoline. It's nice that we aren't pumping air pollution directly into our house when we cook anymore.

Every bit of change we make helps, because the climate crisis is not binary. but more importantly the people who can make these changes receive the greatest upfront benefits.

I view this graph differently, the Biden line is pretty close to the target line through 2030 before it diverges. Estimates decrease in accuracy further into the future, particularly if we're assuming the political calculus stays the same over the next 6 years. The Inflation Reduction Act was the most powerful climate crisis bill we were going to get with the current political situation and it has made a big impact. Particularly with building green economy jobs in swing states. As the swing states see more and more benefits in coming years, that will change the political dynamics of what is possible

Crusty finger

LED adhesive strip lighting for the back of my TV. Back lighting is super soft on the eyes and with color changing you can incorporate the color to match the mood. Playing Zelda, green. Watching sci-fi blue/purple. Halloween content, orange. Etc

Obligatory Technology Connections video.

It's weird that they're pushing for less innovation. Even if there's a slightly increased up front cost, better energy efficiency saves consumers a ton of money on the back end. Particularly if it's landlords buying the major appliances and tenants pay for utilities

EVs don't do any shifting and usually have a low center of gravity, even better for suspect road conditions!