I can get close to your top-brand number if I'm buying no-name/Amazon Basics crap in a 24-pack.

I have seen applicants whose "who I aspire to work with" paragraphs are hallucinated by ChatGPT, fluently referring to nonexistent people.

"In practice it's not 100% alkanes. Benzene, toluene ..."
"Benzene?!"
"Some. It'd need regulation, leak inspections. Standard Oil has a technical report on ..."
"Yes, on industrial sites. Your proposal has this sited between an elementary school and a Piggly Wiggly and operated by a teenager."

Imagine if idea of gas stations was newly proposed today. "We bury a 30,000 gallon tank of, I dunno, whatever cheap alkanes are available. 60 kPa vapor, super flammable. The consumer grabs a rubber hose with a hand-valve ..."
"ahem, sorry, are there some engineering safeguards on this hose?"

Cuyahoga

On the upside, I'm looking forward to building a methyl mercaptan factory just upwind of Mar-a-Lago

Finally: in the spirit of New Years' resolutions, and (with apologies) in the spirit of Thaler and Sunstein's "Nudge", you can take a tiny impulsive charitable action NOW which will help your 2026 willpower up: BUY FARE CARDS NOW. Download the app or whatever and load up $50. Do it now! 10/10

I dare say the ONLY climate-change, poverty-alleviation, road-safety action that's MORE effective than direct-action bus-riding is VOTING for pro-transit elected officials, taxes, and ballot measures. Transit systems need tax funding or it's Game Over. 9/10

I don't want to use the effective-altruism language, because those guys are jerks, but: all of the above is a PRETTY EFFECTIVE outcome for a $2.50 donation/fare and 20m of volunteer/wait time? ($2.50/20m minus the part where you saved money on gas/parking and were freed from driving.) 8/10

Saving lives: For every 100,000,000 miles of car travel, 1.25 people die and 60 are injured. Getting out of your car makes the people around you safer. Take an eight-mile bus rides, that's an impressive one-in-a-ten-million chance you saved a life (maybe your own).7/10

Mobility: Low-income people need mobility. They either (a) do without and suffer, (b) sacrifice other things for car payments, or (c) ride transit and pray the GOP doesn't axe it. Bus fare (and its multipliers!) helps them far more than generosity with emergency-car-repair pleas on GoFundMe. 6/10

Climate change: if you pay $2.50 for a seven-mile, 2-kg-CO2-averting trip, you're doing climate change work that's AS COST EFFECTIVE AS the Silicon Valley's favorite carbon-capture startups. (Their methods routinely price out at $1/kg.) Plus you get the multiplier. 5/10

The good cause is (a) slowing climate change, (b) mobility support to the needy, and (c) saving lives. You get credit for the benefits of your own trip, but by being a butt in a seat (you're +1 in the ridership stats that helps grow the system) your effect is MULTIPLIED. 4/10

You value your time, let's not pretend you don't. But with your charitable-giving brain turned on, you can ALTRUISTICALLY donate those 20m of your time to a good cause. The fare? "It's cheaper to use the car I already own?" Yes but $2.50 bus fare is AS WELL SPENT as any charitable donation. 3/10

(I am assuming that you, reader, are someone whose main transit mode is a car.) There is probably a bus that serves SOME of your transit needs. Your daily commute? Your midday errand? But you're not taking it already, are you? Maybe it's not super convenient. Costs you, what, 20m? 2/10