People Twitter

“2017 Stigmata? No, that’s a 2016. Notice the bulb size in the taillight array. In between the switch from 5th Gen to 6th they changed the LED bulb size from 3.3mm to 3.35, so now theres only 58 lights in the upper track.”

"On the US domestic market version, sure, but on the European version (made in Dresden, not the one in made in Prague of course) they had to add the 59th light back to the upper track to comply with traffic safety laws"

Can’t have nice things

Exactly, and you can usually guess the model year within a few years, simply by looking at the styling characteristics of the vehicle. It's not too difficult to tell if a car came from the first half or second half of the 90s, for example.

unnecessarily big car

Where's the envy? Also it's more about being interested in the subject matter than inherent ability.

What makes you think they’re envious?

I'm very jealous. My memory sucks.

I get what you're saying in terms of "anyone can do this if they're willing to devote enough time to a specific / niche subject matter" but I think you're stating it somewhat reductively (and your tone seems questionable but that could just be a textual communication issue).

I find that I have poor rote memorization skills but that I'm very good at conceptual reasoning using lots of different information from very tangentially related subject matters. So I don't know too much about chemistry, metalworking, and sewing on their own, but I know enough to pick out the right fabric, thread, jewelry findings, and dye, and what order to use them in to get a pretty cool result.

I think that ability actually somewhat necessarily comes at the expense of my rote memorization capabilities. To put that in plainer language, I think a lot of people can be in love with the world as a whole or deeply in love with just a few parts of it (me being the former). And while the important thing in the end is that you find something out there in the world to love and accept yourself for loving it, it's also not maladaptive to see someone else do something cool and think,"I might not have time in my life to pick up that skill, but I bet it feels good to be able to do it." And who knows? Maybe if they're envious enough they'll make time in their life to learn how to do the cool thing.

I can pretty much always do make.

Model for fun cars but not boring ones/trucks/vans/suvs.

Year for the outstanding exemplary best model years of the fun ones.

Saw a presentation of someone visting remote islands and discovering new types of ferns. Talked about contributing to the the open database of ferns: https://fernphy.github.io/ Never too late!

I never knew one school bus from another, they were all just big yellow boxes. Then I started looking to buy a used one and somehow I can now tell make, model and year of every single one I see. I know what engines and transmissions they all have. I can even tell my district's buses apart from the neighboring district's buses although they're exactly the same buses, even if I can't see the lettering or numbers on the sides. And yet somehow I'm still single!

I dated a girl whose dad owned an antiques store. Watching Antiques Roadshow with her was a fucking trip. She knew what everything was and almost exactly what they would be valued at.

The only downside to dating her was that she would do things like hanging up an authentic "Ein Reich, Ein Volk, Ein Fuhrer" poster from the 1930s over her mantel. It was hard to convince her that people wouldn't really appreciate the historicity of such artifacts.

Knowing the headlight shape of Chevy Impala, and Ford interceptors at night is handy to know when you are speeding towards a cop on a lonely highway.

It has been becoming harder, though.
Not only are most cars looking alike nowadays, but manufacturers are also mostly not putting model name badges on their cars any more... :-(