When you look at the regulatory environment and enforcement under the Trump admin, even before they were best buds, it’s very clear that Elon is absolutely terrified of a Harris administration. The moment Biden took office, he was almost instantly under investigation from basically every letter agency in the USA, and they’ve been slowly chipping away at his Jenga tower of fraud. He sees Trump as the only way to hold on to his ill-gotten gains and avoid a prison cell.

Future Weapons!. RIP Mack, he was one of the many Discovery hosts from that era that got me into engineering.

Directly? No. Heavily? Absolutely.

“Phony Stark” is my personal favorite

As someone who’s extremely left leaning, it’s so goddamn infuriating, because there are so many pro-gun Dem leaning voters that wind up voting ® down the ticket, almost solely because the Democratic candidate went on an idiotic speech about AK-15s and their 30 caliber per second clipazines. It’s not like the anti-gun Dems they’re pandering to are going to vote Republican because the Democratic candidate said nothing about guns during their campaign.

It’s literally one single issue that the Dems could just not say a word about. Literally, no work involved. No campaigning, canvassing, or fundraising. Just don’t bring it up, and it would massively improve their odds in some of the most critical swing states. But no, they just have to virtue signal to the areas that are basically ultramarine blue, and it fucks them over every goddamn time.

Don’t forget the Saudis! They’d love to entice Trump with a tacky golf resort in the middle of the desert in exchange for some more environmental deregulation and looking the other way on human rights violations

Another adjacent life hack is when assembling flat pack furniture, use a quality wood glue on all the joints and connectors, but especially those little wood dowels. It won’t make it indestructible, but it’ll hold up far better over time.

This was one of the really interesting plot elements in World War Z, where towards the end of the war where they couldn’t really afford to be wasting resources on prisons, they brought back corporal and public punishment. They’d put people in stockades to let the entire community know they were caught doing something like stealing their neighbor’s firewood, or publicly lashing executives who were war-profiteering, and only imprisoning the absolute worst offenders who were incapable of integrating back into society.

For a silly zombie novel, it honestly has a phenomenal amount of prettt interesting social commentary, and is absolutely worth a listen to the unabridged audiobook.

I’m approaching 30 and will gladly use all of those both ironically and unironically.

Maybe they’re big fans of the Lego Off-road Fire Rescue set?

It’s pretty uncommon though. Aviation uses far, far more leaded fuel than classic cars.

Getting hardened seats isn’t really all that expensive either. I took the head off my MG and a shop only charged me about $300 for a full teardown and rebuild of the head, including all the machining and installation of hardened seats. It’s way cheaper in the long run than having to add a lead substitute every fill-up

I mean, you can’t just not tell us some of the top-10

Also, check your local library, as they likely have a subscription you can use!

It’s so funny because whereas a lot of other languages have rules with defined exceptions here and there, speaking English is more of a theoretical approach.

I feel like this also makes it useful in that you can butcher the hell out of it, and still communicate somewhat effectively. I don’t feel that’s the case in some other languages, or maybe I’m willing to put up with my colleague’s broken English far more than they’re willing to put up with my broken German/Spanish/etc.

This had an interesting part in Westworld, where at one point they go to a big database of minds that have been “backed up” in a sense, and they’re fairly simple “code books” that define basically all of the behaviors of a person. The first couple seasons have some really cool ideas on how consciousness is formed, even if the later seasons kind of fell apart IMO

Having both an extremely enjoyable and fulfilling job, as well as having a long sabbatical that same year, fucking around can honestly get boring real fast.

All those ADHD traits pile up real fast and I honestly felt worse day-to-day than I did working absurd hours at a job I really like. There’s a balance, but honestly having fulfilling structured work to fill at least part of the day is super important. I’ve personally noticed that I tend to go a bit batty even if work is slow and I’ve not got much to do, so having that bit of structure really helps.

I don’t think it’s necessarily bleak or selfish though, it might just be overly succinct. Sure, you can look at it as wanting power purely for selfish reasons, but I think they just boiled it down to the most basic aspect of “more responsibilities = more power = the ability to do more”. You can use it however you want, hopefully altruistically, but at the end of the day a pure altruist who is well connected person with unlimited financial resources can help a lot more people than if they were broke and destitute on the edge of starvation.

I’m amazed they let him do weekly donations. Isn’t it typically every 6 for typical whole-blood donations? I get he’s got special blood, but I’m surprised it would be that frequent compared to “normal” people

Do cars not come with them at all anymore? My 2021 BMW has one, and I’ve used it in a pinch once or twice.