It’s the writing that needs work. Your comments heavily suggest that you only have seen the food but never halve eaten it. Is that incorrect?

The one nearest me is owned by a gay couple. Not sure how that slipped through the cracks…

So you’ve never eaten it and are judging it as bad food?

Here’s a peek of what I saw.

It’s a famously difficult (or at least expensive) book to find in person. I have a PDF copy of it.

Several years ago I met a U-2 pilot, and naturally we talked about the SR-71. I mentioned I had a PDF copy of Sled Driver. His eyes lit up and said he’d been looking for at least a digital copy forever. I sent him the PDF, and in thanks he invited me to the base and showed me all around the U-2 stuff; the vacuum chamber, the room in which they suited up, the planes on the ground, and most impressively took me in the chase car for a U-2 that was practicing touch-and-gos.

I saw Shul (and Walter too) speak at an event near my house shortly before he died. He closed with this story, which if I’m honest I’m sure 90% of the crowd was there to hear. It was like the Beatles playing Hey Jude or something.

It should be noted that it was not a minority who shot him.

His final words were blaming gun violence on minorities.

I’m also in California and would agree. The word “supposed” is doing a lot of work there.

On the other hand, with so many EVs in California we have to at least consider a part of that is because of the loss of gas tax income.

Yes, strictly “to drive” (by which I assume they mean fuel only) makes sense. Medium term expenses are a mixed bag, like increased tire wear but no oil changes. Long term is a mixed bag as well, with an eventual battery replacement and depreciation, offset by the long term costs of a ICE drivetrain.

It’s clearly cheaper day to day, and overall cheaper in the long run. But it’s not all roses.

We need to figure out how to pay for road upkeep somehow.

That’s not to say the way gas taxes are allocated to road maintenance now is perfect. Far from it. But on paper (at least where I’m from) that’s how roads are maintained.

Every single car in the last five years is a privacy nightmare, not just EVs. My next car will likely be an economical ICE not because it’s ICE, but because it’ll be old enough to not be a privacy nightmare.

Being a paid service is a feature, not a downside to me. Even their AI implication, opt-in of course, is reasonable.

Read. Haha.

DuckDuckGo is AI opt-out, and for me that’s a non-starter.

I’ve personally found Kagi the best search alternative.

So about 25 years ago, my mother remarried. Her new husband was a Jehovah Witness, or at least he had been before his previous divorce made him no longer welcome. Well, with their marriage he’s suddenly welcome again, and so both he and my mother were JW.

Fast forward five years, and my mother has a condition in which she had to undergo surgery. During surgery, her red blood cell count dropped dangerously and thus required a blood transfusion. No medical issues with the transfusion, it all went well.

A few weeks later she has to return for further surgery. My siblings and I are visiting with her in the pre-op room, and we’re suddenly joined with elders from her church. They’d heard about the earlier transfusion, and were there with pre-filled out paperwork for her to sign to decline any further should the medical need arise this time. I interrupted, and as the oldest of her children, I told her that under no circumstances would she be signing that. Ultimately, she did not sign and they left the church because of it.

If someone has a deeply held belief, who am I to tell them they’re wrong. But my mother had no belief in the “sin” of blood transfusions. She’d only been part of the church for a handful of years. And even those “deeply held beliefs” of the church, they were subject to change themselves. Organ donation was once viewed within the church the same way they’d been viewing blood transfusion, but at some point the benefits of organ donation were clear enough to alter the “rules.” I’m glad they’re finally changing their views on this, but they could have killed my family member if I hadn’t insisted they leave, and I won’t forget that.

The people claiming it’s humanity ending are all directly involved in the AI companies. One take is that they are the ones that know the most about it.

My take is they are financially incentivized in making sure their investments grow in value.

I fucking LOVE Woody Guthrie. Start with his political songs, such as This Land is Your Land and Tear the Fascists Down, then pick up the Wilco/Billy Bragg album Mermaid Avenue for modern recordings of previously unrecorded Guthrie songs.

And let’s not forget he protested Trump long before it was cool.

And White House and Supreme Court

I don’t know if you meant it this way, but that is hilariously similar to the “First They Came” poem.