My spirit is willing, but my wallet is spongy and bruised.

Same here, and I am hoping that as battery density increases I may be able to extend the range on mine when the car gets old enough for a rebuild.

This was a problem with government owned Volts, they reimbursed for gas as this was already happening for the rest of the ICE fleet but had no way to reimburse for charging. Would not be surprised if this trend is the same for many company fleets too. Fix that and you would probably see similar numbers to private ownership.

To be fair, any American at least 35 years old can run for president. Criminal status or history isn’t a block to that, to prevent pulling a Putin and jailing political rivals to clear the field. The media is also a cesspool of ragebait and train wrecks due to the 24 hour news cycle and “ratings”.

I don’t think those are inherently opposed, the whole point of libertarianism being about liberty. Power gained through free market principles is no different than any other power, and thus can and should be opposed through competing ideas/services. If I don’t like your service being provided, I or anyone should be free to provide a competing service that matches my needs/values.

Being a libertarian doesn’t require keeping Fountainhead as your Bible and worshipping at the feet of oligarchs instead of politicians/the State, and I would argue selling your soul to the company store is as antithetical to liberty as selling your soul to a centralized State. But as you’ve indirectly mentioned, there is a rather huge spectrum under the libertarian umbrella.

I won’t speak for other libertarians, as I know there are those that think do worship the oligarchy, and many of my views do probably put me on the left side of libertarianism. If I didn’t believe that government has a role is keeping free markets free and providing stability and peace for liberty to exist (most fiscally conservatively paid for by collapsing all social safety nets into an actual UBI requiring miniscule overhead, Universal Healthcare, and more Georgist tax codes), I’d probably be closer to the anarcho-capitalists maybe? Maybe some offshoot or flavor of Minarchist?

https://www.theonion.com/gays-too-precious-to-risk-in-combat-says-general-1819594658

You are correct, everyone is a villain at that point. The problem with that, as horrible this is, is it incentivizes the action. For the same reason countries don’t negotiate with terrorists. If you prove that committing terrorist acts, or taking hostages, or using children as human shields works, you positively reinforce those acts. Its fucked up beyond belief, and all alternatives need to be exhausted, but at some level someone takes the responsibility for where the lines are drawn for the least damage in the long run.

Is it actually preferable to just give money to anyone who hijacks a bus load of people, or a plane, or a bank, etc, so that no hostages are possibly injured when that happens? It might be, and could be argued for. Is such acts becoming more frequent or commonplace because it works an acceptable price weight against innocent human life? Again, it very well might be. It’s only money. I am glad I am not the one making those decisions, but we can’t pretend that the calculus doesn’t happen and/or doesn’t matter.

This may only be within the range of human hearing, and you can and do still suffer damage from excessive amplitude by frequencies above and below what is human detectable. ANC is not a protective technology for this reason, it is a quality of life technology.

Obligate. You keep on using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

In all seriousness, pandas are still bears and can/do eat meat on occasion. Gorillas regularly eat insects and larva, digging up termite and ant nests. Our closest cousins the chimps are not only fully omnivorous, but are accomplished predators. Most herbivores (like ungulates, bovines, etc) will not pass up the opportunity to eat carrion, baby birds, small rodents, and the like.

I’ve been wanting that since 1994. Jawsome!

No, but it’s equivalent to the $180-280 most of the current JNCOs are actually priced at. I think the $2000 comment was exaggerating for effect, because I can’t even find anything on their website over $300.

They were $80-100 jeans in '90s dollars back then, so about the same price with inflation really. They were always a niche corner of the market when compared to regular jeans, they were just a popular niche for a while.

So it is the level of “privilege” that does or does not allow the commission of -isms then. The better off the target is, the more acceptable discrimination is? That is also a very Western perspective. It would be ok to tell Muslims in the Middle East that terrorism is their responsibility because their country’s power structure does put Islam firmly above others?

This “some animals are more equal than others” stuff is moral equivocating. If something is wrong if done to a group that isn’t “in power”, then it is also wrong to do it to the group “in power”. This isn’t a zero sum game. We don’t have to weight the guilt by association for a black man when compared with a white man because systemic racism competes with systemic patriarchy. If you do think that the immutable characteristics a person is born with are the most important things about them, I would encourage you to self interrogate how messed up that is.

Are we also going to tolerate the same with Islam and terrorism? POC and safety because “crime statistics”? If those are not acceptable because it’s not anyone’s individual responsibility for others in an involuntarily assigned group, why is this ok?

Yes, but he won’t tell you because it’s none of your business.

America is a power bottom, and proud of it.

Yeah, let’s have a constitutional convention in this environment to update the entire Constitution, let’s see how quick the bill of rights gets tossed out for a complete police state and possibly a theocracy. The most fractious the country has ever been is a great time to remove and replace the foundation of a country. Or are you thinking more of a coup where only one political “side” makes the new constitution they want, and it just gets enforced on everybody else?

Since the entire union doesn’t work anymore and needs to be reworked from the ground up devaluing/depowering States, let’s be honest: there is no way the entire country re-forms whole under its existing borders. We will end up with at least 2 or 3 countries in what was once the contiguous 48.

I guess it’s been a while since there’s been a good civil war.

You seem to be confusing taking no action with taking positive action when compared to a negative action, conflating both to be the same thing under an “if you aren’t explicitly with me then you’re against me” view point. If the University we’re going out of its way to dump more money into new Israeli investments, then that would be the same belief but opposite. Not changing anything is by definition the only neutral action, and any change in any direction would be political. Not saying anything about what is ultimately “right”, just that there “is” an apolitical option and that is to do whatever would be done if this whole thing wasn’t happening.

Do you have a better word for lending money and charging exorbitant interest rates, fees, or conditions to unjustly enrich the lender? I could just call them legally gray loan sharks, which they are, but the laws surrounding the governance of money lending are actually called usury laws. That’s why I used the term. I think the Banks and Credit companies that have bled the countries bottom 50% dry and have nearly succeeded in eliminating the middle class qualify for the label, but you do you.

Biden was Senator from Delaware for nearly 25 years, during which time his state discarded usury laws and became a haven for the Credit Card companies and predatory Banks. He was one of the sponsors removing the ability to discharge student loan debt in bankruptcy. He had a rather staunch record of supporting financial lobby interests throughout his career. He supported drone strikes, including on American citizens, while Vice President. He was openly against desegregation actions in the 70’s, but let’s give him the benefit of the doubt and say he has grown on that front.

I am saying that the harm he was part of due to the selling out of protections for the American people at the beheadst of the financial services lobby over multiple decades means that his current actions to cap fees and provide some student loan relief are little and late. It’s better than nothing, but he is not a paragon of supporting the little guy