You dare to suggest that people want to do things that are affordable, and would pay to go to the movies if it were?

I'm not all that old; when I was in high school I could go on a reasonable (for high school) date for $20. For a decent dinner and movie together, maybe I'd spend $30-40 at the high end. I could also go to Arco with a $10 bill and an empty fuel tank, and leave with a completely filled fuel tank, a candy bar, and change left over. ...sigh.

A lot might depend on the scuba tank and what it's made of, and also on the rifle used. A .223 is a lot different than a .50 BMG, for example, with very notably different effects on the things they're hitting. My guess is a small round like a .223 would, in fact, just punch a small hole in most scuba tanks. A .50 BMG would likely cause it to fail in a much more catastrophic manner. Carbon fiber tanks also likely react much differently than aluminum or steel tanks. Many variables at play here, and more testing is needed for a definitive answer, I think (and I have neither the time nor the money).

I don't have a personal hatred for Sprint, but I experienced them as a customer from the late '90s until somewhere around 2010, and then became a Tmo subscriber. I also had the misfortune of experience a few Sprint datacenters around the 2007-2009 timeframe - they were abysmal. I readily acknowledge having little knowledge of the internals of either network (and said as much), but from a consumer standpoint of "do I have reasonably fast coverage where I need it," Sprint went from being a leader to being last in the pack, while Tmo did the opposite.

The underlying network might be utter shite at Tmo, but things like having spectrum that does really well over longer ranges (the 600/700MHz stuff) while Sprint was chasing high-frequency high-datarate stuff that's only really good if you're close to the tower really helped them get their coverage up with adequate speed. I switched carriers because my coverage with Sprint was complete crap everywhere I went. At the time, Tmo had really great service where they had service, but it had a lot of holes/gaps. Now, they have really great service nearly everywhere (and by really great I mean that I can make and receive phone calls, send and receive text messages, and get generally good download speeds when I need them - all of those were untrue of Sprint in my area in the late '00s).

Was that on the Sprint side, the Tmo side, or both? It would make sense to me (as a mostly speculative observer from the sidelines) to let more Sprint people go, as they had taken what started as a relatively fantastic network (in the late '90s, compared to other networks of the late '90s), and made it a very solid 4th place out of the 4 major US carriers. If they let most of them go, and added a few of the best to the Tmo side (which has taken a network from being "really pretty crappy" in the mid 2000s, to one of the best now), that would be a pretty wise move.

Now, I'm sure not all of Sprint's long slow decline was due to the engineering teams; it was probably more to do with mismanagement not giving those teams the resources they needed. But if given only the limited information available by looking at the direction of the two networks over the past 20 years, I would choose to keep the Tmo team above the Sprint team in a heartbeat.

I went to school with one who routinely drove 80mph through the middle of town, just because he liked to watch the cops pull out, come up on his bumper with lights going, then see his diplomatic plate, turn off their lights, and turn down some other road.

I did (the better gf is now my wife), that's why she's a stupid ex-girlfriend. But the court didn't care about any of that, and refused to drop it (even though the applicable state law clearly states that I don't have to pay it if I wasn't the one driving the vehicle), and send it to collections. I promptly also told them that I wasn't driving the vehicle and wasn't going to pay it, and wasn't required to under state law, but that didn't stop them pestering me about it for years. It's been long enough now they finally quit bothering me, but it took YEARS.

And in those "in a pinch" situations it would be invaluable. Think of the people carrying emergency beacons in the back country now, with expensive sat plans, in case of hiking/skiing/hunting accidents. The ability to carry just your regular mobile device with an "I need help, here are my coordinates" app/button/text/etc., would be great. Less to carry, and less to pay so more people will have access to it.

You could even set up an app to monitor the accelerometer, and send an emergency message if a certain threshold is exceeded (meaning a likely severe fall, for example). Beep loudly and vibrate for say, 30-60 seconds first (so the person can cancel it if they're actually OK), and then send a message. Obviously not something you'd want active all the time, but in some situations it could be a lifesaver (literally).

This is why, despite him being a pompous ass, I like Elon. He does interesting and genuinely useful/helpful things with technology, and uses some of his money in a way that actually helps people (example: I'm looking right now at installing Starlink at a few overseas medical/aid organizations in developing countries, where decent internet service would help them immensely. Starlink is the first option that makes affordable).

What about if the parking ticket was gotten by your stupid ex-girlfriend driving your car, and by the time you found out about it and let the court know, it was beyond their deadline and they didn't want to listen?

Legally, you aren't responsible for the parking ticket, as you didn't park the car illegally; your stupid ex-girlfriend is. But the court doesn't care about law, the court cares about money, and doesn't want to stop pestering you about the ticket that you legally aren't required to pay.

All hypothetical, of course.

So, would you say the gridlock caused by an oppositional relationship between Presidency and House is a bad thing?

I may be cynical (scratch that... I AM cynical), but I'm of the strong opinion that the best government often is a gridlocked government that can't get anything done. That opinion really comes from the fact that most of what government does is against the people (and for the corporations), and there are obvious counterpoints to that (the government of Haiti is beyond gridlocked and can't get shit done, and that's a really REALLY bad thing right now), but a certain amount of oppositional politics brings stability and forces slow, incremental change instead of abrupt policy/law changes every few years, which is a good thing.

I think one of the most fundamental problems we have is the power of the lobbyists, and how much it costs to run a successful campaign for office (which really is what gives the lobbyists most of their power). Candidates, IMO, ought to be given all the same resources for their campaigns, and limited to only those resources. X number of public appearances (televised debates, etc.), Y number of mailing/advertisements, etc. I think it's fine to have grass-roots campaigners and door-to-door introductions, maybe even small in-person town hall type events, but we need to level the playing field and make money-raising less a part of it. This means moderate people of moderate means have a chance at higher political office, so we get something other than wealthy assholes for a change, and also takes most of the power away from the lobbyists and industry.

The other net result can be that in the event of emergency-type situations (pandemics, riots, whatever) and delayed elections, you can end up with a totally defunct congress. Or, if you run out of people sleazy enough to be politicians, you end up with a totally defunct congress (because there's no one else who wants to run).

Haiti is in about that situation right now... 10 out of 30 seats filled in their Senate (which is less than a quorum, so they effectively can't do anything), and 0 out of 119 seats filled in their Chamber of Deputies. Only 3 members on their supreme court, and no President to appoint new members (and no Senate to confirm them if there was a President).

Of course, Haiti's issues go FAR beyond term limits, and really have a lot more to do with overall government corruption, high crime rates / drug gangs, and the meddling in its affairs by US/UN (everyone likes a project), but still... term limits aren't always a good thing. If you have someone who's actually doing a really good job, why would you want to change? Of course the flip side is well understood, especially with leaders like Putin who keeps extending term limits so he can stay in power.

It has to *cook* like meat, too. If I can't smoke it and have it turn out like a brisket or a flank steak or whatever, I don't want it. If I can't throw it on a searing hot grill to get the color and taste, I don't want it. If I can't render the fatty bits in a pan and then fry the meaty bits to make taco meat, I don't want it.

Basically, unless the product looks, feels, behaves, and cooks like a cow (or a chicken, or a goat, or a pig) I don't want it being substituted for those things. If it looks and tastes like a salad, that's fine, I'll carve up and cook one of the animals listed to put on top of it.

I'm not against eating insects (I've eaten roasted grubs in the South Pacific, and they were tasty), but ffs if I want grubs, I'll make a nice grub salad or something. Or a cow-based meatloaf with whole grubs in it, THAT would be an amazing thing to serve to unsuspecting guests at a dinner party. But don't try to make me eat grubs or other insects or plants as a *substitute* for goat or cow or whatever. There's a reason goat meat is > $12/lb in the US, and that's because it's DELICIOUS just the way it is, thankyouverymuch.

I couldn't agree more with your points.

When I think of how "how do we get the largest reduction in death/infection/whatever" should have been answered by CDC et al., I think of things like "freely available testing so people can make their own informed decisions to not infect others" and "provision of proper PPE to ALL health care workers from day 1." Possibly even things like "subsidized grocery delivery services, brought to you in part by the USPS" which would have made a huge difference (a couple times when I probably should have been staying home away from others, I *had* to go out because food is necessary, and all grocery delivery services were booked out for weeks, and I had no one else to do it for me... so I did what had to be done). Of course even now I can't really know if I "should have" quarantined myself, as I couldn't get tested...

The lockdowns and limitations on freedoms, crackdowns on peaceful protests about lockdowns while allowing and even encouraging race riots, etc. was always bogus and a transparent attempt at exerting undue control over the population.

The CDC is more interested in "public health" than my health.

I don't think you're wrong, but arguably that's also not the wrong approach for an agency with their charter. When a public health agency looks at the nation as a whole and says "how do we get the largest reduction in death/infection/whatever," they really have to look at it on a statistical data-driven level, not what's best for you personally.

That said I also do think they massively botched the whole COVID thing, start to finish, in both messaging and actions. Testing should have been WAY faster to ramp up, and "free" (aka taxpayer funded) for all purposes. Of course, many (most?) of the public health departments and public hospitals around the country have either been completely privatized by profit-driven corporations (or profit-driven "non-profits" like Multicare), or are in such dire straits they couldn't help much if they wanted to. They're all underfunded, understaffed, undersupplied, so we had to turn to all the commercial outfits for any kind of testing. The first time I probably had it, I couldn't even get tested because tests were only for people who were actively dying (and why were we testing them? We knew their symptoms and that they were actively dying, why not treat their symptoms and save tests for people who are still out in public as potential carriers?).

The one part you're missing is that in large swathes of the country, the heat pump is replacing other resistive heating which is far less efficient. In my old house (western WA) I replaced baseboard with a 4-room Daikin mini-split, and it was fantastic. I gained A/C in the summer, and I replaced my baseboards entirely, dramatically lowering my heating bill in the winter, because heat pumps are FAR more efficient than baseboard.

In my area, a great number of older houses don't have natural gas, so all the heating is resistive (baseboard and/or electric furnace). Going to heat pumps might put a bit of extra load on the grid in the summer (because a lot of these houses weren't built with any A/C originally), but in the winter it will significantly reduce the load on the grid.

In places where it gets *really* cold, heat pumps are generally used for the bulk of heating/cooling and then auxiliary heat (resistive or gas/oil) is used on the coldest days when the heat pump has a hard time keeping up. It's still generally a big efficiency gain over resistive or gas/oil heat alone, from what I understand, and heat pumps are pretty light on power (the entire system for my old house ran on a single 20A circuit).

It's interesting, but it's actually easier to do "voice only" with a smartphone than a feature phone these days. On smartphones, you have Google Family Link or Apple [whatever they call it, iFamily or something probably], and on PCs you can use Microsoft Family Safety. On feature phones, you have nothing unless you pay for it through the carrier, but most feature phones now also have wifi chipsets and rudimentary web browsers and such things. So if you really want to lock it down and see what a kid is doing, you really need the smart phone that can run Family Link or iSomethingSomething.