It doesn't just look like "a car". It looks like a freaking steampunk Hummer. Except that you can hear yourself think because it doesn't use steam.

The problem with "global population growth rates" is only in the developing world. As a society develops, birth rate naturally goes down. Right now Japan is facing a top-heavy population due to declining birth rate, and Europe is also below the replacement rate. I think the US is about flat, but because of immigration. The reason is that as infant mortality goes down (less need for "spare" kids), and as lifestyle options increase, children turn from an asset into a liability. Child labor laws also help reduce the value of a large family, and having children at a later age reduces the replacement rate.

You not having kids isn't going to help the planet. People in India and China having fewer kids makes a much bigger difference.

Don't forget the people living on a... um... "government income", who suddenly won't be able to watch Jerry Springer or Dr. Oz or other fine examples of daytime television programming. Once their big-screen TV set shuts down, you know the first thing they're going to do is grab a large kitchen knife and go on a rampage killing everyone in the neighborhood.

I think there's a bit of a difference between having "good English skills" and spending four or more years of your life taking classes about it, instead of taking classes to learn an actual trade.

Example: Hyatt Regency walkway collapse

The contractor made changes to save money. Only in this case they got the PE to sign off on their changes without evaluating them.

Where did this "floating barge" thing come from? They're landing it on the water right now so that it doesn't cause property damage if it fucks up. When they feel confident that it can stay under control and on target, they'll have touch down on land. A floating barge is a hell of a lot more difficult than dry land, with no advantages.

The aluminum-era Powerbooks/MacBook Pros were awful for that. I had three of them, 1 PPC and 2 Intel. The DVD drive would become misaligned with the slot and you had to take it apart to get the disc to eject. Also, the latch to keep it closed wouldn't work, and the skin oils from my palms would etch pits in the top of it. The "unibody" case design was a major and overdue fix for all those problems. The only thing I miss is a matte screen option.

I regularly use one with a keypad and digital timer, so no knobs to wear out, but still a genuine Amana RadarRange. Got it for $25 at Goodwill back in 2000 or so.

The other day I needed to open a Visio document. I had created it a few months ago, before my old XP PC got refreshed with a Win 7 box. For some reason, while it still had Office 2007, it was missing Visio. Even worse, it wanted to open IE, which wanted to use an ActiveX viewer plugin... which proceeded to turn the line art into a bitmap when printing to PDF.

So I downloaded OO. No Visio for you! (This was actually the point at which I tried the ActiveX viewer.) Then I decided to check if Libre Office could handle it. Holy crap, yes, it opened it like a native document.

Then I made sure to save a PDF version of my document just in case someone else wanted to see it later.

The link to medium.com is for editing an article.

I never said anything about "our" sports teams and colleges. You can get them on a Texas license plate for almost any major university or NFL team, regardless of what state they're in. I'm sure that's all made easier by group-licensing agreements. Well, that and being able to put any 4-color process art on a plate in low quantity.

They terrorized Boston.

I've been using the H&R block off-line software for the past few years, OS X version. The main reason is because they are NOT the #1 in that market, so they won't get cocky like Turbo Tax. And I'm in Texas, so the basic basic version. You also get 5 e-files included for the price, so I got my mom to use it a couple of times.

I get it for $15 at Fry's in January because even though they mail me a new disc every year, the amount they want to activate that online costs more than buying it at Fry's (like ten bucks or so more). At least they sent a cardboard sleeve mailer this time instead of a full snap case, to save postage on something I won't be using anyhow.