Have you also suffered from this strange rotating knob on the place where the hand brake/gear shifter is usually located?

I agree. I heard a commercial '...so you can enjoy media in excellent quality, while driving'. Really? How insane does this get? Time to go bicycle-only, if half the drivers are watching the latest GoT episode.

Whoa, even older than I am (by 6 years) :-)

They are not made by 'Apple'. (I totally agree with you, by the way)

By all that is good, I hope my future cars will not suffer from silly additions such as touch screens.

Ha, that actually makes sense! :-)

If this is the mere Prelude, something truly gargantuan must appear shortly.

I never said it was going to be easy, or fast... ;-)

To actually *go* there!

A big company... promising anything... Bwahahahahahaahahaha! Actually it is worth weeping over.

As sex creates endorphines, en endorphines help with healing processes, this could be placed in the category of curing your ills.

The tons and tons and tons of plastic waste can be removed by robots. In essence this comes down to fetching things, but in a very specific way.

As a player of civilization, I can say that even if you I did not play the industry path, other players would easily ruin the world without my help. I can see that this works in real life as well.

Bombardier is French. And of all the things the French despise, the Germans are very high on the list. Siemens is German and of all the things the Germans hate, the French are very high on the list. And many customers, among which the Dutch railway company Prorail for which I have worked, prefers to buy material from as many different vendors as possible, to prevent vendor lock-in. So the company that made the TGV and holds the world speed record for rail with it, and the company that made the ICE, the most comfortable high speed rail in the world, will not be working together soon.

Thanks for your detailed explanation. There is quite a bit of voting going on in the US. :-)

We (The Dutch) vote every four years for a lower house (second room; 150 people), who in turns elects the higher house (first room; about 15 people, including the president). And every four years we vote for municipal government, including the mayor. While the lower house elections has options of about 15 political parties, only about 7 have a serious chance of getting seats. They then form a (usually majority) coalition and an opposition.

Municipal elections are similar. However, candidate mayors are sometimes all from the political party. Sow whichever you vote, they may all be in agreement or disagreement with your own views.

Municipal and state elections alternate.