Legally that makes sense. Although, I really think AI's paying content producers for providing access to their information is the right way to go, long term. If NYT is going to hire reporters to go places and find out stuff somebody has to pay for it. AI is great partially because it bypasses the horrendous mess the Web has become, but that's too good to last.

Bearing in mind that most of the world thinks even left leaning democrats are right wing extremists. Maybe most chat-bots are also right wing in their view

I see the point now, it "took" (pretty much past tense) about 30 years.

I do remember when it came out, and when a work friend got one in the early 2000s. It seemed so freaky. Everybody was like, 'Toyota loses money on every one!' 'You're going to be crying when the battery wears out!' 'It'll break down twice as much as a normal car because it has 2 drivetrains!'

Mine has them which was surprising.

Because for the past 30 or so years, it has worked very well for MS to keep their main products barely useable, rely on lock-in and chase the next big thing so they can get their dirty hands on it early and lock more people into more products.

That is exactly wrong. Beta versions are there to find bugs. If nobody complained about them, they won't be found. So if you try beta versions, please DO complain about bugs.

I guess "vibe-something" is going to be the anti-word of 2026. People are slowly waking up to what it actually means to let the AI do the work.

I'm not dissing AI, I'm using it extensively myself and there's a few AI whitepapers with my name on them. But like any tool, it can be great when used correctly and ruin your day when not.

That doesn't mean what they do is automatically legal.

I'm pretty sure there's a demand for "murder my husband", or for "can someone please drown my neighbour". And yet it's illegal to offer such services.

Also: Voters. Smokers are still a fairly substantial fraction of the population, enough to swing a vote, especially if, and that appears to be the trend in most western democracies these days, there are two opposing political sides roughly evenly matched.

I mean, does it not strike anyone as a very weird coincidence that we have almost perfect 50/50 splits in so many countries?

No, but they do everything BUT force to make it the most attractive option. Just as one silly example: With wages and prices as they are, having both partners work full-time is basically required unless you're in the top few percent of earners or inherited wealth. So who's going to cook? After a long work day? Convenience food is the obvious choice. You are not being forced, but unless food is a high-priority item in your life, you are very much steered into that direction.

one of Toyota's executives said that every model would be offered as a hybrid in about a decade. That might happen after three decades.

Really? The only ones available without a hybrid option that I can see are the GR 86 rwd coupe and the GR Supra.

We could include the GR Corolla and Hatchback Corolla if you don't consider them "Corollas."

But I was told the opposite:

"We were ahead of them by a mile, by 10 miles, on the internal combustion engine. They went into EVs, and then they convinced the Western world to go into EVs and play their game," the freshman Republican lawmaker from Ohio said during an auto industry conference. "That was just irrational, dumb policy."...

"I pushed back on the premise that EV somehow is about innovation," he said. "Electric vehicles were around in 1910. It's not like this is new technology."

Here's a guy working hard to ensure the US not only loses the global competition for auto production, but becomes the last bastion of tailpipe emissions.

That's actually a good question. Inks have changed somewhat over the past 5,000 years, and there's no particular reason to think that tattoo inks have been equally mobile across this timeframe.

But now we come to a deeper point. Basically, tattoos (as I've always understand it) are surgically-engineered scars, with the scar tissue supposedly locking the ink in place. It's quite probable that my understanding is wrong - this isn't exactly an area I've really looked into in any depth, so the probability of me being right is rather slim. Nonetheless, if I had been correct, then you might well expect the stuff to stay there. Skin is highly permeable, but scar tissue less so. As long as the molecules exceed the size that can migrate, then you'd think it would be fine.

That it isn't fine shows that one or more of these ideas must be wrong.

I've tried ChatGPT - when it comes to hallucinations: I think LSD does it better!