> Here 25 years later, the market is flooded with
>"compact SUVs" essentially the same as the
>Aztek, and just as ugly.

That's not fair.

The modern ones don't even *approach* the Aztec's level of ugliness! But they *are* painfully bland.

the first time I saw an Aztec, my immediate reaction was surprise that AMC was making cars again. It didn't occur to me that anyone else could make something so hideous!

worse.

They were forced to eat a bland cereal that turned soggy before the milk even hit it!

> Most of the very populated parts of Norway don't get too cold,

methinks that we have very different notions of "too cold" . . .

("Above" and "below" should never be part of a temperature!)

hawk

that, or you might be eaten by someone who identifies as a cat . . .

>A regular bank can't magic up $1M out of thin air,

uhmm . . . historically, this is *exactly* where paper money comes from, and why they are called "banknotes"!

Banks issued paper notes promising to pay the bearer a sum of money (i.e., an amount of gold or silver) upon presentation. This was a matter of convenience, the paper being easier to haul about. This led to the practice al matter that a bank could issue more paper than it held money, as long as it was careful enough not to issue so much that too much would come in to redeem.

This isn't fundamentally difference than the practice of lending deposits back out to other borrowers (which is generally how this new money created by the banking system was disbursed, anyway).

In time, government stepped in to regulate how much a bank cold lend in this manner (reserve requirement).

Until WWII, the majority of the paper money in the US was *not* issued by the government, but by banks and some other companies (e.g., Railroads printed $2.40 bills, as $2.40 was a common fare).

Even today, some cites print a local currency, generally (universally) backed 1:1 by federal money. It circulates and shows the effects of buying locally as these local bills start showing up in cash registers. (In the same vein, the US Navy used to deal with local discontent and calls for removing bases of rowdy sailors by paying in $2 bills. Once merchants noticed just how much of their registers were full of that uncommon note, attitudes changed quickly!)

The federal government has the exclusive power to coin money--but this means coining metal; it doesn't stop states or other entities from printing paper money.

doc hawk, displaced economics professor

To pay a fitting tribute to the man, I'd drop the coin into a dish of acid, but then instead of saving it while there was plenty of time left, I'd leave it to be slowly eaten away while occasionally dropping in healing herbs and drops of organic fruit juices, and then only try to rescue it once it was far too late

No. There will always be jobs. Stupid jobs that pay nothing, but there will always be jobs. Why? Because having people you control is a kink for the oligarchs.

Thatâ(TM)s it. Itâ(TM)s about slavery. Never expect UBI, as long as billionaires exist. They want to keep you poor, weak, and most importantly *dependent*.

Bruh. Thatâ(TM)s literally how passports work. They work with visas, and visa free travel agreements.

Did you think TFA was going to be about how many grams the cardstock the cover is made out of can support? Seriously, what do you think âoea powerful passportâ means? Itâ(TM)s where you can travel without visas.

As if that's different from any other "Sponsored Item" search results?

I really look forward to more widespread adoption of AI search in listings. I hate spending hours having to manually dig through listings to see if the product listed *actually* meets my needs or building up spreadsheets to compare feature sets. This should be automatable. We have the tech to do so now.

To get an SLS-equivalent payload to the lunar surface, it will take 8-16 Starship launches

You're extremely confused. SLS cannot land on the moon in the way that the (lunar variant) Starship can. It can only launch Orion to the moon. Orion is 8 meters tall and 5 meters in diameter. Starship is 52 meters tall and 9 meters in diameter. These are not the same thing.

SLS/Orion missions are expected to cost approximately $4,2B each. If you fully disposed of every Starship, the cost for 8-16 launches would be $720M-$1,44B. But of course the entire point is to not dispose of them; the goal is to get it down to where, like airplanes, most of the cost is propellant. The propellant for a single launch is $900k. Even if they don't get anywhere near propellant costs, you're still looking at orders of magnitude cheaper than a single SLS/Orion mission.

By far, most of SpaceX's launches are for Starlink, which is self-funded.
Nextmost is commercial launches. SpaceX does the lion's share of global commercial launches.
Government launches are a tiny piece of the pie. They don't "subsidize" anything, they're just yet another minor revenue stream.

The best you can say is that they charge more for government launches, but everyone charges more for government launches than commercial launches. You can argue over whether that's justified or not (launch providers have to do a lot of extra work for government launches - the DoD usually has a lot of special requirements, NASA usually demands extra safety precautions, government launches in general are more likely to want special trajectories, fully expended boosters, etc), but overall, the government is a bit player in terms of launch purchases.

I donâ(TM)t know if the Internet feels like Philadelphia, but I will say it feels like Itâ(TM)s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Even this sounds like Charlie asking if Pittsburgh is part of Philadelphia.

>30 minutes BEFORE Trump's announcement of 100% tariffs on China, I

the more interesting question is why it took so long for someone to place this bet: Trump's reaction was rather predictable; why did noone move faster?

>Why though?

for the same reason the Enterprise makes swishing, sounds of course!

>How many people know what 100hp gets them?

Probably not very many, given that it's peak output of about seven horses . . .