Interesting thought: do you think New York's new government-run grocery stores will let people just walk out without paying?

Because I don't live in SF and have no desire to go there?

But it's obviously just more fake security if all a shoplifter needs to do is get someone's receipt to walk out of the store past the guard.

So shoplifters just have to get hold of one old receipt and they're good?

Odds are if you really push it just sounds an obnoxious alarm while letting you out. Kind of like pushing against the gates at my walmart to go out the entrance area rather than the checkouts.
I just give zero hoots and do it anyways.

The whole point of these "age limits" is to force people to accept digital ID. This is why we're seeing a coordinated push all over the world.

I can't think of any business or other government function that still makes me fill out any paper forms. At one recent employer I did not fill out a single paper or PDF-style form, HR or otherwise, in the entire experience from the day I applied until the day I resigned.

Nobody uses paper forms any more. Everything is online. Taxes should be no different, and there should be no 3rd party middlemen collecting tolls for the "privilege" of doing something online the way everything else is done.

You need to fill it out because by doing so you're authorizing the government to take your money. Otherwise they're literally just stealing it.

> Yes, those religions do have some empathy in their philosophy, and it is the first thing to go when they feel threatened or if they find something of someone else's that they like more than what they have.

Empathy means the ability to see the world from someone else's point of view. It does not mean "giving your country to foreigners."

Empathy tends to lead to inqusitions, pogroms and wars because empathic people can understand the point of view of others and don't imagine that those people are "all the same under the skin." Then they realize they don't like those people much and want them gone.

The left love talking about empathy, but have none. If they did, they wouldn't be the left.

Well, he renamed it and made minor changes around the edges so he could claim that it was broken and he fixed it. And then, of course, proceeded to violate the agreement he signed.

Is the idea here that high frequency trading and self-dealing can be used to pump-and-dump a given proposition?

So, I find some low-traffic topic suggesting that Pigs Will Fly by the end of 2025 which has "yes" shares trading at $0.01. I buy a bunch of "yes" shares and then buy/sell a small chunk of them back and forth with myself, driving the price up to $0.50. Now I sit back and sell off my "yes" shares for something between $0.50 and $0.40 to anyone who shows up looking to get in on the rapidly-rising "Pigs Will Fly" proposition until a whole bunch of people have bought up the $0.01 shares for 40 times their actual value.

Or is there some other scam at play here?

What SPECIFICALLY do you haul that you presume to speak for all users who "haul things"?

Four door vehicles including Suburbans (whose "bed" is internal) are popular with businesses for many good reasons. They haul a three-person crew plus their personal items, have room for cargo (which a short bed crew cab equivalent does with extra clearance for outsize items) and make excellent towing vehicles.

There are many ways to roll one's own work truck besides single cab long beds. (I've one of those, too.) Short beds do not exclude long cargo else I'd not use mine for that (I've multiple trucks in various flavors). Accessories like lift gates work well on either (and on vans and box trucks) and in the case of liftgates extend the bed when travelling with the gate down.

Is it so terribly difficult to understand buyers who already have those choices buy what we do?

BEV proponents don't care about people who use trucks as trucks or why that used market requires ICE.

They don't use liftgates (I find it odd more truck buyers don't install them but attribute that to ignorance of how very useful they are) so hauling the weight of same plus cargo and often towed loads is not their concern. I quite like mine which is a major back saver.

Their sole agenda is forcing you to obey them. That's typical and a major reason people who would not otherwise vote right wing consider they've no other way to defend themselves.

Selling new trucks requires sufficient demand from the USED market to make new trucks a wise economic choice.

Excellent post, just a couple of comments.

First, it's interesting that Nikkos said "a previous administration", without naming it. It was, of course, Trump 1.0.

Second, international treaties on refugees don't require a country to accept every refugee and there are multiple examples where nations have made agreements that modify which county must handle asylum claims. For example, the US-Canada Safe Third Country agreement specifies that asylum seekers must make their asylum claim in whichever country they arrive in first. If the US and Mexico had a similar agreement, then refugees could not enter from Mexico at all. Trump tried to get Mexico to sign a Safe Third Country agreement, but Mexico refused -- and it probably would have been invalid anyway, since Mexico might not satisfy the requirements of a "safe" country under the US law that authorizes the signing of Safe Third Country agreements.

Instead, Trump signed the "Migrant Protection Protocols" agreement with Mexico, which was the "remain in place" agreement. You said that no other country should be willing to put up with it, but Mexico did formally agree to it, though only to avoid tariffs. Of course, Mexico has declined to renew the protocols in Trump 2.0 (though Trump announced they had, which Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum immediately denied -- Trump's habit of unilaterally announcing that an agreement has been reached obviously doesn't really work).

Anyway, there are lots of reasons why countries might agree to various limitations on asylum processes to manage refugee volumes, and these agreements are often perfectly valid under international and national law. Trump, of course, doesn't care about legality, or humanity, only what he can get away with.

Same here but I renovated my houses and built my workshops.

I can retain my paid-for gassers for another 50 years (in the case of my '75 F350) or another ~26 years (F150s and one 5.3 Silverado) at trivial cost because they are designed to be repairable and are not vendor locked by electronic feature bloat.

Early 2000 LS drivetrain trucks and vans already fetch high prices because later years are so intensely mechanic-hostile. (Mechanic of many decades here.)

Driving used trucks let me easily pay off my homes and acreage then retire early. Buying even one new truck would have delayed my financial freedom by years.

When Slashdot was a techie site more viewers understood such things.

Function is the issue, not being a pickup. This may be painfully difficult to understand for BEV zealots but not everyone WANTS what leftists (it's political, you want social control by regulation) attempt to coerce people into buying. Build what customers want, not what someone who is not a customer wishes they should want.

Compete or be cast out.

I and millions of others would be delighted to buy a BEV truck that equals or surpasses gassers in EVERY way with zero sacrifice of functions WE (not you) care about. When one pays that much excuses won't do.

There is no current coldly pragmatic personal reason to buy a BEV pickup truck no matter how much frothers screech otherwise. They're not good enough at truck tasks yet. People who don't use trucks pretend they know what's best for people who do and vilify gasser pickups (though the same drivetrain in a van triggers no one).