I heartily agree with your assessment of The Abyss.
Without those 40 minutes, one of the major points of the movie is completely missed making it un-rewatchable to me.
I've seen the SE version maybe 2 dozen times over the years.

These science "journalists" drive me crazy with their unnecessary equivocations.

It's plasma. That's it! Or are you just trying to jackup your word count?

> How sad can you be where you need artificial engine noises?

Pedestrians kinda need an auditory cue that car engines give off. But 125db is probably a bit over the top.

Wikipedia:
"The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration issued its final ruling in February 2018, and requires the device to emit warning sounds when travelling at speeds less than 18.6 mph (30 km/h) with compliance by September 2020, but 50% of "quiet" vehicles must have the warning sounds by September 2019."

Also:
"The American rock band Linkin Park is helping Mercedes-AMG come up with just the right sound for its electric performance car."

Have the fake engine sound end-user replaceable.
Have a Prius sound like a Corvette or Ferrari, for instance.
Just upload the sound profile you want with a USB stick.

Why haven't I heard of this sooner?

Graduated with a masters in Software Engineering (1990). My top two choices for a job after was the IBM TJ Watson research center and Bellcore. At the time, both choices looked like lifetime employment opportunities. Chose Bellcore because of better contacts. Turns out neither were a lifetime job. Bailed and went to Wall St. Did 10 years there and retired young. Missed out completely on being age discriminated.

I started out with emacs with "Brief", a programming editor
by some folks out of Brown U. which basically cloned some
version of emacs, which forced me to learn a bastardized
version of lisp to make it work on a non-standardized
version of IBM-BIOS so I could remap the key-bindings
to something rational. That and Turbo Pascal launched
my career, along with a copy of Lattice C and an early
version of K&R C. I'm 60yo now but I do look fondly
back on those days and still use xemacs on Win7.

*2011 Lexus"

>Just wait until these things start shipping with cellular capability built in that you cannot disable.

I just found out my 2011 has cellular capabilities by pressing an overhead red button and somebody asking me if everything was okay. Surprised the hell out of me. Going to get that disabled next time I take my car in.

I also don't plug tvs into the internet.

Ninja Warrior is an excellent example of this.
In the original Japanese version, people competed against the course (and themselves, ultimately).
When it was Americanized, people were competing against each other; the course was the mechanism to do so. I just couldn't watch it.

> When you do it in public you 1) look like a dick, and 2) scare away people who very well may have good ideas but don't care to deal with your arrogant and insulting outbursts.

>> This method works perfectly in the Military

This.The reason you rip someone a new one in front of other people is so that you don't have to do it in private again and again to the other people. I learned this in Basic Training. I got ripped for a mistake and nobody else ever made that mistake again. I figured this out immediately and didn't take it personally.

I'm a Jack White fan, not just of his music but of the work he does for the music industry (producing, nurturing talent, etc...). I also love it when the soccer crowds in Europe start chanting the opening riff of 7 Nations Army.

That being said, I hate it when people are recording music performances or Broadway shows. It's so damn distracting. A better alternative would be to post "No Recording" signs, make an announcement before the show, and the have bouncers throw those crass rule breaking idiots out.