JUDGE: The jury has sent a question and the answer is no, the death penalty is not "available for both sides" please return to the jury room and limit your consideration to civil damages.

JUDGE: No, a “light maiming” is also not acceptable, nor is “getting medieval on their asses.” Please constrain yourself to statutes approved by this court.

JUDGE: A further follow-up question from the jury, and no we cannot 'dunk them in a lake and let God decide, like they used to do with witches'. That has not been considered a valid means of determining guilt for several centuries at least.

JUDGE: The jury has sent another question and the answer, again, is no. "Excommunicado" is not real - that's only a thing in the John Wick universe. Civil penalties DO NOT encompass revoking all protections under the law for Mr Altman and Mr Musk.

JUDGE: Court reporter, please note that the jury's latest request, quote, can we let them hang by their thumbs for a few hours, end quote, is also denied.

The violence in the Middle East dates back to the early Bronze Age. The Shah was violent and assassinated political rivals. In the 1940s, half of the Middle East sided with the Nazis.

The violence did not start in the 1970s, it didn't even start with Islam. It predates all of that.

Blaming individual X or modern event Y is to ignore the violence and open warfare leading up to those.

Only an idiot fixates purely on Iran. One genocidal Syrian despot has been replaced with another genocidal Syrian despot. IS is back on the rise. Egypt is a military dictatorship. Libya went from military dictatorship to perpetual civil war. The Arab Spring was ultimately crushed not because of a hatred of freedom but because the entire region is riddled with corruption.

Iran is a minor side show.

Too little, too late.

I moved on to better OS when you started messing with stuff and REFUSED to even give me an option to put it back how it was.

Modern Windows UI/UX literally and actually hinders my workflow because of enforced nonsense that I don't want.

In America, laws are made by paying the politicians under the table. That's common knowledge. It's how the DMCA got passed, for example. But it's also made by having financially valuable information information, particularly that which permits politicians to have insider information that they can sell for votes/influence or use to make a killing on the stock market.

(You notice anything odd about oil price fluctuations recently?)

Musk had access to money, some of the largest databases the USG had, and the ability to fire civil servants who might have been inconvenient to Congress.

For some reason, the Control Panel is still here after 10+ years of trying to get the Settings app to be feature complete

Because Control Panel is the best and fastest way to find what you want. It is clearly laid out, descriptive, and allows you to get things done.

Whereas, Settings is configured as if someone threw a ball of yarn into a box and let a cat play with it, then the cat threw up from playing so hard.

He was in government for how many years? If he wanted the statute of limitations altered, then surely that would have been the time to do it.

It would seem to me that he didn't care about the statute of limitations until AFTER other people started getting rich and he didn't.

I was under the impression that an appeal against a not guilty verdict was not permitted in the US, and was only permissible in the UK in the event of murder when overwhelming evidence showed wilful interference of the trial or exceptional new evidence.

Fortunately, that's highly unlikely. There has never been a confirmed case of airborne transmission between humans. Most transmission is due to insufficient and unsanitary health care facilities, due to lack of funds.

I had already received three Pfizer shots when I came down with the virus (confirmed, with a test that came up positive in less than a minute). However, I am absolutely convinced that the severity of my case was so minimal (sleeping under a blanket on the couch in my clothes for 3-4 days) because of the enhanced response of my immune system, due to the vaccine.

Correct. It's like a governor declaring a state of emergency ... for a flood that only affects one region of their state. These alerts are a call to action for officials, not the general public.

AI, huh? And here I thought the, uh, government might seize the opportunity to declare these companies illegal gambling that's rife with insider trading and other criminality, and shut them down.

No, it's fine. Texas says so.

The problem is always the relative ease of modern travel. This outbreak would be a regional issue if there were no jet planes.

So far, the outbreak is reasonably confined. But it might not stay that way. Raising that alarm is one of the key functions of the WHO.

1. The vehicle is only at the preorder stage; they're not shipping any as best as I can ascertain. Pricing isn't listed, either.

2. The vehicle is only available as an SUV/Pickup. While the modular design has merit, there is no sedan available.

3. The website makes no claims regarding privacy, except in its privacy policy regarding the website. The closest indicator is the absence of an infotainment system, but that doesn't mean that it lacks a telemetry module; there is no specific indication that it lacks one.

4. If it's not shipping yet, it will likely still be subject to forthcoming laws regarding kill switches; they have made no claims to the contrary. ...So, while I would LOVE for Slate to be the starting point, and I'd even switch to an SUV form factor to get it AND pay double the cost of a Camry for it...I don't think it's really reasonable to have a "put your money where your mouth is" stance when the vehicle is not available for purchase, is only available in one form factor, and where the company makes no claim to lack a telemetry module. I'm open to a solution, but a Slate gives me zero confidence that it is, in fact, that solution.

That can be rectified.

Even on a stock Google Android phone, one can at least SOMEWHAT mitigate data collection by not-installing certain apps. To my knowledge, Meta doesn't get data if you don't install FB/IG/WA. Also, one could leave their phone at home and drive somewhere if tracking was undesirable; while by definition, one cannot avoid that if the car itself is doing the tracking. Even if tracking is unavoidable on the phone, 'airplane mode' can assist in certain contexts.

Also, crazy as this is, there are still 'dumb phones' that exist, which may still involve selling location data or call logs by the carrier, but don't have the sensors or software to do the level of tracking that stock smartphones do. Some people do opt to get those instead.

The fact that they're in vehicles, without buyers being meaningfully informed, where even customers who do opt out of data collection still get their data collected, and don't have an 'airplane mode' available to them...nor a simple "remove this fuse" stipulated in the manual to negate the telemetry parts at a hardware level, nor a manufacturer that specifically sells a 'no telemetry' model (one CAN get a Fairphone with LineageOS out of the box; I haven't found a 2025-model car sold in the US that is analogous). While mass transit in the EU might be the extreme-but-possible solution, that's simply not the case in the US outside of some metro areas, so car ownership is a necessity, even more than a smartphone is.

Smartphone tracking is bad, but there are solutions, even if they are hard. Vehicle tracking is worse, because it's way more expensive to get that wrong than getting a Graphene install wrong.