"if they can accuse important people without evidence and make them spend time and money"

So, for example, dredging up (in a suitable venue ofc) some ancient bimbo who diddled some rich guy in a dressing room (though she can't remember exactly when, or what she was wearing, and....well... She does admit to finding rape kinda sexy before she's dragged off the air), carefully not bringing the case to criminal court? Like that?

"... the way that the Federal reserve deals with that is every few years they crank interest rates. "

What?
That's absolutely the opposite of the data.

The US has generally had - aside from ww1/WW2, and the explosive 1970s - an inflation rate of 3-3.5% since 1900.

The last 25 years have had extraordinarily LOW inflation until the literal shoveling of money toward the public during COVID. ($5t in "assistance" including $1.8t in DIRECT payments).
Couple that with an insistence on the radical increase in legal wage floors across the country - how would those policies (which, I recall, you militantly supported) NOT be inflationary?

It's hypocrisy to blame "the Federal Reserve" for the logical, predicted outcome of the policies you have rather militantly endorsed.

You don't seem to realize that this car has the lowest drag coefficient of a land vehicle. Your side mirrors are as bad as this whole car. They began working on this decades go using a GAS engine, it was not an EV!

It's so great that SOLAR can drive it 45 miles per day but that was not the purpose of making the most efficient car ever. You can have smaller batteries which means they charge faster and it costs less to charge it; a side benefit is bugs don't go splat so it doesn't need as much cleaning. The solar marketing gimmick actually has real results even if they are are minor - but for people like me, it'll save me from plugging it in most the year! I go days at a time without driving and when I do it is not 45 miles; I won't need perfect days of sunlight when I only go out a few times per week.

NOTE: This car does 100 Miles/kWh so you are not getting 5 miles per hour at level 1. I get that on my Leaf which is rarely 5 Miles/kWh (4.5 winter, 4.9 summer) and I do that annoying other drivers who are not paying enough for gas with the wasteful way they drive. I used to hypermile and almost doubled my gas savings.

I ordered a NO solar model of the car but they dropped that option. I asked. we asked. They said it cost them too much to set that up and actually saves me little money over the non-solar covering. Their work on hardened curved PV panels resulted with them inventing and patenting solar tech which will be used in other places (they only have 1 customer for those so far.) Yes they are not the best PV but they are better than other curved panels I've seen over the decades and they are being sold and they won't easily break.

I'd rather pay for more PV on my roof; and if I saved $300 on the car without PV I'd still get it on the car just because it's a cheap upgrade. Lithium batteries do not wear out if you keep them above 60% charge. Worth it. For $1000 extra, I think I'd skip it for house PV which is what their estimated add-on cost was initially. If you have micro-inverters etc. you don't get hit as bad with shading. Me, I wish I could go 1000V and have an inverter which could do a wide voltage range because I think that would handle shading far better. but 600V seems to be peak and everything is geared for lower; and oddly microinverters are more reliable... so I have those.

They reclassified a DIFFERENT group called "Asperger's Disorder" as being the top end of Autism because a few outward traits are shared. Mostly, I think it is because of funding and maybe some politics. The same year they did this (or maybe 2 years) a big study showed proof there is no genetic correlation for Autism and yet it showed there was one for Aspergers. No causal proof except that when you have 0 correlation that is proof it's not the cause. This was the strongest evidence the two are not the same thing with varying degrees. There is nothing you can do to an Apsy to set them into an autistic fit or get their brain scan to go goofy like that.

Asperger's is a DEVELOPMENTAL DISORDER in that they grow up in a different order. Their intellectual development comes way sooner than their emotional / social abilities/intelligence. So the child will think at an adult level but emotionally, socially, etc. they move slower and are behind for their age. Around 30 they will be normal except the previous life experience which can't be undone just like growing up in another culture or having unique experiences can't be undone. The perspective is valuable and arguably BETTER than the norm. Having an intellectual lead their emotional impulses and development is arguably far better for the best outcomes in the end (like 30 years; but should be 25 years if we handle things better.)

Treatment for Autism is mitigation and adaptation, it is not developmental. They don't need sheltering from their problem like autistic they need growth they are fully capable of while the Autistic can't grow their way out anymore than a blind person can; they must learn to cope. Fundamentally different. It's not optimal if not possibly harmful to lump the two together. There is actual discussion about it being a mistake and splitting the two apart again; which is great. Science will autocorrect in the long term and the funding and study is there now because of the mistake which I was in support of about 20 years ago even though I was sure it was a mistake and said so ever since.

Tesla was given a massive US government bail out and subsidies.
Aptera was forbidden because Joe Manchin (oil/coal guy) fought hard to ban 2-3 wheel EVs and compromised watered down US modernization efforts. Aptera couldn't get ANY help that GM and Tesla received so they went bankrupt. It took all this time to come back again and then the Pandemic... Now it's going to be another depression hopefully not before they can get a foothold and enough guts to move to a successful country before they go under again.

The car DC fast charges faster than anybody in the USA. You don't need the solar.

The CEO said that offering a solar free car wasn't worth it because the cost savings are negligible and it pays for itself right away. You have to pay to cover the car in SOMETHING and the solar isn't a lot more money; plus it actively does something... which is enough to make a difference.

If it did nothing, it would be a useful marketing gimmick... like we don't spend more money on rear spoilers and other BS to sell cars..

The car is mostly positioned over the front wheels; and is pulled by the front wheels. The little bit the back gets can act like a ski. I plan to find out how it handles a frozen lake this winter (when I should have one.)

ALSO something to note is there are long term studies on batteries and the old style decade old batteries will last forever if you keep them around 60-80%. Obviously 20-80% still applies but you get more than double life 40-80 and probably infinite 60-80. The 20-80 is likely going to prove to outlast the cars before it dies if you can handle having 60-70% capacity before the body rusts apart (likely impossible with Aptera) or you get in an accident.

Charging the battery to keep it from ever going below 20% makes it worth it.

Already done.
They created a classification called "autocycle" specifically for this new type of car. Even Canada has it.

In Trump's America this will be overturned. They just have to shop around to the right crooks and eventually they'll win; luckily it takes time and also it is hard to predict how corrupt a judge will be... Unless they start out clearly corrupt from the beginning and since that is becoming an accepted norm, that time will come. It may take another attempt and after the 3rd trump term; not that he is required, he merely accelerated and demonstrated how incompetent and corrupt America has become, the rest will continue to spiral all on it's own... unless enough good people stand up and it's not been enough so far; I'm sure it will not be enough to counter Russia's influence. Actually Russia can stop because I think it's been pushed beyond the point of return and without a major remediation there is no coming back.

"only 60% of Americans know how to drive a manual transmission (according to a survey from auto parts retailer AmericanMuscle)"

1) that seems like 60% of the readers of American Muscle
2) 'know how to' is covering a lot of ground here. "Knows how to start a stick, and how to probably get it moving from level ground with 25% of killing it" maybe. Can confidently and reliably drive with a stick, knowing basic techniques? 25% or less, certainly.

Having a stick shift is 100% the simplest security system you can have on a car in the US in 2026. Your car might still get broken into, but they'll abandon it quickly.

I remember guys who couldn't handle school but getting an educational sex bot probably was the ONLY thing that could have taught them! Seriously, we should have prescriptions for these bots! You ever see an oversexed teenager with perfect grades? (if you think so, then you're misinterpreting over-sexed.)

I'm serious; some kids are simply not ready -- some need major therapy full time not education. If you want a good generic solution with massive success... you take all 12 year old children and replace their year of education with pure therapy work. The vast majority of problems that have the biggest impacts on the most people come from the puberty transition age. Hell, targeted hormone therapy around those years could level off a lot of issues around that span of time as well as align the timing. We do all this sort of biologically management with animals already. Ok, there I blew your minds with some ideas to ponder... though you probably just want to keep thinking about the teacher blow-bots.

Yeah! they don't need to learn ANY math because calculators will do all that for them later!
Seriously, this is the 1980s over again. Do the calculators do it all for you? never happened. Teachers won and we still learned some math despite the calculators; which were limited in their usage, they even had a protest of math teachers at the capital over the problem. A compromise was found. back then.

People are stupid, ignorant, and lack creativity and motivation... already (in USA but it's coming to you.) So now AI is going to compound all of that and make it worse. Idiotocracy is only not going to happen because it's going to get too stupid to even make it as far as the movie optimistically predicted.

I assumed the comment meant that young males need that extra blood sloshing around in their brains moved somewhere else...

Unfortunately, afaik red dwarf stars are so cool that any planet in their liquid water zone are also almost certainly tidally locked.
Not saying that doesn't make it habitable (as ample science fiction authors have imagined alternatives) just that that might make the challenge harder.

Then again, life finds a way.

First, let's note the referenced article IS A SALES PITCH.
Second, electrical outages are a normal thing in a storm prone country. The "outages" aren't news, it's only meaningful if they're growing more frequent.
The article asks plaintively "is this the new normal" without ever establishing what the old normal was.

When taking into account the higher population and higher electrical demand per person, are large blackouts becoming more common in the US?
Per ai: no.

"The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) tracks Bulk Power System (BPS) performance annually in its State of Reliability (SOR) reports. Key takeaways from the 2025 SOR (covering 2024 data):

The BPS "remains highly reliable and resilient." Core metrics like frequency response, misoperations, and many transmission outage categories are stable or improving.
Severe weather (hurricanes, winter storms) caused the most impactful outages, as in prior years. In 2024, events like Hurricanes Helene and Milton led to millions of (mostly distribution-level) customer outages, but BES restoration was often faster than historical averages for similar storms due to hardening efforts. No major operator-initiated load shed during key winter events.
There were notable events, but the Severity Risk Index (SRI) and other indicators do not show a clear upward trend in frequency or severity of large-scale BPS disruptions when viewed over multiple years. Distribution outages (local, below 100 kV) are more visible to customers and can be widespread, but they are outside NERC's primary jurisdiction."

I fully agree our policies toward the increasingly critical electrical grid infrastructure are incoherent. That's said: quit buying into advertisers insisting the world is ending and here's some snake oil that will fix it.

They are NOT bad... what measurement matters? They usually make a huge amount of money and get customers even if they lose money they still got more customers/sales than the quality film you put up against it. Marketing gets a majority of the credit in my opinion. A large portion goes to the masses and their popular taste... Yes, it's a formulaic pattern, which is bland and predictable but it also polishes up turds so they are barely tolerable for us; the outliers, while the masses eat it up like it's junk food. If you are not eating polished turds all the time, you do not get sick of it... and maybe you have less experience with actual nourishment so you don't know how shit it is.