I still have my very first credit card. It's 20+ years old, sits in a lockbox, and has a thousand dollar limit, by far the lowest of my cards. It costs me $10 a year to maintain. It's there entirely because it anchors the oldest account ranking for me.

Do something the robots can't do - raise a family.

Given the vast amount of data that is collected and sent to the mothership in modern "connected" cars, maybe they realised they can sell that on? Apart from all the obvious stuff like realtime tracking data and telemetry on your driving style while you are are on the road, there's your preferences on playlists, what kind of temperature you prefer (from which health info can be inferred), what stores you prefer and where your friends and family live, (extracted from parking location data), all tied into the real ID you used to buy and register the car - no "dark profiles" here.

It's a model that seems to be working very well for browers and certain OSs, as well as pretty much all of the Internet of Shit. It might cost a bit more and be a lot larger than some connencted $20+tariffs widget, but a modern car is still just another component of the IoS. It's said the margin on a mass market car is around 5-10%; care to bet that the captured data is being sold on to info brokers for a whole lot more?

Texas and Florida prohibit local governments from mandating rest and water breaks.

The issue with health concerns like this is that it's not like it explodes and kills you - there's really no way to say, "It was the molecule on March 13, 2026 that started cancer in your body"

You can't even do that with cigarettes - you can only make a conclusion on cause that's well supported by circumstantial evidence.

And I'm not saying you're arguing against it, but just broadly speaking ... arguing *against* more information - unless the argument is that the information itself is inaccurate - seems particularly anti free-market to me. (Obviously that's why companies fight against the burden of regulation designed to increase market transparencies.)

Oregon isn't a red state overall. Almost all states, whether red, blue, or purple, allow felons to vote at some point.

Class 1 and 2 e-bikes limit assist to 20 mph, not 15. You can ride them faster than that, but you have to provide the power. 20 mph is well above what most recreational cyclists can maintain on a flat course, so if these classes arenâ(TM)t fast enough to be safe, neither is a regular bike. The performance is well within what is possible for a fit cyclist for short times , so their performance envelope is suitable for sharing bike and mixed use infrastructure like rail trails.

Class 3 bikes can assist riders to 28 mph. This is elite rider territory. There is no regulatory requirement ti equip the bike to handle those speeds safely, eg hydraulic brakes with adequate size rotors. E-bikes in this class are far more likely to pose injury risks to others. I think it makes a lot of sense to treat them as mopeds, requiring a drivers license for example.

Democrats sure don't. They want them to vote and everything.

The following red states allow felons to vote after completing their sentences (carceral sentences in some cases, or complete sentences and fines in others):

Alaska, Arkansas, Florida (1), Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa (2), Kansas, Kentucky (3), Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and West Virginia.

That's the overwhelming majority of them. A couple of them have exceptions for certain crimes like rape and murder, but for the rest, if you can finish your sentence, you can probably vote.

(1) Sort of -- the state government has intentionally made a mess of the initiative that passed 65-35.

(2) While the Iowa constitution bars felons from voting unless they have applied to the governor to have voting rights reinstated, Gov. Reynolds (a Republican) has a standing executive order automatically reinstating voting rights of felons upon completing their sentences unless they were convicted of murder.

(3) Similar to (2), except that Gov. Beshear's executive order applies only to those convicted of non-violent offenses.

Would treating them as mopeds be so bad?

What weâ(TM)re looking at is exactly what happened when gasoline cars started to become popular and created problems with deaths, injuries, and property damage. The answer to managing those problems and providing accountability was to make the vehicles display registration plates, require licensing of drivers, and enforcing minimum safety standards on cars. Iâ(TM)m not necessarily suggesting all these things should be done to e-bikes, but I donâ(TM)t see why they shouldnâ(TM)t be on the table.

I am a lifelong cyclist , over fifty years now, and in general I welcome e-bikes getting more people into light two wheel vehicles. But I see serious danger to both e-bike riders and the people around them. There are regulatory classes which limit the performance envelope of the vehicle, but class 3, allowing assist up to 28 mph, is far too powerful for a novice cyclist. Only the most athletic cyclists, like professional tour racers, can sustain speeds like that, but they have advanced bike handling skills and theyâ(TM)re doing it on bikes that weigh 1/5 of what complete novice novice e-bike riders are on. Plus the pros are on the best bikes money can buy. If you pay $1500 for an e-bike, youâ(TM)re getting about $1200 of battery and motor bolted onto $300 of bike.

Whatâ(TM)s worse, many e-bikes which have e-bike class stickers can be configured to ignore class performance restrictions, and you can have someone with no bike handling skills riding what in effect is an electric motorcycle with terrible brakes.

E-bike classification notwithstanding, thereâ(TM)s a continuum from electrified bicycles with performance roughly what is achievable by a casi recreational rider on one end, running all the way up to electric motorcycles. If there were only such a thing as a class 1 e-bike thereâ(TM)d be little need to build a regulatory system with registration and operator licensing. But you canâ(TM)t tell by glancing at a two wheel electric vehicle exactly where on the bike to motorcycle spectrum it falls; that depends on the motor specification and software settings. So as these things become more popular, I donâ(TM)t see any alternative to having a registration and inspection system for all of them, with regulatory categories and restrictions based on the weight and hardware performance limitations of the vehicle. Otherwise youâ(TM)ll have more of the worst case weâ(TM)re already seeing: preteen kids riding what are essentially electric motorcycles that weigh as much as they do because the parents think those things are âoebikesâ and therefore appropriate toys.

Or it's a new take on the "RTO Mandate" approach to headcount reduction leveraging a kind of reverse Dunning-Kruger.

Right now, everyone at Opendoor is thinking of their colleagues and wondering if they are in the 15% that won't get the cut. For a team of 20, that means you've got to either truly believe that you're in the top three of that group, are blissfully naive, or will be polishing your CV and getting it out to agencies this weekend, and since company morale just went to shit, there's a pretty good chance that a chunk of those who *are* confident they'll make the cut will be doing the same, because once everyone else is gone they're going to have a lot more work to do. Good luck running the company on the blissfully naive remants.

Yes, there's probably a LOT of deadwood at Opendoor but, like RTO Mandates, this isn't the best way to get rid of it, and will have the same result as RTO; a lot of the best and brightest will be deciding the door they really want is the exit door.

E-fuels will be so expensive that only supercar owners will be able to afford them. We're talking $20 per gallon or more. Nor do they solve the problem of local air pollution.

Automatic salary increases have been part of federal law since 1989, as your linked article mentions. They haven't happened since 2009. The bill that the link mentions didn't pass, and the replacement bill didn't change the prior block, so no pay raises are possible until the new session in 2027.

I get that members of Congress are unpopular. But if we want regular people in Congress, people not coming in wealthy, they're going to face extra expenses that aren't covered from their office budgets, and they should be paid enough to not end up poor for doing their service. Maintaining a separate residence -- even sharing in renting an apartment -- in or around DC is expensive. Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-FL) was unable to rent an apartment in DC when he was elected last year because even with a guaranteed Congressional salary, he didn't make enough to overcome a poor credit rating coming in and the apartment complex rejected him. I'm all for the stock trading bans for them and their family. I'm fine with them participating in Social Security and the federal employee pension fund. I'm happy with them getting their health insurance off the DC ACA exchange. But at some point, the pay should increase so that we can send people who aren't already rich or who won't have extra temptation to bend or break the rules because they're about to go broke.

Too bad RFK will claim it’s biased and will switch to Grok.

RFK and most of the Trump administration don’t understand how LLMs work, they just assume it’s magically smarter than they are so they are content asking it questions and following it like an Oracle.

Nothing good will come of this. Once it tells RFK that ibuprofen causes autism and suggests putting antipsychotic meds into the water supply, he will follow it, because it’s “smarter” than he is.

The irony of your sarcasm is it actually *is* horrible.

Water is good - necessary even - but too much water will kill you. Choice is the exact same way - it's entirely possible to have too much of it, as much as that contradicts an ethos buried deeply in the American id.