Actually, it's more about perspective than math. If you only got 51% of the answers on a test correct, that's pretty bad. If you had a 51% chance of waking up dead tomorrow, you'd probably not be feeling so great about those odds.

If you're making at least $133k a year and can't afford your bills and health insurance, you've overextended yourself. That'd be a genuine case where the proverbial "stop eating so much avocado toast" advice actually applies.

There's no amount of high-end income that is immune to bad budgeting. It would take some extraordinarily bad spending, but even Elon Musk could waste his entire fortune if he really put his mind to it.

With a mobile app and some QR codes on the cattle, now you've got everything you need for dockless cow rentals!

Here in central Florida that's a pretty decent living if you bought your house before the market went crazy. As with a lot of things relating to wealth, there's always the "fuck you, I got mine" factor in play.

A lot of people don't realize how well off they are. Take the median income for example - if you earn more than that, half the US population earns less than you.

It's probably also a bit of a contributing factor to why so many folks on here underestimated how popular the MacBook Neo would be. A cheap computer is a lot easier to dismiss when you've got the budget for something better.

The tech bros previously were investing in fake meat. It went through something of a boom and bust cycle as people eventually realized it wasn't all that healthy and still doesn't taste exactly like real beef. Beyond Meat is close to bankruptcy.

It kind of makes sense, when you think about that most Americans are collectively fine with driving around in a machine that literally pollutes the air as part of its normal operation - from a big obvious tailpipe sticking out the back, no less. The idea that cow farts are somehow causing problems is even more abstract.

Great, you're team "the status quo is fine". Guess what? Me too. Parents should be the ones held responsible for setting boundaries on their rug rats. Thing is, that's not the direction the winds are blowing in, and we're probably going to end up with more age checks (it's already happened in several states, so it's no longer a "what if?" scenario). Next comes, exactly as the article I've linked stated, the politicians who implemented piss poor age checks realizing that they're not working at all, and no, they're not just going to throw up their hands and say "Bugger all, that didn't work. Let's give up and go home chaps!", they're gonna double down on the dystopianism.

I already see it here in Florida. It's trivial to add a VPN plugin and get around Florida's age check law, and providers like TunnelBear don't even seem to care if you rotate through multiple unpaid accounts so you don't run out of data.

I don't want any age gates, but we often get stuck with a choice between the lesser of two evils in politics. Except lately, where it seems like people actually have been voting for the greater evil. Go big or go home, I suppose.

This is actually why OS level age gates are the (slightly) saner solution when politicians open their yap about ostensibly protecting kids online. The alternate method - legislating for site/app level age checks, can be bypassed by using a VPN, and then yeah, the powers that be get to say this shit ain't working, we need to implement more draconian measures! Then, just like that, you get VPN bans.

You do realize people arranged revolutions before there were VPNs, right?

There probably is no deeper meaning to why Russia is cracking down on VPNs. Fascists gonna fascist, dawg.

Be a pole star just like mommy!

My own experience with used vehicles is that there's always some reason the previous owner got rid of it. At least with my Bolt that I'd bought used, that reason was the battery recall (which was replaced, and the powertrain warranty counter reset).

Also, now it's probably a bit late to get a good deal on a used EV now that gas prices are nuts and the used EV credit is gone.

There, I fixed it for you. We're way too far behind to do much other than order bags of parts from China and have robots (what, you thought we'd hire humans?) assemble them like IKEA furniture. Okay, we might need a human or two to refill the parts bins on the robots.

Since people tend to get a bit more squeamish when the subject is LGBTQ+ youth, the standard for what constitutes truly pornographic material should be the same as what would be applied for heterosexual youth. If we let heterosexual youth read about love stories between a man and a woman, well, let's try to avoid those pesky double standards of somehow seeing a similar story where the love interests happen to be same sex as being "corrupting", "filthy", or otherwise less appropriate.

My point is, the term gets abused. If we're talking things like PornHub and Xhamster and various wank-u-bate cam sites, yeah, that's obviously porn and clearly inappropriate for anyone under 18. If you don't like a story about two boys kissing, that's not pornographic just because it offends someone's Republican brand of family values.

That's strongly YMMV. In fact, in many places we're actually backsliding. Here in Florida, they basically banned LGBTQ+ discussion for all grades (the law left the age appropriateness exception so ambiguous that no school wants to touch it).

The concept that gays have some agenda to groom kids is a bogeyman created by the right-wing. If anything, most sexualizing of minors is done by heterosexuals, and the ones who actually do unspeakable things with kids, again - also mostly heterosexuals.

Personally, I'm in a loving, committed relationship with another middle-aged man. The only interest I have in LGBTQ+ youth is seeing that they get to experience growing up as equals to their heterosexual peers, because I've always believed that progress is made by planting trees you'll never sit in the shade of.

If the companies don't solve their pedophile problems, then you hold the companies liable for their contributory role and punish them harshly. As for who should enforce this, that's entirely why we have a legal system. They'd just have to, dare I say it, do their jobs.

That's also another right-wing talking point intended to divide the LGBTQ+ community amongst itself, making it easier to "conquer". Basically, "Hey, you minorities should turn on each other, that'd make my job of oppressing you a lot easier!" Anybody who's actually picked up a history book can spot it from a mile away.

Usually, I think when people say they want the option to buy directly they're not expecting dealerships to go away entirely. We'd probably end up with something like how it works now with Apple, where if you need the product right away and aren't interested in waiting for a deal from a 3d party retailer (like how Target and Best Buy regularly seem to put iPads on sale), you can just buy direct from the manufacturer's store.

Dealerships would be where you go to waste the entire day playing games with incentives and enhanced trade-in values (because the dealership can make up some of their profit by selling your trade-in at some overinflated price to the next sucker, whereas the manufacturer has no interest in your used car), and you might leave in your new ride while spending a few less bucks.

I've actually dealt with the no-haggle, no-dealership side of things back when my partner and I looked at the Tesla Model 3. They lowballed on the trade-in (again, they're not a dealership so they just push trade-ins off on some car buying company) and the price for the new car was what it was. We ended up just walking out, and because it was Tesla, they didn't even care that they'd lost a sale. Ultimately, after a whole lot of back and forth, we were able to get a price we were very satisfied with on a '23 Bolt EUV at the local Chevy dealer.

I already hate that I need a smartphone app to charge my EV at most DCFC stations (the one saving grace is that I don't need to fast charge all that often), but having to use an app every time you want to get your nicotine fix would be a real pain in the ass. Something tells me if this actually caught on, vapers would just go back to smoking the old fashioned combustion form of cancer sticks.