Well, school has been sucking the life out of reading for over a century nowadays.

It doesn't help that right-wingers have been forcing schools to ban books such as To Kill a Mockingbird, Frankenstein's Monster, anything dealing with slavery or how Native Americans were treated by Europeans, and yes, 1984.

CNN had an article about parents in Tennessee complaining their kids shouldn't have to read about slavery and how slaves were treated because it makes them feel uncomfortable.

In other words, the people who cry the loudest about participation trophies are crying about little Johnny having to read about how horrible white people can be to others. None of this helps the ongoing issue of Johnny not able to read.

Then again, he didn't issue 'pre-emptive' pardons for his family, friends, crackhead son, etc yet,

The only reason Biden issued those pardons was because Trump was bragging about how he was going to weaponize the DOJ to go after people.

As for the clemencies, that does not absolve the person of the crime they committed. All it does is show mercy on them.

Compare that to all the January 6th terrorists who have been pardoned. And now there's talk of paying them for their troubles. No, not the $1.8 billion "anti-weaponization" fund*. There is still talk of paying these people for their crimes.

* Anti-weaponization is straight out of Orwell. Or the Soviet Union. Take your pick. Apparently imprisoning people who attack police aren't criminals in his eyes.

Yes, Lenovo had this feature. They were called the Yoga.

if expense is the concern, don't buy a mac book

Fixed it for you.

Reminds me of that post (quoting from memory) where a guy says the reason he needs to own a gun is because if his child needs an operation, no one's going to stop him from going to Italy where it's cheaper.

When someone builds a company and new product, they are creating wealth. The companies he owns are the net worth.

The only reason he has these companies is because of socialism. He has received billions in taxpayer money to keep his companies alive.

Side note, the same federal agency doling out taxpayer money to him is the same one he targeted under DOGE.

Double side note, Musk whined about another stimulus package after covid, while taking an unknown amount of money from the U.S. taxapyer during covid despite his company being worth $270 billion at that time.

For a slightly longer version of the amount of money the socialist has taken from the U.S. taxpayer, read on.

Yeah, and Russia deliberately targetting train stations, hospitals, maternity hospitals, schools, apartment blocks, churches, and a whole host of civilian sites is perfectly good.

If you're a soldier invading someone else's country, you should expect that country wil do whatever it takes to repel you. You're on their territory. Killing you is their job. Striking anything that supports the war effort has been done for centuries. You think the Allies didn't bomb German factories, oil depots, railheads, or other such targets?

Get a grip.

Killing people invading your country is a war crime? You Russians really are drunks.

Still better than removing a liver rather than a spleen.

My father has been locked out of his email account since last month. Multiple calls to support and now a second ticket for support have gone nowhere. They're a bunch of script kiddies repeating the same things over and over and never listening to what is being said.

The issue is on AOL's end, but they refuse to acknowledge it, let alone do anything.

Based on this experience, no way I'd buy company stock. With that kind of bad service, people will be leaving.

You might want to read up on how current hybrid vehicles actually work, 'cause it seems you have more than one misconception going on.

I have. For instance, my latest vehicle is the Ford F-159 XLT,, the full-hybrid model of the F-series pickup truck line. Power train is:
  - 6 cylinder dual-turbo engine. (runs low power but approoximately doubles output when a lot is needed.)
  - 47 HP motor-generator "pancake" on the engine side of the ttransmission, to scavenge / return power to./from a 1.5 kWhr lithium battery.
  - 10-speed automatic transmission, working with the lithium battery;s main alternator to fine-tune match the engine/mogen to the current driving situation. Max power of engine plus hybrid mogen; 430 hp.
  - full four wheel drive.

So it's primarily a gas-engine power train with an electric-car motor mechanically coupled to the engine shaft. Many other hybrids, from the venerable prius onward, are similar, with plug-in variants having a big scavaging/peaking battery good for pure electric operation of tens of miles rather than a minute or so and a wall-powered charger added.

What I'm looking for is essentially a pure electric - totally electronic "transmission" consisting of alternator(s) between the batteries and the motor(s), plus a tiny engine-generator able to burn gas and feed some teens of KW of charging power into the batteries when running down the road or parked near it.
 

Do the Waymo batteries use one of the lithium chemistries including cobalt, or a non-cobalt chemistry such as lithium iron phosphate?

Cobalt chemistries have a higher power/weight and energy/weight ratio, which made them the go-to chemistries for vehicle batteries. But they also produce oxygen when the cells overheat, leading to an unextinguishable runaway fire hazard: A burning cell makes enough heat to ignite the adjacent cells, so the whole assembly of them goes. Bad enough when it's a car's worth, but a disaster if it's a shipping-container sized module of a utility energy storage site. (And even worse when the site is a building full of racks, which someone had "protected" from fire with water-spraying, equipment-shorting system, so the whole site burns up, as happened recently with one in California creating a toxic mess.)

That's why purpose-built stationary lithium energy systems use non-cobalt chemistries - heavier, but a shorted cell just kills itself without getting hot enough to light off its neighbors.

I want to see inexpensive plugin hybrids.

But not like the current ones, which are primarily an engine/tranny powertrain with a motor/generator + small battery for scavenging downhill/braking energy for later accelleration/uphill/cruise/power-boost.

I want ones that are primarily a battery-electric with a small aux engine-generator (say 15-20 HP range), big enough to power crusing with a bit left over for gradually charging. That would let you range-extend by the size of your gas tank plus fillups (i.e. indefinitely if only gas is available) or go from battery empty to back on the road in a couple tens of minutes.

The backup engine would only run at max-efficiency speed and could use an atkins-like cycle (see "liquid piston engine") to get the max power out of the fuel. Most operation would use power-grid charging (when available and cheaper than fuel).

If air is leaking out, is it not possible to do an EVA and try to see where it is leaking on the outside? Wouldn't the air freeze once it hits space? Yes, I realize there is the issue of what would carry away the heat, but shouldn't they still see something, even if it's a pinhole?

Congress doesn't have these powers.

Yes, they do. Had you ever read the discussions in the Senate about the amendments, you would have known this very subject came up. Unfortunately, his orange lardness has hidden from public view those historical records, so what I'm about to say goes from my memory.

Essentially, if Congress has the power to enact laws affecting the country, it is up to the Executive and Judicial branches to curb that power. Madison, despite opposition to the General Welfare Clause, admitted late in the life that clause granted Congress a power to legislate on all national problems. His nature of limited government was undercut by that clause, for if the national Congress could enact laws affecting the country, it wasn't a limited government, was it?

Further, as mentioned in the debates, Congress could delegate its authority. It would be inconceivable for Congress to be involved with the minutae of the country, to discuss and debate whether this or that is allowed. Instead, as granted by the Constitution, Congress has delegated its powers to others. Namely, agencies such as the FTC.

It's really hard to find these powers in such a tiny document without decades of legal training.

No it's not. All one need do is read the debates in the Senate to understand the mindset of the Founding Fathers. If you want more, reading a few books about those Founding Fathers would suffice to fill your lack of knowledge.