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The phrase "Little old lady from Pasadena" was, after all, coined in L.A. to describe someone who basically drives like a self driving car. In Los Angeles you are either driving aggressively or you're parked. There is no moderate option. I spent about 40 years driving there and learned the basic rule is to always drive as fast as you can. That may be anywhere between 80 and 0 mph and it's subject to change at any moment. If you attempt to leave a "safe" interval between cars on a L.A. freeway you can be pretty sure someone will simply change lanes and pull into that space. And don't even think about Mexico City.

We techie folks spend much of our lives hanging out with our peers. This tends to give us a rather warped sense of the average intelligence and rationality of the general population. The fact is that most folks just feel overwhelmed by facts and data and really don't want the responsibility of choosing their own path through life. They would rather have someone they trust tell them what to do and think. Hence the popularity of religion and autocrats. It is counterproductive to try engaging these folks in some sort of rational fact based argument. That just makes them fearful. Try to remember that they are not acting stupid in order to annoy us; they're just in over their heads.

what about "Homestar Runner"?

will get great mileage and have plenty of power while still passing government emissions tests, right? Would you really buy a "self driving car" from these proven liars?

LA is not one big city. SpaceX is in Hawthorne, a totally separate city with its own city council, etc. The same can be said of Culver City, Santa Monica, and dozens of other cities that many think of as just part of "LA". Each of these presents another opportunity to get bogged down in local politics.

"And you may not have noticed this, but if you let a kid question you once... it rapidly escalates until they question EVERYTHING"

But that's a good thing. Yes, it's a pain in the ass for the parents. But hey, nobody said parenthood was supposed to be simple or painless. I sometimes lament that sperm count isn't more closely related to IQ.

religious brainwashing early in life. Innocent children are taught that they should be unquestioningly accepting of wacky ideas just because their elders seem to believe them. Their natural scepticism is denounced as heresy.

The whole idea that anything should just be accepted as a matter of faith is a threat to democracy. Sunday school is clearly a form of child abuse. (even when it's done on Saturday)

are neutrons being emitted?

This is just total nonsense: "The parts in question are ceramic capacitors that have bedeviled the satellite project. They take higher-voltage power from the satellite's power system and reduce it to a voltage required for a particular subsystem" Nope, wrong, try again.

or lack thereof. The POTUS is asking us to exhibit pretty much blind trust in a government that has lied to us repeatedly. Sorry, too late.

Not correct. At least where I live my electric bill includes a separate fee that is supposed cover the effort expended to deliver the power from it's source to my home. Then on top of that I pay still more for the power itself. I understand that a regulated monopoly utility should be paid for what it does. I don't see why it should also get a retail markup on the power. This is equivalent to UPS charging their normal shipping fee and then adding a 20% markup to the price of the goods they deliver.

See: http://web.mit.edu/humor/Compu...

Perhaps we should just retire the word "Hacker" in this context and replace it with a more accurate term like "Spy". It's pretty obvious that this is espionage.