Last time I checked, my vehicle is not a legal entity that can be cited for infractions. Whatever person is sitting behind the wheel of that vehicle is not known by a camera. I can't believe these things haven't been totally obliterated in court. In my state, the tickets you get from these things are actually from 3rd parties contractors who run them, and try to sound very official, but they are not actual summons through a court.

To what are you alluding?

It baffles the mind that Microsoftware - known for decades for being unreliable shit - is allowed on space missions at all, no matter how uncritical the role. The potential for malware alone is ludicrous. "Hey, pay us 2500 bitcoins if you want your space capsule back".

Then again, I figure the days when NASA did the right stuff are long past.

Basically everyone who lives in the area or studies the climate or hydrology would tell you that you're insane.

More like a once-in-a-millennium event. Though I suspect it's going to be considerably more common going forward.

Deserts have some amount of normal precipitation, too. And when you get a lot less than normal, that's called a drought. Yes, even in a desert.

We do have pretty good data from tree rings. Unless you think the trees came from somewhere else?

They don't "fly" or "sail", what spacecraft do is "fall" there. Except for the bit of time they use their engines.

Betterbird doesn't solve all of Thunderbird's problems, but it *does* act a little more sanely in many respects, and the search works a bit better on my machines.

Bernie wasn't running out there to pay a 0-5% income tax rate and advocating for lower tax rates on the wealthy. Responsible people who have money SUPPORT the idea of higher tax rates on those who make over $4 million per year.

The big problem with Tesla and SpaceX at this point is Elon Musk. Seriously, many people who were looking to buy a Tesla immediately became anti-Tesla with Musk and that abortion known as DOGE, as well as the obvious conflicts of interest and how it cost more money than was saved(because Musk only did it for his own profits and as a way to steal information from things like Social Security). SpaceX I wouldn't bet against right now, but all second guessing about Tesla and SpaceX would be gone if Musk were removed from the picture.

There is a difference between sea water and water we can drink. Now, if they would do something, like building desalinization plants and then pump the water around the country to places that need it, we could actually even reclaim the desert over time if done the right way. The problem is that we have very short-sighted politicians who only think in terms of 1-6 years, instead of thinking 20+ years out. It's like all the idiot executives out there that will go out of their way to save $0.10 cents per hour per employee, not realizing that it will cost the company $1000 extra per year per employee from the side effects. When short term profits are more important than long profits, that is when you know the company is going to crash as soon as a decent competitor shows up.

It absolves them of liability. If there is a law they have to validate age (even if it is ineffective and easily worked around by minors), and they are doing whatever silly thing they need to do to be compliant, then they have shielded themselves from liability.

By being involved in the process they can steer things to something easy and affordable to implement on their end. Make it work the way they want to (scan an ID, have AI look at their face, DNA test, measure their height - whatever method they're specifically wanting to do is why they are funding this and pushing for it).

Even worse is when they compromise the VPN operators and then monitor your usage until you do something that makes them decide to crack down on you.

People erroneously think of VPNs as privacy protectors. They aren't, not unless you have very good reason to trust whoever is running the server. If you don't, then they're concentrators for likely subversive traffic and its origins.

The solution to this is to join a party and get involved in the decisionmaking. It's a lot easier than you might think, and you can have a lot more influence that you might expect, precisely because not that many people do this.

(in the margins)
Turn to page 122
Turn to page 65
Turn to page 89
Turn to page 44
Turn to page 12
Turn to page 56
Turn to page 35
Turn to page 55
Turn to page 77
Turn to page 130
Turn to page 120
Turn to page 110
Thank you for letting me waste your time.

Meh.

It would undoubtedly be very expensive at first, and therefore only available to the very wealth (probably not ultra-wealthy -- even without automation, caring for such a clone wouldn't be a full-time job, so call it maybe $30k/year -- within the reach of the upper middle class). But competition would drive automation, and we already have most of the techniques required, having developed them to deal with coma patients and the like, but at lower cost because this case would be dealing with a fundamentally healthy body. My guess based on some napkin math is that cost could be driven down as low as $10k per year. Maybe lower.

$10k per year is expensive, sure, but having an immunologically-perfect organ donor could absolutely be worth it for someone making as little as $200k per year.

If the cost could be driven down to $5k per year... then it's in the range where most middle-class Americans could afford it, even if it meant that they'd have to cut back a little somewhere else; maybe drive an older car rather than leasing a new one, or similar.