If Trump thinks AI is so "super intelligent", why doesn't he ask his favorite LLM for a plan to lower gas prices?

The problem with a flat tax scheme is that it's based on consumption rather than how well the whole capitalism thing is working out for you. I usually like to mention how many iPhones Elon Musk would have to buy in order for him to have paid the same the same percentage of his income towards sales tax as someone making the average median income (it's somewhere around 10.4 million iPhones), but a more down-to-Earth example would be if you happen to know anyone who is of limited means and spends a ton of money in gas because their vehicle is a bit of a gas guzzler. That person is paying more of their income towards road taxes to travel the same distance as someone who conceivably is paying nothing in road taxes, because the person paying nothing was able to afford an EV (assuming they're in one of the states that hasn't implemented a separate EV tax).

Of course, I wouldn't fault you for assuming that the reason the road taxes in my example aren't implemented fairly is because we don't just make everyone pay by the mile. That seems all well and good until you realize that some people are using the roads to commute to their minimum wage job flipping burgers, and others are using the roads to pull down a nice high 6 figure income. Shouldn't the folks who are getting more benefit from the upkeep of the roads have a greater obligation to pay some of that forward (since they're deriving more benefit from the infrastructure and also have more to lose if it isn't properly maintained)?

Lately, that means dumping money into more films for a franchise where the horse hasn't entirely been beaten into an unrecognizable bloody pulp yet.

At least it's just entertainment *shrug*. I'm fine with just re-watching from the back catalog if they don't produce anything good, and if they raise prices on content that actually is otherwise decently entertaining - I'll raise the Jolly Roger. Really, when it comes to companies getting all late stagey with the capitalism, movie studios aren't what you need to worry about.

The worst part is, we knew this and still somehow collectively thought it was a good idea to send this man back to The White House for a second fucking time.

Where I live, we've got these Muscovy ducks near the entrance to my neighborhood that have a tendency to sleep in the road at night. It's not for want of a grassy area to roost in - there's plenty of that. Nope, these ducks just decide that the best place to plop their fat feathery asses down for a snooze, during the time when they're the hardest for passing motorists to see, is right in the middle of the street. As you might imagine, they regularly do get accidentally run over. You'd assume that might send a message to the remaining ducks that their chosen place to sleep is less than ideal, but they're entirely unfazed as to why their comrades sometimes wake up dead in a mess of duck guts and feathers the next morning.

America's voters are like those ducks.

This sort of drama was fairly prevalent in the iOS jailbreaking scene even before AI. The issue was mostly that whatever exploit you found, it would get patched right away anyway, so it ultimately ended up being less about producing something neat that the average user could play with and more about bragging rights between the folks finding and implementing the exploits.

Or just buy the "smart" TV and don't connect it to the internet? I fail to see the issue here.

It's sold as a gaming console. At no point does Sony give the impression that you're buying anything buy a gaming console. Additionally, keeping the system secure is typically considered a desirable aspect of a gaming platform, since it's not really all that much fun to play online against people who are using cheats and/or hacked player profiles.

Granted, I do think gaming consoles should be unlocked by the manufacturer once they reach the end of their supported lifespan, as the hardware could then be repurposed for other uses (and wouldn't just end up a useless brick once the servers shut down).

Can't forget the parody, which was incorrectly attributed to Weird Al back in the Napster days (along with just about every parody song).

You did not just diss Dole Whip? That stuff is the frozen nectar of the Gods when you've been walking around for hours in the hot Florida sun.

That market seems to be pretty saturated. Around here it feels like they passed an ordinance that every strip mall must have at least one smoke shop (with the obligatory obnoxiously bright LED signs saying things like "VAPE", "KRATOM", "THC", etc.)

Most of us here should be old enough to remember when people tried to do serious work under Microsoft Windows in the MS-DOS era, and it crashed if you looked at it funny. Another amusing "it's never going to work" technology story was the development of lithium ion batteries. Early attempts to design a working cell kept going up in flames - literally.

It was even one of the old running gags in Disney's Carousel of Progress that new technologies were inherently buggy.
"But we do have television - when it works."

Hell when I worked at Radio Shack as a teenager, the store had all the typical things you'd expect a Radio Shack to have and it was still rare to see any customers. That was still a well known retail chain at the time, too.

Presumably if the store does sell any cars, they're of the toy variety. Though in this economy, $1 for a toy car is still a win.

Haven't you seen Idiocracy? Fox lets Pete and Bernie on their network every once in awhile so their viewers can point and laugh at the "faggot" and the "communist". These people don't even hear the argument, they just see the caricatures Fox has created for them.