"only 60% of Americans know how to drive a manual transmission (according to a survey from auto parts retailer AmericanMuscle)"

1) that seems like 60% of the readers of American Muscle
2) 'know how to' is covering a lot of ground here. "Knows how to start a stick, and how to probably get it moving from level ground with 25% of killing it" maybe. Can confidently and reliably drive with a stick, knowing basic techniques? 25% or less, certainly.

Having a stick shift is 100% the simplest security system you can have on a car in the US in 2026. Your car might still get broken into, but they'll abandon it quickly.

Unfortunately, afaik red dwarf stars are so cool that any planet in their liquid water zone are also almost certainly tidally locked.
Not saying that doesn't make it habitable (as ample science fiction authors have imagined alternatives) just that that might make the challenge harder.

Then again, life finds a way.

... expect the solution to be no more movies "sales," just rentals with a fixed time limit, either "until [date master license expires/is up for renewal]" or "some number of weeks/years".

Another solution will be to shift to a "library access" model, which is already common. At least that will be understandable by the general public: Most people know that brick-and-mortar public libraries retire old books to make way for newer ones.

As for existing complaints, the best hope consumers have is that some law firm will successfully argue that the fine print is too buried to create an enforceable contract, then reach a settlement that gives consumers some partial credit depending on how long they had access to their purchase, with vanishingly-low credit if the purchase was more than a few years ago.

When it comes to AI, I expect there will be many years between any credible, widely-recognized claim of sentience and the time when more than a few countries recognize "human rights" for them, if it happens at all.

Having sentience is not required for most people to say "this person/entity deserves human rights," and such rights are routinely granted to non-sentient individuals or entities:

We rightfully give legal human rights to people with medical conditions that render them not self-aware and not intelligent in any meaningful way (e.g. newborns with severe anencephaly, who may only have a brain stem and may only live a few minutes), because they part of a larger class (people) who by definition are supposed to have human rights.

We give limited "person rights" to corporations and other legal entities, but they only exist as legal fiction.

We do not give "basic human rights" to primates, dogs, dolphins, octopuses, and other animals even though there are examples of each that are arguably smarter and more self-aware than a typical 4 year old child. Even in the USA, dogs - "Man's best friend" - are routinely killed (albeit humanely) in some animal shelters for no reason other than the shelter they are in is too full.

In some countries and periods of history, we don't even give "basic human rights" to all healthy adults (e.g. repressed political minorities, children, the ill, the elderly, slaves, women, etc.).

In short, being sentient doesn't mean you get legally-protected human rights, and you (rightfully) may get legally-protected human rights even if you, as an individual, are not self-aware and show no signs of being intelligent.

First, let's note the referenced article IS A SALES PITCH.
Second, electrical outages are a normal thing in a storm prone country. The "outages" aren't news, it's only meaningful if they're growing more frequent.
The article asks plaintively "is this the new normal" without ever establishing what the old normal was.

When taking into account the higher population and higher electrical demand per person, are large blackouts becoming more common in the US?
Per ai: no.

"The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) tracks Bulk Power System (BPS) performance annually in its State of Reliability (SOR) reports. Key takeaways from the 2025 SOR (covering 2024 data):

The BPS "remains highly reliable and resilient." Core metrics like frequency response, misoperations, and many transmission outage categories are stable or improving.
Severe weather (hurricanes, winter storms) caused the most impactful outages, as in prior years. In 2024, events like Hurricanes Helene and Milton led to millions of (mostly distribution-level) customer outages, but BES restoration was often faster than historical averages for similar storms due to hardening efforts. No major operator-initiated load shed during key winter events.
There were notable events, but the Severity Risk Index (SRI) and other indicators do not show a clear upward trend in frequency or severity of large-scale BPS disruptions when viewed over multiple years. Distribution outages (local, below 100 kV) are more visible to customers and can be widespread, but they are outside NERC's primary jurisdiction."

I fully agree our policies toward the increasingly critical electrical grid infrastructure are incoherent. That's said: quit buying into advertisers insisting the world is ending and here's some snake oil that will fix it.

1) there's no feedback of any value, at least not worth the effort. Any post can be immediately swarmed by bots or by humans that are little more than such. It happens here; you might be posting about the functionality of light switches and you'll get 5 anon posts about being a MAGA cuck and how it's Trump's fault; likewise you might post asking legit questions about data centers and have 5 anon posts calling you a communist woke traitor. Why bother connecting your brain to social media if all you're getting back is digital feces?

2) I've just spent much less time online anyway; I've decided to practice what I preach and - unless I'm actually doing something like ordering food, etc - I simply put my phone away when there are other humans present that I might interact with. At all. On a tram, in a waiting room. I am ready to engage other people, and if they don't choose to I've welcomed being alone with my thoughts again instead of being constantly bemused by some bit of celebrity news I couldn't give a shite about.

It's simple addiction, based on a very low-entry, socially approved neural anesthesia.
Think Trainspotting writ small, played out in public where every time the family stops moving, Mom or Dad (or more often, both) pop out their phones to "just check some things".

Ah, but you may be mistaken about the point.
If you're talking about the simple physical reality it accomplishing the task of detection, well sure, it might be impossible. But if you recognize the point isn't to detect nukes but to gain nearly infinite streams of funding based on ok-perhaps-it's-implausible-but-hear-me-out -nukes-are-scary, well sir that certainly is within our reach.

Thanks 1977. Glad you could join us.

I understood that (we deduced) humans were generally more of a hijacker/scavenger for most of our history, only developing sophisticated cooperative hunting techniques relatively late in the process.

Wow great links, thanks!