Well, I don't think its irrelevant. I learned years ago that the US has power outages regularly, and much of the developed world, such as Europe, does not. Europeans coming here and experiencing this are appalled. We should be appalled, but are used to it. There's really no excuse, it just isn't that hard, other than being short on generating power. We need to build more of those over a more diverse area so we don't need quite so much long distance transmission.

You can work with AI models, that's great, but there's folks that are better at working with their hands, and factory jobs are their pot of gold. Manufacturing pays blue-collar folks better wages than almost anything else they can do. There's lots of them, so if we can get the manufacturing ramped up here, the labor participation rate will also go way up, there'll be lots more people with lots more money, and they'll pay lots more taxes, and maybe get our economy out of deficit spending, and maybe even start paying down the debt. We have to do this, or the economy will literally crash and burn. We're on a path over a cliff, and I don't think AI models is going to turn the wagon, you need stuff that the non-laboratory workers can make good coin at too.

Yeah, I'm ancient, but personally remember the 60's, and prosperity was there, and it was because of manufacturing. The income taxes basically nuked the manufacturing, and are the reason for the rust belt. Get rid of them and maybe we have a chance for prosperity for everybody, not just the lab rats or the coding geeks.

Ding, ding, ding! Winner winner, chicken dinner.

The economy is going to have to start coughing up real cash. But it is hard to do when the country gets flooded with 20 million poor people who will say "Si" to any low-ball, dirt-bag wage, while the other side of the coin is the heavy industrial jobs that left the country in the 80's and 90;s, and took big fat blue-collar paychecks with them.

We need a complete turnaround on several fronts, my personal candidate to effect them is the FairTax, but you've heard that from me before. Rocket engines on the economy, etc., etc. but I believe its true.

But this "service jobs" bulls*** of retailing and anything except building something is not going to pull the country up by the bootstraps and provide a high-wage society that CAN provide the taxes necessary, without oppression, to nuke the deficit and then start rolling back the debt. Build it and they will come. Manufacture. And manufacture some more, until we get back to the 60's where 1 paycheck supported the whole family. I think it can be done, but not by offering the public crap wages. They need to be great wages, that cause the individual to be able to buy, buy, buy, and under the FairTax, the buying is what's taxed, only the non-impoverished can do it, and so no poor person pays a penny of FairTax but it will provide a way out of the current mess. USA becomes the manufacturing world's tax haven, foreign business executives injure themselves in the stampede to build (untaxed) factories in the USA, and then employ Americans at decent wages that spend on baubles and balance the budget. Oh, and they don't "leave the workforce" because their crap-wage job won't pay for the car, gas, and child-care to be able to do it.

"You know, like every one else in government."

Not everyone else in government was Secretary of State, where lots of classified got routed into her "server in a closet." Of course that is "insecure" and an actual violation of the espionage act, and no, you don't have to break those laws intentionally, its more like negligent homicide when you don't take proper care when wielding a weapon or driving a car without due regard for safety. You don't have to intend to violate the espionage act, you can do it just by being careless with classified.

So, it was not like some gov't employee not in the classified world using his private server for gov't business, this was "classified stuff." That was the difference.

No, I wouldn't think of getting on the highway without fastening my seat belt. I sometimes, very slowly, navigate a parking lot at McDonald's because I'm just driving to the trash can to deposit my drive-thru bag for the food I received, and am going to get out of the car within the next 150 feet. Otherwise, seat belt every time. Its air bags I object to having to pay for. Have never been in a situation where they would have been an advantage, and that includes 62 years of driving.

Also, folks seem to drive into deep water completely without the help of a map of any sort.

Yeah, other cars also have rear windows that are absent or useless, like the 1963 Corvette "Split Window" coupe that also could not be used as emergency egress. But there's no reason to be planning more such cars. And rear-view cameras and displays are a good thing, but they don't have to replace the rear window completely.

You just drove into a lake. The car is going down nose-first. The bystanders would like to rescue you, but that rear access that is still above water for the moment is not available.

...to the benefit of the American people.

The FairTax is essentially a luxury tax on new goods and services sold at retail.

The poor pay $0 FairTax.

The FairTax completely abolishes ALL the income taxes - personal, payroll, corporate, capital gains, self-employment, gift, alternative minimum, estate, all of them.

Prices of American-made good fall by 18% - 22% due to being free of the income taxes during their manufacture.

Prices of foreign goods do not fall at all.

The FairTax exclusive rate of 30% is applied to both the domestic manufactured products and the foreign manufactured products.

The domestic product ends up at about the same price as it was before. The foreign product ends up about 30% higher.

The world's business executives injure themselves in a stampede to build factories in the tax-free USA.

Much higher paying factory jobs raise the wages of Americans dramatically, while the burger restaurants and big box retailers raise wages just to pry some help off the factory floor.

The much richer American people happily become bauble-buyers of more expensive things, accelerating the collection of the FairTax.

The FairTax raises revenue to be able to nuke the deficit, then begins to pay down the debt.

And that's the ONLY way I can see that the debt ever has a chance to be paid, since there's nothing that we can similarly cut to balance the budget without killing a lot of folks. Medicare and Social Security cuts would kill a lot of folks, and they're the only things that cost enough to nuke the deficit.

In Michigan's upper Peninsula, one out to build their data center in a waterproof tube, submerge it in lake Superior, and never worry about cooling it again.

"Require closed-loop cooling instead of evaporative."

Then you get big fans that sound like a WW2 propellor-driven 4-engine bomber making racket 24/7/365 as actual fans force the not-all-that-cool air (here in Texas, anyway, where ambient can be 106 degrees Mid July to late September) and drive everyone absolutely over the edge.

Had this one fellow at the Subaru dealer in Fredericksburg, Va. He would do anything to make me happy. Found exactly what I was looking for, got me great prices, bought 2 WRX's off him. One of the few downsides to leaving the Fredericksburg area (always hated the weather, now hate the politics too), was losing him as my salesman since I feel the "need for speed" coming on in the form of yet another WRX.

They're not going to capture that sort of relationship with AI. They just aren't.

10 over AVERAGE is hard. It's not hard to do 75 in a 65, but it's hard to average 75. I keep trying to get my speed up, and at the end of the day, when I get 800 miles down the road, what's my average? 60. or 65. or something thereabouts. And it appears useless for catching people at the bottoms of hills doing 85 'cuz they're just dead-footing. All the cute little traps the cops set like that won't much show in average speed. Lets see who wants to scrap it first, the public or the cops!

Life seems to me to be one big war with boredom as the enemy. When young, I was in a constant state of battle for "something to do." At one point, I had an impressive collection of Popular Mechanics, Popular Science, and to a lesser extent Hot Rod Magazines that I would read, sometimes multiple times on the same articles, or even dissecting the ads for the X-ray glasses. It seems like a solution to tell kids to "go outside and play", but "outside" is often a failure due to temperature, precipitation, and lack of others to do outside with.

A smart phone doesn't require the presence of others. They can be safe in their own spaces, secure from the 106 degrees or 14 degrees outside, the wet or the ice, and still be available over the internet for some kind of game to fight boredom with. Take that away, and what is your weapon to do battle with boredom? Is it healthy, safe, and legal? "Idle hands are the devil's tool" is an admonishment rooted it truth, as substituting something else for the smart phone can give rise to not so desirable alternatives.

Possibly the "banners" are thinking of Johnny instead working to conjugate some Latin verbs, or learn nuclear physics. Possibly the "banners" aren't thinking at all. And maybe they need to think about unintended consequences when simply hurling another "don't do this" at someone else's weapon against boredom. Should it be a requirement for anyone attempting to ban anything to provide a solution that solves the same problems of that which is banned? Maybe. I'd like to see what some of those that currently are all hot to stick it to "big oil" would come up with to solve our transportation and petrochemical products benefits without the oil.

Yes, someone should work on making that possible. They do it with the premium channels, but not the standard ones or the local broadcast stations. They're going to continue to oblivion unless they think of something like that, but the hardware to get it done might also be too expensive.

Cable is easier than streaming. I could find programming 2 weeks in advance thru their catalog of programming, I had their DVR's in 3 rooms and almost all the premium channels that they offered. I miss the convenience. I hate turning on the TV and having to make the Roku navigate to Sling, then my favorite channel. Turn off the TV while watching my favorite channel on cable, and when turning it on again, my favorite channel is right there on the screen.

With me, it's just a money thing. Cable was freakin' expensive. $310 a month. As stated, 3 DVR's in 3 different rooms, nearly all the premiums. Plus high speed internet service which was actually pretty good, except they were particularly inept at keeping it working. Between having it go down... and up... and down... and up to the point I had to have my Verizon "MiFI" hotspot ready while playing online poker because the cable's internet dropped out so often, and then an outrageous 10 hour interruption for scheduled maintenance on a Sunday morning - yes, I was using the cable that Sunday morning - I did what I really didn't want to do, and went streaming.

Again, I miss cable. I just don't miss $300+ per month, I think I have most of the streaming services I want and fiber internet provided by the power company and all comes in the low $200's. They haven't yet had a 10 hour scheduled maintenance interruption. But its harder to use, and I actually tried and failed to find the Coca Cola 600 the evening of the Indy 500 that I did find and watch. I think it was on Paramount+ which I had, and just didn't know to look there. Or it may have been on Peacock, I get those two mixed up sometimes. But what I didn't get was the Coca Cola 600. I wouldn't have missed the Coca Cola 600 on cable.

And cable's technical changes that nuked Tivo also was a downer. The cable company I had before moving to Texas, in King George County, Virginia was implemented with Tivo provided by the cable company itself. It was a dream of a system with a main receiver and 2 satellites for the 3 rooms I wanted TV's in. You could be watching a movie, switch rooms, turn on the TV, and continue watching the same movie from the same position in it that you left it where you 1st turned it on. Fabulous system.

Not sure cable can ever come back, it's just frightfully expensive. Stringing expensive wire on poles you have to pay rent on and with greedy local TV channels charging the cable company for their signal I think just doesn't work for the average person's wallet. I _could_ afford it, I just don't want to while there's the alternative of streaming. I just wish streaming was as convenient as cable.

We have a nice little 6-screen theater about 2.5 miles driving from my house. I used to say, "I see everything", but now just "almost everything."

The theater itself is marvelous. Near lay-flat, very, very soft plushy upholstered recliners, everything is spotlessly clean, and I just love it.

The movies themselves seem to have found myriad ways to piss me off. Or bore me. The big "Marvel Universe" goes and kills off a CHARACTER. I'm especially peeved about Iron Man. Somewhat less so about Captain America, although he's not really exactly dead, just fairly useless now. Then there's woke - really idiotic crap that has me wondering whether the moviemakers are really that stupid, or they just think I am. And I don't really thing they're stupid. Worst woke was a TV series I was going to watch, 1st episode opens with the female captain and the female 1st officer journeying out to do hand to hand battle with Klingons. Kirk / Spock would barely survive, these ladies would have been dismembered. Never watched another episode of it. Just stupid. Female-dominated Star Wars sequels ditto.

And of course there are my friends with kids / grandkids that they won't let near a film without reviewing the heck out of it first since you can't even trust Disney any more to be "clean" / "straight" etc. like the Boy Scout Oath says.

Right now, there's a horror flick, "The Bride" which I was all set to see, when I read someone saying "woke." Now I'm a bit worried that it'd just tic me off. Have to find some reviews...

But the fare on the screen is not trustworthy to a large extent, and not really spectacular like it used to be. I mean, "The Magnificent Seven", the original, was spectacular. It had some spectacular people. Maybe Tombstone is its equal, but its been a while for that, too.

I went to the theater yesterday and the day before. Scream 7 and Hoppers. Scream was as silly as always but a decent way to kill 2 hours as long as you're not expecting masterful performing art. Hoppers was cute but the compelling theme of, "Progress is bad", "The environment", etc. was just a bit disappointing. Funny if you can ignore the anti-progress message.