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.

To really foul things up requires a computer.

Paper ballots... #2 pencil... Humans counting. There, all fixed.

Can they do that? Sure, they can skew the clock later, but, then what happens? Will the folks affected by sending their kids off into the darkness in the winter start changing the school time to an hour later? If so, will businesses begin changing their hours to an hour later to accommodate the folks that are taking their kids to school and picking them up. Will the whole system slowly shift under the weight of each complaint that rises in the winters so's that, eventually, they'll have year-round standard time? I think maybe.

And with standard time, that stuff you used to get done in the evenings, lawns, leaves, even gardening and hedges, all if the implements make a noise, you won't be able to instead do that work at, say, 6 AM. Try it. Start your 28 horsepower twin cylinder lawn tractor at 6 AM and rev all 3 of those blades in the cutting deck, and see how many calls you get from neighbors to knock of that racket.

So, taking car of the property could get hard because you may not be able to do it in the morning, and you may have to set up lights to be able to do it in the evening.

So what happens then? You're stuck with mowing and gardening and hedging and so forth on the weekends. You know, when you want to be out on the golf course. Or at the beach. Or with someone you don't much get to see during the week. Or maybe you do, and want to talk business during the 18 holes.

Lessee if this works the way they think it will. Like the Princess Bride, "You keep using that word! I do not think it means what you think it means."

I can stand an elevated price for the charger in the middle of nowhere. I'd use it maybe twice or 3 times in a weekend. Then the 1200 mile trip I took to get to the boonies (I have a specific use-case in mind involving competitive driving (yeah, it's all legal)) will be well-served by major roadways. This use case is admittedly rare, but again I believe that people are so diverse that there will be a plethora of specific use cases that also dictate a need for "charging everywhere."

"The vast, vast majority of Americans don't live in "remote areas". They live in towns with infrastructure, "

This town of 12,000 has a gas station within walking distance of the house, and a fast 24 hour charger a 35 mile drive away. I fortunately have a garage and could charge at home. But then here's the weird places I drive to that are also in the boonies and a problem for finding charging.

There are 2 solutions.

One is the touted solid state battery that results in a 700 - 900 mile range. Then we don't need a fast charger close to whever-we-are.

The other is having a fast charger wherever-we-are, to include the remotest place we currently find gas dispensing nozzles.

Either of those would allow EV's to take off and dominate. I'd really, really, really like to have an EV because of the blindingly cheap fuel, as well as the blinding acceleration. But as long as I have to "fill up" in a big city, drive to a small city like the one I'm sitting it, and drive around it and out in the country for maybe 600 miles on a weekend, I have to have a car with fueling wherever I happen to be. Right now, that's gasoline. Only. And you can say, "Oh, you're a special case" and it's true, but I think there are an array of special cases like towing and ridiculous cold and such that will keep EV's from taking over the market untill everyone's little problems are solved. If you don't solve the customer's problem, he'll buy from someone who will, and that someone's selling a V8.

"What do you do for income spent on goods outside the US? "

The tax is owed. Responsibility for paying it lies with the purchaser. Enforcement would be done by customs in most cases.

"A consumption tax would eliminate much of the IRS. "

By the FairTax law, 100%.

"A pure consumption tax is regressive"

The FairTax is not a pure consumption tax.

"Income-tax regressivity is fixed by exempting the first ~$25,000 or so of income."

The payroll tax component of the income tax is probably the most regressive tax on the planet, and would be eliminated by the FairTax, as would Capital Gains, Corporate, individual, alternative minimum, self employment, gift, estate, etc.

...advocate a 100% personnel reduction at the IRS, since it is entirely unnecessary when replaced by a voluntary system where everyone contributes as much tax as they agree to pay. It's called the FairTax.

"Selfish Americans."

Everyone is going to buy the vehicle that best suits their wants and desires. If someone has a big boat or travel trailer to tug around, they're not likely to buy an EV. If like me they have a lot of driving where few chargers exist, they will not buy an EV. If we want to make the country 100% EV, we have to make the EV to be the best choice for everyone's driving situation. Gas cars achieved it and got everyone off their horses. Now it's EV's turn to blow away the convenience of gas cars with better convenience. EV's have to improve some more to do it.

"If you're driving greater than 300 miles in a day,"

I not rarely drive in excess of 1000 miles in a day. That is, several times a yeart. Adding significant time for charging would preclude such achievement.

"Also, I think every EV has a route planner,"

As I said, sometimes I can't plan it, I just have to follow a route that someone else has planned. For instance:

I sometimes put on SCCA National Road Rallies. When they are put on, it is customary to put on 2 on a weekend. They are a minimum of 180 miles by the rules. I would attempt to make mine about 250.

Road rallies involve legal speeds on open roads and highways, but have a driving profile that dramatically lowers miles per gallon. They repeatedly start and stop, and tend to accelerate more rapidly than normal driving, as well as being on roads that often climb and descend hills while containing tight turns. These features make my 25 mpg highway mileage into about a 16 mpg rally mileage car.

I assume that the 64% mileage attribute would be reflected in an EV as well, so a 900 mile EV would likely be a 576 mile rally car.

There are no “fast” public chargers in my town of residence, a 12,000 population town with supposedly a fast charger on a Chevy dealer’s lot, but that is closed most of the time. Plus, the charge rate is 75 cents per KwH, which is pretty outrageous considering home charging in the area is about 16 cents per KwH.

So, the car would have to run the 2 rallies which would consume 500 miles of the 576 rally miles it could drive, by fast charging in the nearest city with one which is 35 miles away, run the first rally with no opportunity to charge overnight except for maybe 1 level 2 charger at one motel that I could find, and then run the other 250 mile rally. After that, they would have to start the next day and drive the 35 miles to the fast charger after checking out of the headquarters motel, so they would have 76 miles of driving range, which luckily would be actual 118 miles of range under normal, non-rally conditions, so it would be barely doable.

And that’s with a car rated at 900 miles of EV range.

So, I either need a car with an insane amount of range, or I need a fast charger for every gas nozzle in the country, located where the gas nozzles are currently located, even if it is outside the Ma and Pa General Store in Bug Tussle.

"You don't take a reasonable break every 4 hours?"

Sure, but I don't always refuel and there are lots of breaks where there is no fuel, like interstate highway rest areas. I get close to 400 miles on a tank of gas, sometimes a bit over 400. So I only have to have a gas station where I need it once in a 700 mile trip like 'Vegas to El Paso. And there's tons of gas stations. I'd need maybe 3 - 4 chargers, and they are like hens teeth to find the fast ones without consulting an app. I can consult an app when following interstates, but not when charging around the countryside all day. There just aren't many fast chargers outside big cities. My 12,000 population town here has gas in walking distance of my house, but a 24 hour fast charger is a 35 mile drive. If I had just happened upon my home town when cutting cross-country, not on interstates, I better have 35 more miles of juice or things will get ugly.

Either we have a fast charger for every gas nozzle in the country so we don't have to plan gas stops (because some folks are following courses set by others without regard to charging), or the cars themselves have to have insanely long ranges like 750 - 900 miles so's we can make do with the rare density of fast chargers.

I say fast chargers because nothing else is any good when you're trying to cover 100's of miles in a day. You can't sit around for an hour every 200 - 250 miles and have an equivalent-to-gas-car experience. Lots of folks do long drives at least once or twice a year, and will be reluctant to buy a car that won't do it, or does it poorly at hours added to the trip. They'll just buy a gas car and not look back.

I desperately want to own and EV due to the blindingly cheap fuel, but I do unusually long trips unusually often. Just a few weeks ago, I drove central Texas to Las Vegas to flee the predicted ice storm. 1300 miles in 2 days. Do I want to recharge every 250 miles or so? No. My current ride, on the way back ('cuz it's the one I remember fuel stops for) refueled south of Phoenix, at the overnight in El Paso, and once between El Paso and home. I didn't have to plan the refuelings, I just looked up in the air and there was an "Exxon" or "Speedway" or "Circle K" sign. Planning refuels would be a PITA, so no thanks.