Scooters and motorcycles are the worst. The number of loud, smoke belching scooters on European city streets is absolutely staggering.

I am extremely surprised by this article, since I see the huge increase of incidence of autism in post-generation-X children as something that would invalidate what it preaches. Or is autism not considered to be a mental disorder?

Standard of living is down?? Every fucking child in America has a cell phone with $50/month unlimited data plan. Janitors drive $50k SUVs. Many people hardly ever eat at home -- they can afford Doordash meals at $50 a pop. They own houses they use as ATMs because real estate keeps going up. Every vice is readily available -- from OF to legal marihuana. Women don't clean or cook anymore -- they have other people handle these unfun tasks. Most new homes in America have CENTRAL air conditioning. No one in America has to conserve electricity, or gas, or water, or gasoline -- they are all so cheap that people don't even give these things a second thought. Americans are loud about gas prices but the truth is the prices are extremely low, to the point of car manufacturers completely abandoning whole market segments of economy vehicles due to lack of demand.

> If we left it to the insurance companies, they would probably identify the cost savings of killing off the elderly and be done with it

The obvious conflict of interest here is obvious and palpable. However, there is a sinister other side of the medal. The elderly are literally used by the providers (doctors, hospitals, provider networks, all of whom are for profit businesses in the US) as ATMs. If someone is covered by Medicare (and often dual eligible for Medicaid), is old and senile, has no relatives who care enough to advocate for them, they will endure inhumane end of life full of unnecessary painful procedures, expensive drug therapies with little tangible benefit or any hope of recovery. You may think that this is the exception to the rule, but I KNOW the statistics from my job and they are not pretty. This happens ALL THE TIME. I have seen extremely invasive unnecessary and debilitating surgeries performed on elderly Medicare patients in order to get the generous Medicare payouts. As soon as Medicare gold mine is exhausted, the patient is dumped into hospice care. Again, the prevalence of these unnecessary treatments for financial gain is not in single percentage points. And don't get me started on Pharmaceutical companies. Check out efficacy statistics on some of the most expensive new chemotherapy agents that have been approved recently. There are some real eye openers.

I tried to lease an Envista. It was cheap to buy at $25k loaded and we really liked it. However, lease payment on it was way too high. Ended up with a loaded Alfa Romeo Tonale Ti. Very similar to the Envista, with a six speed auto and 1.3l Turbo. Lease payment on the Alfa was 2/3 of the Buick.

Google should implement RCS in their own messaging product, Google Voice, before judging others.

Matthew 7:3-5:

“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.

Why do we need EVs to look like conventional cars? Why can't we come up with a better configuration to enable quick and easy battery swaps? For example, design a modular battery that is easy to detach and is universal between manufacturers. Use some kind of tandem trailer configuration that makes it easy to drive up to a "battery station", unhook your depleted trailer and hook up a fully charged one.

The one person from Indonesia I know calls his language "Indonesian" :)

MC points to Soviet/Russian actors. Anyone CS educated in that region has a hardon for MC.