All the automakers have to say is that the DMCA is present here, and because it is a treaty, it overrides any RtR laws, then sue in a Federal court to hammer this point home.

RtR is dead. It means IP gets violated, people who can second guess engineers try hacking stuff (look at how people blow up Ford EcoBoost engines with stupid tunes), lawsuits when someone tries to repair it, and shareholder lawsuits when there is less revenue coming in from repairs then replacements. Yes, shareholders can sue if a company allows for repairs.

One word: Offshore. It was the best thing that happened to the IT industry, where you could move stuff to India, or get H-1Bs when local US people were too dumb or lazy to take a job.

Just hire some Bollywood writers, some actors from there, and use deepfake to slap a "white" looking face on them. Done, next blockbuster hit.

You don't get anywhere by "marginal" changes. Banning ICE vehicles and going EV or nothing is how you actually get things accomplished. If people can't buy an ICE vehicle, they can always use a bicycle, and get in better shape anyway, or use public transportation.

The Second Amendment is going to be amended by Newsom's 28'th amendment. In the real world, reasonable gun laws like NYC, where if someone has a gun or even a brass casing, they enjoy 12-18 months at Rikers before they even see a judge, is what is expanding. Washingon and Oregon are doing well in banning assault weapons, and it is only a matter of time before the US just does a wholesale ban on gun ownership like Venezuela, Japan, North Korea, and Saudi Arabia, with the UN and the Small Arms Treaty enforcing it. (Sad to say, people expecting the dudes with the blue UN helmets asking to "hand 'em over" to be American... nope, they will be Turkish, Syrian, or from a country that has never heard of a Second Amendment, and doesn't care about it.)

School just started this week, and we already have had ten mass shootings here in the US.

Just like with any striking organization, just replace them. You can find just as good acting and writing talent outside the unions, and they might be able to do better with new blood anyway. Or, just use non-union labor and AI to make the same blockbuster films with more profit. Nobody really cares who is wearing the Spiderman suit anyway.

Ask the people around Chernobyl. Nuke plants either have melted down, or will melt down. Now talk to me about "dirty air."

Perhaps it is because nuclear never gets back the energy it takes to build a nuke plant in the first place, or that if a coolant pump fails, you have a meltdown heading for the water table? Wake me up when you can have a reactor in a stable condition, even if the coolant can't be pushed around. There is a lot of talk about thorium reactors and such, but those are still great on paper, right next to the dudes spinning magnets around for zero point energy and flux capacitors.

Fossil fuels work, but they keep the lights on and the air conditioners running. Germany is wise to have abandoned nuclear.

For most Americans, their biggest store of value is a paycheck and what is in the checking account. Which is eaten away by inflation. Deflation, on the other hand, allows money to be an intrinsic store of value, and not something that slowly evaporates, transferring value to the rich who have the privilege of not being worried about cash, but can store other investment vehicles. The closest an average Joe has to this is Bitcoin... which is ironically perhaps a reason why it is being regulated to death.

Good luck regulating them. At the worst, it would be another Prohibition, as people use TOR or even offline validation. It just seems like as soon as Bitcoin wasn't going skywards, governments found an excuse to pounce on it and blame it for the economy, and try to drive everyone away from it. Governments know that maybe China or North Korea might succeed in banning crypto-currencies, it means evolution of better ones that make Monero and Zcash look like amateur attempts for anonymous transactions.

An overpriced telescope doesn't mean much compared to actual landings on the object and ability to set up a base there. Obviously, you have not read, "The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress", to see why having the ultimate high ground is a useful thing. Even North Korea is sending stuff to the moon.

Some people take pride in whittling a dowel into mini totem poles. It doesn't really matter. The small farmers are an ecological waste compared to a company that actually knows what they are doing with maximizing returns from the soil. The government could do a lot with the money wasted on farm subsidies.

Just because you failed to make it on the loot train when BTC was in the hundreds doesn't mean you need to bash it for everyone. Wait until the end of the year, and BTC likely will be in the six digit range, especially when the US government is shut down.

There is a reason why central banks love inflation. The rich don't have their value in money. They have it in real estate and other things. Poorer people's main value store are paychecks, where if they are constantly losing value, it is a wealth transfer. This is why China's deflationary recession will be a lot less damaging to their economy than the inflationary recession in the US. If someone has currency in a mattress in China, they can still afford stuff. The currency under a mattress in the US is always worth less and less.

Cryptocurrencies bypass that, and allow people to have cryptographically secure means of wealth storage, without having to deal with KYC/AML or someone always spying on every single transaction you do. Especially if you tumble, or use a currency like ZCash or Monero.

Please, explain to me why cryptocurrencies are more dangerous than stocks or bonds.

Cryptocurrencies have been the biggest vehicle of wealth in human history, and they constitute a major, if not majority part of economic trading. Currencies like Bitcoin have a proof of energy spent built in, and are deflationary currencies (you know, the central bankers HATE deflation because it means people making a paycheck have their money grow and not shrink over time.) Even Bitcoin with all the worldwide government pogroms against it is holding its own, and the much-maligned NFT market is doing strong. Stuff like BAYC NFTs are still selling for hundreds of ETH. Even Trump's Truth Social NFTs fly off the shelves as soon as an offering is made, and series 2 already came and went.

To make a long story short, they are too big and well entrenched to fail, and in the long term, only go up as people lose their Bitcoin wallets.

Wonder when the US will bother flying back to the Moon.