Well put. I'd add to the cold calculations, waymo has been caught 19 times passing school busses in Austin. And they have calculated that they will not be subject to the rule of law. I don't trust them at all. I've never done that (the penalty is quite extreme, I am super careful around school busses) and if I had done it 19 times, I'd be without a license. And in TX, if I had done it once, and hit that child as they just did in Santa Monica, prison time. Even though no real injury, prison time.

I doubt the ICE agents have wives, well at least not blow up ones. Kids maybe, contrary to repub talking points, rape does sometimes end in a pregnancy.

Somehow I am more ok with engineers working on war products than software to addict children. One I see is necessary, the other I see as just sick. Sorry zuk, it takes some kind of special sociopath to do what you do. Even Dexter managed to make his gruesome tendencies for good, although granted it was fiction.

Well I did grow up in the 60's/70's, a different time, a time where youth rebelled against things like the Vietnam war and watergate.

As an aside, like your tagline, I enjoyed 3rd rock a great deal.

What kind of amazes me is that they find programmers willing to do this kind of code. I've done scientific code for all my life, so not something I had to consider. I think though if I knew that my code was doing shit like this, I'd find another job. And the employees almost have to know. This is the kind of stuff that gets talked about in break rooms.

Tunnels in situations like this always makes me think of Hogan's Heroes and their very unrealistic tunnel network in a German prison camp.

I'd add to that tesla has a large presence in China. Now what kind of control would one expect Xi to be able to assert over musk? Not like Xi is afraid of billionaires that get to uppity. Jack Mao seemed to get much less vocal after something happened. Not saying as far as a re-education camp, but I expect something happened to adjust his views.

You'd like to believe that and yet you have the dummies at the Pentagon using Signal and including a reporter in the group chat. https://www.bbc.com/news/live/... You really can't make this stuff up. Those dumbasses were 100% responsible for what happened. 100%.

And as someone who decades ago had a generic clearance, I'm disgusted. Back then even a peon like me was told repeatedly what you could and could not do. And they always reminded us at the time it was an offence that had the death penalty on the table. You better believe I followed the rules. If a doc was not to leave the room, it did not. If a doc was marked to not be copied, it was not copied. Only people that needed to know had a discussion. The security guys are pretty damn good. It is the top level people who just don't get it. Hilliary with her email server, trump with his docs at maro. And these absolute morons who did the signal thing. And then you have stuff like trump saying I can just declassify by thinking about it shit. I imagine many of the security people are like WTF. Why even bother. These dumbfucks will just blab it to anyone willing to listen.

CNBC has a great headline today, "Never interrupt your adversary when he’s making a mistake’: Why Beijing isn’t rushing to answer Trump’s tariff broadside" https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/2...

I expect China is figuring out they don't need to do much anymore to destroy the west. We do it to ourselves.

Musk is so desperate to "market" their FSD as level4/5 that tesla has removed the "safety" monitor from the robotaxis in Austin to a car that is following the robotaxi for not if, but when it does the wrong thing. https://electrek.co/2026/01/22... So "marketing" is pushing the illusion the tech is better than it is. People have died from this illusion.

This may end badly for lemonade. A neighbor down the street had an S. He is currently fighting with insurance. I'm puzzled, insurance has totaled it with a decent payout. He wants to buy it back but they won't let him. I and most neighbors who saw the damage are incredulous. It looked like maybe the front quarterpanel might need to be replaced. Damage was so light I could have believed quarterpanel could have been repaired. And the wheel also had rash and would likely need replacing. Instead, totaled because some irreparable damage. He was driving it up until insurance got it. So at least in this one case, the S was a very expensive claim for what was a very minor accident. Airbags did not fire. He hit a curb at a low speed. And he checks all those boxes.

Check if it is a SEP. I did one eons ago and the limits are 25% of salary up to the specified limit of 72K. I don't remember it being called a 401K back when I did it. There are some rules, but they usually work great for freelancers. I had some good years where I put away a decent amount and other years that were quite sparse. Like most retirement things easy to raise/lower contribution depending on how good a year you have, which for freelancers tends to be volatile.

I sort of lump all of SoCal together (add SD). With that the number rises to 1/3rd. https://coloradosun.com/2025/0...

No the distribution overhead still exists unless you want to drive over to the desal plant with a water truck to pick it up. My local water co pays a fraction of the price for water that they charge, 48c/1000 gal. I pay anywhere from 3.50 to 10, excluding the connect charge. They have an aggressive rate structure to discourage usage.

Unfortunately as we had down the path to dictatorship, the R's have learned don't screw with him. Marjorie is a clear example. She didn't fall in line, so she is out. I expect part of it is re-election (and party needed to get there) over country. They are all breaking their oath to the country. All of them.