And windshields/screens.

As well as tires, lubricants, tools, etc I guess. People tearing around the desert in vehicles with flawless glass is maybe the most unrealistic part of that image for me.

I’m forced by the government to give up a bunch of money so that people can feel important rolling around in their $50,000 toys with heated seats and entertainment systems, while simultaneously destroying the planet.

It’s no use. Resistance is futile.

Signed,

Someone Who Raged Against the Destruction of “FUD” Back in the Day

No.

This is kind of like asking a man being attacked by a bear, “When did bears become your whole thing?”

With all due respect, you’re telling on yourself.

So, essentially the same as a company spokesperson!

Forget the spokesperson, just ask Google AI directly:

AI on Google Search, including the AI Overviews in search, does not provide summaries on topics involving Donald Trump and dementia. This is due to risk aversion, sensitivity to political topics, and recent legal challenges. Instead, these searches return a list of traditional web links.

Reasons for the lack of response

• Risk of misinformation: AI-generated conclusions about a public figure’s health could spread misinformation. The mental acuity of Donald Trump and President Joe Biden, the oldest presidents in U.S. history, is a topic of public discussion.
• Avoiding political sensitivity: AI models often have restrictions on sensitive or controversial topics to avoid biased responses. Google and other tech companies are cautious about how their AI products respond to election-related or partisan queries.
• Legal history with Trump: Google’s handling of Trump-related content may be influenced by recent legal and political issues. In 2025, Google paid a $24.5 million settlement in a lawsuit related to the suspension of Trump’s YouTube account.
• Inconsistent application of AI summaries: Some users report that searches about other politicians, like Barack Obama or Joe Biden, may return an AI-generated response, though this varies. This inconsistency has led to criticism that the AI applies selective censorship.

Google’s statement A Google spokesperson stated that AI Overview and AI Mode do not always show answers to all queries, especially sensitive or complex ones. The company suggests that users rely on traditional search results in such cases.

Don’t get me started how bad outlook is, period. I don’t get it, it fails so hard at just being an email client.

I get the thinking here, but past bubbles (dot com, housing) were also based on things that have real value, and the bubble still popped. A bubble, definitionally, is when something is priced far above its value, and the “pop” is when prices quickly fall. It’s the fall that hurts; the asset/technology doesn’t lose its underlying value.

It’s the other way around. Residential properties are used as investment vehicles, because it’s profitable. It’s profitable because the prices are high and rising. The prices are rising because of the housing crisis, which is caused by lack of supply. Lack of supply is caused, in large measure, because of restrictive zoning.

If there were a glut of housing on the market, prices would crater, and it wouldn’t be profitable, investors wouldn’t buy residential properties. They could still try to buy up all of the properties, and create artificial scarcity that way, but the idea is to make a profit, not just collect residential property for the sake of having it. As soon as they started selling or letting properties in large numbers, supply would rise and prices drop again.

It’s the artificial scarcity mandated by law that’s driving the high prices. This explanation is confirmed by many cities, like mine, that have a very low rate of private equity ownership, and still have a housing crisis.

Because the rest of us have a right to life, too. Ever heard the saying, “Your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins”? That’s colorful, but it’s not even true; people have an expectation of a certain reasonable amount of space around their bodies, and even entering it with your fist might be considered assault. The concept that one’s actions and choices affect other people is what’s important here.

That’s the problem with giant pickup trucks: They affect other people on the road, and the problem with giant pickup truck drivers is that they either refuse to recognize this fact, or they enjoy infringing on the rights of other people to enjoy life. Either way, it’s bad for society, where we all have to live together somehow. Mullets and man-buns, by contrast, don’t materially affect anybody else in the slightest.

The wheel of the metaphor-of-thing-as-wheel exists and is widely understood, but apparently needed to be reinvented as a metaphor involving a roughly rollable shape?

Challenge failed.

I have to, take issue with this, one. The rules of commas are, pretty, easy actually: Use a, comma where you’d, pause when speaking. If, you read it out, loud and sound like Captain, Kirk then you put, a comma in the, wrong spot.

I appreciate the gamer aesthetic when scientists need to buy gear with the power to run scientific calculations for relatively cheap. The RGB lights under the case windows bring a bit of pizzazz to the laboratory.

It’s even sillier when you realize (hah!) that -or came from Latin, and -our came from Old French, and both had been used interchangeably in English for at least a century when Samuel Johnson decided to use -our in his dictionary, and Noah Webster decided to use -or. So Britons and Yankees are equally (in)correct.

That just makes it worse! (From my point of view here.) People behaving reprehensibly because an authority figure asked them to do it? That’s just the Milgram experiment, but without any apparent hesitation!

The Milgram experiment. The Zimbardo prison experiment. The bystander effect. At the end of the day, humans are just monkeys with smart watches. As social primates, it’s really hard to be the one to stand up against the crowd. Our brains decide how to act based largely on the reactions of other humans around us.

It’s disheartening.

Freaky! For the most part, name a movie, any movie, and I haven’t seen it. But I’m one of the few people who saw Space Truckers in a theater. Stuart Gordon went to school here, so he had screening of the film at the student union, followed by a Q&A session, back in '96.

Yes, it was a hoot! Gordon was a founder of an experimental theater company here which has the improv mentality of treating goofy ideas seriously and just going with them. That sensibility shows through in the movie, for sure.

All logic breaks down at the grocery store.

One of life’s profound truths!