STARK: “wow, your intellect is stunning. I look forward to seeing what you’ll be able to accomplish in the next few years”

CAMERA PANS

GRETA THUNBERG SMILES

The number of times I shout “your car is supposed to be smarter than that!” As a Tesla does something like, without signaling, whips around me and into oncoming traffic to pass a stopped city bus is staggering.

A coworker of mine was recently bragging about their new electric mustang and its zero to sixty time. “Have you ever gone zero to sixty?” was my only response. Of all the facts and figures, 0-60 has you to be one of the least important when buying a car.

Though many wear red, the Ace I managed for a few years had black vests. With the exception of a few large groups (like Westlake), each Ace is independently owned and part of the Ace co-op, but get to make their own choices about things like uniform, sales, and stock.

I intentionally said blue vest because while an Ace employee (in whatever color vest/apron their store chooses) would take the time to explain why you can’t have the thing you think you need, a guy in a blue vest (if you can even find one) is likely to say “oh, I guess we’re out. Maybe we can order it for you online…” before wandering off.

I don’t think he can afford rusty nails and broken glass at this point…

People hanging Christmas lights do the whole house and when they go to plug it in, they realize they have the female end by the outlet, not the male end. “Fuck, I’m not gonna redo the entire process” the idiot thinks to himself, I’ll just get a male/male adapter.

It’s not sold because as soon as you plug in the side to the house, the other ends become live, and touching them means “big ouch”.

“That’s okay, I’ll just plug the end into the lights, and then into the house, problem solved” the idiot thinks.

Except the far end of the lights has a male adapter and that end is still live. Plus, anyone who doesn’t know about your deadly modification is in danger of hurting themselves because they don’t realize the hazard.

There are exceedingly niche applications where these cords are used, but those applications only come up for trained electricians who know how to make one of these cords, and use them responsibly. If you’re asking the minimum wage guy in the blue vest, this sign is for you.

I used to know a hardware store that sold guns in the 80s. Guy bought one, walked down the block, robbed a bank with it, and died in ensuing police shootout. Store stopped selling guns after that.

It’s not the weed that’s the problem. Unless I’m a snob for not considering this a ritzy beach community…

Has the creator of this ever been to California? “Beach community” is not how I’d describe the northern half of the state’s coast…

I was having this same conversation the other day. Have you ever seen that picture where different people involved in the creation of the video game Kirby draw the title character? Two look really good, and the rest are awkward blobs that only look like Kirby because of the power of suggestion.

Anyway, I genuinely think a team of Tesla employees (independent of Musk) were talking about building a truck, and all took turns drawing something while pulling together numbers before the pitch to Musk. As a joke, the design team mocked up the worst sketch in 3D, and Musk accidentally saw the design in the Slack chat history and demanded it.

Either that, or some sort of “have your kid draw the next Tesla” employee contest, and the design teams modeled the funniest ones as actual cars for the company newsletter. Like those companies that’ll turn your kid’s drawings into real life stuffed toys.

I wonder who makes the mainframes used at NSA domestic spying server farms, or who run the computing for predator drone targeting systems. “Not profitable to be vocal in support of antisemitism” hardly means “currently on the moral high ground”…

Right, but we’re not talking about gun-caused child deaths per capita, we’re talking about the leading cause of child death. If you do the actual math, it’s about 20%.

But of course you know that isn’t as compelling for your argument. Thank you for joining me for another lesson in lying with statistics.

https://usafacts.org/data-projects/child-death

I didn’t suggest Amazon run the process. I just meant “logistics infrastructure exists on a scale unimaginable in 1996”. 600 million COVID doses given out in the US might have been a better comparison. Or 7.2 billion packages by USPS in 2022. There are 708k cops in the US. That’s 2 guns recovered per cop per month to have it done in 90 days.

There is literally no argument in the world where “the logistics make it impossible” is a reasonable claim.

Likewise, “we’ll never get 290 votes” is a lazy and cowardly claim. Yes, it’ll be hard. Yes, it’ll be a fight. Yes, we’ll have some minds that will be impossible to change. But your apparent argument in defense of gun rights seems to be “aww, jeez, it seems pretty tricky” which is truly mind boggling to me.

Took 13 years to undo prohibition, which unlike abortion and gun rights, was based on a clear and direct constitutional amendment with no arguments about “framers intent” or changes to technology/interpretations of rights over time.

This entire “50 years of cultural shift and overcoming supreme Court decisions” is straight bullshit.

I mean, you’re throwing out a lot of numbers claiming it is impossible, but we have logistics and resources that Australia didn’t in 1996. If Amazon can deliver 7.7 billion packages a year, and the US can count 150 million votes in a week during election season, we can figure out how to break down 400 million guns over a month, a year, or a decade. It doesn’t have to happen overnight. The “Australian plan” doesn’t have to work here, but getting guns off the street somehow does.