Doesn’t that list also include Iran?

I don’t have to like it, but it’s sort of a sound strategy. The Red Sea is on the way to the Suez Canal, and the world had a demonstration a few years ago about what happens when you block the Suez canal.

I’m reminded of Bender:

“This isn’t even about you”

“That’s impossible!”

I thought that was called sealioning?

I’m afraid I don’t have a wall of links to support my argument.

The thing I keep thinking about, and I feel like I’ve never been able to properly communicate, is that the machines our society runs on are built to run in a certain temperature range.

The 2021 texas winter fiasco was a perfect demonstration of what happens when we try to run a society’s machinery outside of it’s expected temperature range. Yes, the ERCOT goofballs were trying to save money by narrowing that expected operating range because “It never gets that cold” and “It never gets that hot”, but my badly articulated point still stands - a system was made to operate in a temperature range outside of it’s capability, and it started to fail. They were minutes away from losing very expensive and hard to replace equipment. What we don’t want is for one of the more competently-run power grids in the world to start to buckle due to temperatures, because the same thing that happened in texas could happen on a larger scale.

And that’s just talking about the power grid. Anything with a heat exchanger in it, including your car and air conditioner and all the refrigeration that is needed to keep everyone fed, is designed to run in a certain temperature range, and will stop working if you run it outside of that range for too long.

But wait, we can just design stuff to run in a wider temperature range! We certainly can. But we would have to redesign everything that moves heat around.

The titty of the polar vortex sags ever southward.

Like drop the macho act and ask for help, buddy. It’s ok.

And watch the people who said they cared suddenly get real scarce.

I wish it wasn’t that way, and I’m happy it’s no longer that way for me. But there are people around you right now who know of they speak up, loved ones and friends will tell them “it’s no big deal” or “It’s all in your head” or my favorite, “man up”.

Christopher Dorner intensifies

That happened to me once! I was 15 and going to school, was riding a Lotus Eclair I’d fixed up. I entered the school zone and wanted to see if I could get over 25 mph. But there was a cop hiding and I got a ticket. I had to tell my parents, and I think they were impressed with my 31 in a 25 speeding ticket.

The best part was having to go to court, and the judge asking how I got a Lotus (she was thinking of a car) and then upon learning the truth, asking the officer why he was wasting his time stopping a kid on a bicycle.

I see all these silly rules being floated and part of me almost wishes I was back in high school so I could be really annoying.

Oh, perfect for that.

Speaking as someone who has suffered an original air cooled Beetle, they’re cool but I wouldn’t try to daily it. The lack of power steering would be far, far down your list of issues you will run into.

But for paralell parking a beetle specifically it can be a challenge, because reverse doesn’t work like you expect. You have to push the gear lever down, like straight down toward the ground, and hold it, to put it in reverse. So you have to steer with one hand and hold the shifter with the other.

I have this weird little vehicle from the 1980’s. I can best describe it as a Japanese Jeep. It wasn’t ever a “big” vehicle, but seeing it next to a modern truck is jarring.

The best part is, I know from direct repeated personal experience that the 60 horsepower 4wd can go more places than a typical 4wd truck.

EDIT: Also, the truck in this picture is a 2004-2008, a 2023 is even bigger…

Have you tried to buy a Maverick?

Yeah, I’d be a-okay with an fm radio and roll down windows in a compact hatchback, thanks. You people with your fancy cars. It’s all going to be trash with the flick of a firmware update.

Nobody makes fun of my wife’s little econobox anymore. 1.2 liter engine, 5 speed, and a radio.

Im in Oklahoma. It was cold, with a day of powdery dry snow that we normally don’t get. Might have had 3"-4" of coverage. The schools were closed until today. We never lost any utilities, just stayed at home, got high, and did some baking.

It was above freezing today and yesterday, so we have some fun icy patches that haven’t cleared.

I used to work with truckers, and a LOT of them started out like this.

I used to use high-powered (4KW) lasers at work every day. Now I make 3D models and sit at a desk.

Guess which job I like more.

“I’m going to business school!”

Two of my favorites are from books and don’t have pictures: the nanotech weapon given to grunts in “Old Man’s War” and the Soft Weapon from Niven’s short story titled, appropriately enough, “The Soft Weapon”. There was an animated Star Trek episode based on The Soft Weapon, but I can’t remember what I looked like, I just remember the producers weren’t brave enough to animate an alien with two heads and three legs.

Other than those, I really liked the silly guns in Ratchet and Clank, epecially the Vacuum Cannon.