In this throwaway, instant satisfaction society? It’s all about the price point. And the marketing.

The profit on torches is the rebuy for more. You don’t need to sink a lot in material, it just has to burn bright enough to sell.

Thanks for the link. This has just what I was looking for, even county level. The only thing I don’t know yet is how well it updates, that was an issue in the past between different interfaces and their refreshing. But that was a different internet too.

Every vote is important.

“My life amounts to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean. Yet what is any ocean, but a multitude of drops?” - David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

Nvidia Riva TNT, because the onboard graphics were only going to play EverQuest (beta) and Rogue Squadron like a painful slideshow, if at all.

If you’re doing more than just voting and forgetting, then the message wasn’t about you. I won’t stop asking people what else they’ve done, because how else is awareness of the need of democracy and public involvement supposed to be spread?

If someone tells me they voted third party, I just tell them that’s great and ask what they’re going to do now. Never get much of an answer.

A quote attributed to a few people, Heinlein and Pournelle for two, “If you can get your ship into orbit, you’re halfway to anywhere.” Both space and planets have shared and their separate problems to solve. In my head I prefer the image of most populations moving into habitats in space, customized to their preferences, with smaller settlements on various bodies for their own purposes. In my realistic view I don’t see us getting that far before we get bogged down with all the problems we’ve created on this planet. The window to a permanent space civilization might have already shut. A sad thing, as a 70s kid I grew up convinced we were full speed into some version of what scifi had sold to me.

Any questionable acts would happen after the movie’s end. My thoughts have always been what the effects were to Susan once she saw he was telling the truth. We don’t even really get that short of the look of amazement, and maybe shock on her face.

Just because “mainland USA” wasn’t used doesn’t mean it’s racist. Would it have been perceived the same way if Hawaii was substituted?

“Companions”

With the advent of LLMs and access to anyone, there’s been repeated posts about instructors putting some oddball directions in white within the text of a question. Not perfect as a copy/paste into Notepad will show it, but it gets the laziest ones, especially the ones that don’t even review what the LLM gave them.

I’m one who does all the basic maintenance on my car, so if I had someone push a filter at me saying it needed replacing my response would be I didn’t ask for them to remove it and I change my own filters. Then I’d demand they put it back in with me watching, because it’s probably not out of my car and it’s going to be very awkward when there’s a filter still in there.

Got to always find a shop that you can trust, random ones will eventually screw you even in small ways. I’ve caught missing lugnuts and 50 psi on a tire, and from a dealership for recall work they forgot to reconnect something and it was running terribly. On the flip side the guy I know has called me on the phone and explained exactly what he found and a range of options and prices and recommendations. It’s no wonder I return for his business when I need it, I don’t have to worry about being ripped off. (I do still check behind, can’t help the OCD when it comes to the car lol)

It’s okay, that was Reddit. It could never happen here. /s

Hardly okay with it. Some Americans don’t even know how things work to begin with, so ignorance is worse than knowing things are broken but what we have at the moment. Just because I acknowledge that’s the current election system doesn’t mean I don’t think we could do a lot better. That is its own topic with a lot of hills to climb, but some states have started.

And it’s a representative democracy with various flaws, one being not the proper number of constituents per representative, and far too much influence from other places that override the public’s opinions. Another separate debate.

Someone on another planet around another star is probably asking the same thing about their conditions. Once you understand how they could be there, you understand why we’re here.

You forgot the other scenario. You talk of not having leverage because of a vote, and yet the other choice absolutely has no leverage at all, and possibly makes things even harder to change.

Let me ask this - would you recommend not voting for either President, but voting on the rest of the ballot? Because telling people to not vote usually implies don’t show up at all, and that is part of why nothing changes. Local and state representation can matter more than the President.

I knew I’d get downvoted by some for asking how to arrive at some solution with the given dilemma we’re in. Maybe some people don’t want to fix it.

It boils down to if you think any admin will ever change how the US deals with Israel. And if that’s true, then how does change happen? Maybe if the rest of the world pushes against the US? Other countries are having their own struggle with any change suggested being labeled as a convenient antisemitism. This is a huge US problem, but not JUST a US problem. And I know OP didn’t want to get into the politics of it, but it’s hard to avoid when that’s exactly what it is, politics while people die and other people try to object and question it but get stomped down for doing so.

Does refusing to vote stop your family from being executed?