My first thought is I wonder if you could layer a bunch of batteries together in sheets or weave a bunch of smaller batteries into a flexible structure of some kind.

Thanks, I appreciate it

It’s called Lazarus Syndrome. I was exposed to a case once at a large ER while waiting for a bed for my own patient (hello, am paramedic). Not too much to say about it, the ED staff were working a code, like they do, and called it. About twenty minutes later, some staff was in the room cleaning up when they noticed the patient breathing and told the nurses. Staff came running like hell and worked them for another 15-20 minutes before calling it again. Weird shit, and pretty unusual in my experience, AFAIK we still don’t understand the mechanism behind it.

Okay, bud. I re-read and I didn’t see what you were talking about about, so I really think there’s been some kind of misunderstanding. But okay.

Not my jokes, and I don’t think it’s funny. You might want to re-read my post, I certainly wasn’t celebrating the attitude that spawned freedom fries.

Yep. Dunno what else to say, we’re absolutely responsible.

IIRC, one of the effects of Brexit is that the UK’s sewage outlets to the ocean were no longer bound by EU regulations, which led to extremely high sewage contamination and closing of a number of English (specifically English, I want to say) beaches.

I think that’s a bad take. Here’s the thing, “freedom fries” wasn’t a self-enclosed phenomenon. It was part of a broader jingoistic fever that swept through the US post-9/11. Yeah, sure, it’s fair to joke about Americans being dumb, but our brains dead ass shut off after 9/11, and anyone could do anything if they just waved their hands and said “terrorists, 9/11”. And Operation Iraqi freedom was just one of the turd sandwiches we ferociously gobbled down under such framing. Freedom fries happened because France wouldn’t support our stupid, pointless invasion, and the boomer email network kicked into overdrive to create a new meme (in the literal sense of the word) of replacing anything having to do with the treacherous French with Freedom. And that was what we did to people who owed us nothing, so it felt much more dangerous to step out against it as an American, at least in the early days of the war.

The right in the US really isn’t so different. The thing we know for sure is that fascists lie and lie often. The fascists here in the US aren’t above paying lip service to certain issues; Trump tried to convince the libertarian party to vote for him by letting the guy who ran Silk Road out of jail, for example. But they’d be fools to believe them, as Europeans are fools to believe their own dollar store Trumps when they say they’ll protect or embrace the social programs. Exhibit A: what the Tories have done to the NHS. The program really isn’t all that complex, they just sneak in some modest reforms that erode the service and enshittify it slowly, or do some bullshit temporary measure that puts the service permanent behind in terms of (one to all) money, employees, or output. Then, they use that as evidence for why they must further enshittify the service and give more taxpayer money to the private sector.

I mean, not trying to sound like a pessimist as much as a realist. Even if Europe started paying the full sum of what we’re paying in defense subsidies, I seriously doubt we’d cut that spending. Raytheon and Lockheed’s investors are counting on us.

In a healthy housing market, there’s enough competition that renting is much cheaper than buying. Indeed, I remember it being that way when I was a kid. Over the course of my life, landlording went from something that retired people did for a very small additional income stream to a get rich quick scam.

This is so frustrating to watch as an American. I spent much of my youth on the internet getting clowned on by Europeans for the consequences of my country’s hard right policies. The UK has been deservedly getting clowned on for the consequences of embracing the Tories. It beggars belief that the same people clowning on the US and UK would then turn around and say to themselves “yes, but it will be different for us, it will work for us, our situation really is different, you don’t understand”. No, it won’t be different. Pretty soon, you’re going to be following the path that the Tories set the UK on, marvelling at how dysfunctional your government is, and hearing about how the only solution is even more gibs to the people who are already the most economically advantaged and the private sector. Before you click reply, just consider that you guys deserve to get fucking dunked on, because you guys spent decades laughing at other countries for doing this shit just to say “hmmm… but what if sticking the fork in the electrical socket works out for me?” I’m honestly sad and disappointed for Europe, not least of all because after years of deservedly shitting on the US for being racist, all it took was one big wave of immigration for you guys to hold up blonde dumbasses with bad hair and worse ideas as the solution to all of your problems.

“Oh, great bozo of the European trailer park, what is your wisdom to save our culture from the immigrants?”

“Deregulate sewage plants. You will certainly not regret deregulating sewage plants.”

Enjoy your US-style healthcare system in a few years, I guess.

I’m 35. We took out a refi and paid off our credit card debts in 2019, and we were doing financially great for probably the first time in our adult lives. In the course of the last year, we’ve nearly maxed out most of our credit cards on living expenses. It’s not only that the cost of living jumped up, but that our wages haven’t gone up with it and our combined student loan load is like $1000/mo. There’s also the creeping understanding that we’re one big unexpected expense from disaster. I was really looking forward to taking the kids on their first real trip or something, but I guess we’re just going to stay here and play Vidya until they’re adults. But hey, glad to hear that the economy’s doing great.

What this guy said. No way the richest people on earth are walking around without body guards.

Anyone paying attention knows that we’re heading towards a wave of domestic terror.

It’s just high, high volume. You swing at every pitch and you’re statistically bound to eventually hit some home runs. The CIA is always up to some shit.

I’ve got the version where Jesus tells rich people to give away all their belongings or they can’t get into heaven. Hope this helps.

Look, it makes them happy, it’s free, and it doesn’t cost you anything. It just kinda doesn’t seem like a big deal.

I’ve really been waiting for gas stations to jump in on this. Tying it to vehicle manufacturers just doesn’t make that much sense to me, not nearly as much sense as using the companies whose mission is already to deliver energy to vehicles. You need a tiny fraction of the infra for electric charging that you need to supply gas. Shell or Chevron could EASILY ink deals with, say, Starbucks, to put one or two chargers in every Starbucks parking lot in the country and just sit back and laugh as the money rolls in. And yet, they just keep pushing for exclusively fossil fuels.

AFAICT, the charger network is a huge part of Tesla’s value proposition. Laying off the entire 500 person team like this is going to be a massive, massive disruption no matter what anyone says, you can’t just patch it with [checks notes] an entirely different team. It’s going to take that new team months to get up to date, put out fires, find their bearings, etc. and by that point, issues are already snowballing. The rapport and contacts problem is also going to be enormous; basically shit canning all of the company’s industry/logistics ambassadors is what, in any other light, would be called a disaster. This is going to be a clusterfuck, and that’s before any competitors interested in starting their own charger network start scooping these newly available specialists up.

It’s incredible to see this man still idolized, even by bosses and other execs, as he tanks not just one but two household name businesses AT THE SAME TIME.