I think Tesla would have been a much more profitable company under Apple. Musk certainly got it to a point - over a million cars per year, and the single most popular car model, gas or electric. But more recently with cancelling the small cheap car, and the Cybertruck, and betting the company on robotaxi... Apple wouldn't have done any of that stuff. They'd be improving successive versions and not offending their customers with politics, and making Tesla a super-valuable company.

Trains are an interesting one. The US has the largest freight rail system in the world, and it is very efficient. Where I live the I-40 interstate (a major east/west roadway, essentially the modern incarnation of Route 66) is paralleled by a railway. Very often you can drive along I40 through the desert and see super-long trains stacked double-high with shipping containers, and just think how much traffic that is taking off the road. And yet, there is basically 1 lane-worth of steady tractor/trailer traffic along the freeway at all hours of the day and night - almost like a virtual never-ending train.

So here is a side-by-side railway and roadway for long-haul freight in which both are evidently viable, yet neither every pushes out the other. This seems to argue against the idea that idea that trains would naturally take over except for some cultural defect in the USA. Freight rail doesn't have to worry too much about niceties like convenience or timeliness (on the order of a few hours parked here or there) like passenger rail does, and it's not because "individualism" or small penis size or whatever people who hate cars and trucks like to blame them on. Freight is almost purely about efficiency, yet they still use trucks quite a bit.

But then do you have super-high rates when there is a shortage? A few years ago I think it was Texas there was a big "scandal" about people paying exorbitant rates for a while - because they put themselves on commercial pricing schemes that are super cheap most of the time.

Federal intransigence will have an impact, but I'd like to see a more detailed analysis of how much, because most solar development does not require federal approval. Not unless it's on federal land, or using federal funding, or some cases of environmental protection such as wetlands. So, it's unclear to me what the effect will be.

Nobody's perfect but James Cameron I would never rule out of hitting a homer. Also the fact that he is actively worrying about the plot tells me he doesn't just want to chug out a minor update of the same idea. "I could be wrong."

What are we saying, there's nothing left to imagine? I would say "Don't" too unless he does come up with something fresh. But of course it is out there. The future is (still) not a straight-line extrapolation from today.

As a motorcyclist, self-driving cars are my greatest hope for a real reduction in risk from cars.

Now, if we all converted to cycling would that be even safer? I grant it would be. I just don't see it. All the American suburbanites converting to bus and bicycle travel, it's infeasible for so many people without a total lifestyle change.

Whereas self-driving, or at least to the level of automated emergency braking, I see as likely.

I imagine so. Itâ(TM)ll probably take place around the same time we get one frigging thread without Trump sycophants.

Same as a taxi would be my guess.

Wait, are you saying Waymo is more dangerous than ebikes and electric scooters? Good luck supporting that statistically.

So the explanation is that among the 255 women who DID come forward against Epstien, some were also raped by others including Trump, but choose to NOT tell that part of their story. (Not even, say, to 60 Minutes with their face in shadow and their voice obscured).

I'm not saying that's impossible. I'm not saying that "just" one (Katie J) isn't enough to worry about even if true. I'm just thinking, what exactly is it that people online are thinking, because they usually just throw out a phrase like "serial child-rapist Trump" without explaining anything as if everybody should just assume that by now.

Yes I have read about that and take it seriously. But when you say cases, plural, are there any more that you are referring to?

Socrates lived to see the defeat of Athens in the Peloponnesian War that marked the beginning of Athens' decline as the dominant Greek city-state. After that, Athens went through political turmoil, which directly shaped the environment in which Socrates was tried and executed.

Oh my god, dude, how much are the gas companies paying you?

You run into the same things with gas cars. Oh, I'll just pop into the gas station on the way to work. If it's open when I'm driving to work. If it's not busy. If the pumps aren't down. If you don't mind standing there in the weather pumping for five minutes. If you don't mind the gas stench. If you remembered your wallet. If if if.