As an aussie, I'm convinced with the exception of cities with large Italian populations, Americans wouldn't know a good espresso if they where drowning in it. (This does NOT include NYC where you can get a fine coffee if you know where to look)

With that said, I've come to respect the drip coffee and filter coffee traditions. Its a very american thing and I think it deserves respect as its own unique style, closer to french than italian traditions.

But before writing off the "modern" espresso, I implore you to travel.

About 15 years ago Starbucks tried to set up in melbourne, and the coffee was considered so bad by the locals there where literal protest marches lol. Needless to say Starbucks didnt last long. Oh they are back now , but nobody thinks its "good" coffee.

Weirdly the one American chain that seems to have read the market here better and upped their coffee game is..... McDonalds.... Shit food, but actually a decent coffee, somehow.

The study said that they're better: 19% better. That's not nothing! It's just not the 75% better that lab testing showed.

The link you provided is the experience of one driver, one who is conscientious and focused on minimizing fuel consumption (within reason; hypermilers would do better). The study looked at the real-world results across 800,000 drivers, most of whom apparently didn't take so much care to minimize fuel usage.

Also, it's not true in general that "hybrids use generators rather than ICE". That's true of PHEVs that are strictly serial hybrids, but most are series-parallel or "power split" hybrids, meaning they can drive the wheels with the electric motor, or the combustion engine, or both. Often both the electric motor and the ICE are too small to provide the target maximum performance so must be used in parallel when you step hard on the accelerator.

One fascinating strategy for power splitting is "through the road", which has no mechanical connection at all between the ICE and the traction motor, and uses the wheel-driven traction motor as the generator. The way it works is the ICE drives one axle and the traction motor drives the other. Battery charging is done "through the road", using the road itself to transmit power from the ICE-driven axle to the electrically-driven axle. The ICE spins one pair of wheels, driving the vehicle forward, which forces the other pair of wheels to spin which turns the electric motor which charges the battery. This only makes sense in AWD drive cars but it's peak design elegance.

If 100% of jobs meet some standard, we'll pick a higher standard. For example, consider the standard that employees not be chained to their benches, fed nothing but moldy bread and be brutally whipped if the overseer feels like it. 100% of legitimate jobs in the US exceed that standard. OSHA exists to ensure that jobs meet minimum workplace safety standards and minimum wage laws ensure that jobs pay at least a certain amount, so we don't discuss whether jobs meet those standards, we take them as a given and set the quality bar higher.

If a study finds that 40% of jobs meet some standard, it means that the researchers did a reasonably good job of writing a description of the median job, then tweaked it upward just a bit. It's not like there is some universal, eternal standard for what constitutes a "quality job". It would be interesting to take the current standard and apply to historical working conditions, 50, 100, 200, 500 years ago. I'll bet the 1975 percentage would be half of the 2026 percentage and the older percentages would quickly tail off to ~0.

Of course if you get rid of capitalism then you get a different systemic problem, massive shortfalls in production, making everyone worse off. Much like democracy, capitalism is the worst system except for all of the others.

Real 'Muricans don't leave the ol' US of A. Anyone who regularly travels beyond driving range of their home town is suspicious, frankly.

(Meanwhile, I got the extra-thick passport booklet and have made a good try at filling it with stamps.)

The study does note that it's not controlling for this factor and recommends social media be looked at more closely. The question I suppose would be , is it Fortnite or Facebook (or whatever it is kids use now, Facebook has been considered "boomer" social media for some time now by the kids) responsible for this.

That said , your observation on Gramps cursing the TV is interesting. As a kid in the 70s and 80s, my father was so adamant the TV was bad for it, he sold the TV set. The question is, what's the difference between kids glued to TV sets and kids glued to screens.

Yeah thats actually a worry. The sale of 6ghz to mobile carriers could have some troublesome implications for wifi. In theory it could be moved elsewhere but that'd reqire the FCC to release bandwidth to the public and it currently seems more interested in selling public bandwidth to telcos instead.

Not a lawyer, but UK law doesn't apply across the world.

No, but it does apply in the UK, and international law has always been clear that when you serve customers in a country, you do so under the laws of that country.

UK law does not apply to what is served to US customers. It applies to what is served to UK customers. And if you break UK laws, you pay UK penalties.

This has been the standard internationally since Dow Jones vs Gutnick 23 years ago (That was an australian lawsuit that settled how international juristiction works in defamation cases and has been largely adopted internationally as it was based on the US model of international juristiction).

Note also, both OFCOM thing, and Twitters violations in Australia are both related to websites (4chan and twitter) refusing to provide information to cops doing child porn investigations.

Thats what these companies are protecting. Nothing to do with politics. Its pedophiles, not politicians.

tbh if all it did was chant "Remember your vows. defend the constitutioon" over and over again, that might end up being useful.

Not that I trust palmer or Thiel to give a shit about the constitution , with their authoritarian surveilance fantasies and all.

I live in Utah... I wonder what effect this will have on my power prices.

We have a joke in my band that we could do the most diabolical marketing ever by driving around the suburbs with a megaphone blaring out "Alexa, please buy the new album" really loud.

Not sure if it'd work, those devices are banned in my house since they day long ago I was woken up by a Google assistant at 3am in the moning by it reading out the Wikipedia page for "Human Skull". The GF wanted it gone straight away lol

You might be right about the rest, but the Aptera is far more efficient than a Model 3. The published numbers put it at about 110 Wh/mile, while the Model 3 is at 230 Wh/mile. And, frankly, the Aptera numbers seem a little high for a vehicle with a 0.13 drag coeffiecient and with one less wheel. I think the Aptera design should be able to do better than 100 Wh/mile. Obviously, it's hard to make an accurate comparison between a real-world car and one that is basically vaporware, but something would have to be seriously screwed up for a design as light and aerodynamic as the Aptera to be barely better than a Model 3.

I'd buy one if they ever get around to making them. I've been wanting to buy one for 15 years.

That you at all think this is some how partisan is hilarious.

Just a pro-tip. Pointing out the actions of someone who happens to belong to one party or another isn't "partisan" its truth telling.

We know these laws are coming from template law orgs aligned with Thiel and the GOP. Demanding this fact be ignored in the name of "non partisanship" is dumb as shit. Anyway, whats wrong with partisanship. The best people of the 20th century where the partisans, especially when they where hanging fascists.

Locally, yes, but the moisture that is accumulating previously evaporated and went somewhere else. What will the impact be there? Very hard to say.