I was listening to a Jim Gaffigan bit he wrote during the first Trump admin which is even more true these days. Short version, he compares having Trump as President to having a parent who’s a raging alcoholic: what he does isn’t directly your fault but you still know you should apologize.

Passport proper is still kinda expensive, but you can get a passport card for $65 for a first-time applicant. Good for a decade, Real ID compliant, works for all US land border crossings and domestic flights. That’s not exactly cheap, but it’s not that much more than a License in California.

whereas previously all states kinda did their own thing

This can’t be emphasized enough. Different states had (and still have) wildly different standards for what is required to get a basic Driver’s License or ID Card. Making a unified standard needed to happen, even if the way Real ID was implemented was… let’s say “problematic”.

AFAIK you can still get a non-Real ID compliant license in almost every state, though for some the difference in documentation requirements are all but nonexistent. Here in Nevada the only difference in required documents is that you can’t use a Prison Identification Card to get a Real ID.

I love how the UK’s supposedly left leadership aggressively, insistently opened with “let’s cut off the heating for old people in winter” and kept doubling down on it.

Quick, someone make a Lemmy instance called Scunthorpe. Should keep out the trash level of LLMs that seem to shit things up.

Full-sized trash cans don’t fit in a car very well. But they fit nicely in a truck. This truck can “haul”…all kinds of bulky, awkward shit that doesn’t weigh much. I’ve got a lot of that in my life.

Yep, furniture especially. A Queen-size bed is bad enough, but at least you can tie that onto the roof of most sedans. A table and some chairs? Some dressers? Doesn’t matter how light they are, you run out of space real quick, and that’s assuming you’ve got your Luggage Tetris skill maxed so you can cram everything in perfectly.

…or you could just set it all in the bed and put a net over it if you really wanna make sure it won’t go anywhere. I know which one I prefer.

Ironically, a large portion of that industry is owned by the Timeshare industry. You can imagine that they aren’t always the most effective at getting people out of those contracts.

There are plenty of pieces of legislation which allow small businesses to exist which do not involve literally outlawing the competition. Outlawing competition is the sort of regulatory capture that simply should not exist, no matter who benefits from it. Rather, the consumer never benefits from it.

small businesses

car dealerships

Bruh, wat?

Yeah, famously “small business”, those car dealerships. Right up there with payday loan places, and equally ethical. I can’t even.

Because the laws had to exist for dealerships to exist…

If a business cannot exist without its competition being made illegal then it should not exist. Anti-competitive laws cut both ways.

All of the things you’ve listed there are reasons why dealerships should be allowed to exist. They do not address why manufacturers should not be allowed to sell cars directly to consumers at their own stores. Why would that interfere with the numerous benefits you’ve suggested that dealerships bring about? Consumers would still be able to choose to purchase their car from a dealership, so why wouldn’t they? What could motivate them to go direct to the manufacturer?

Price. It’s the price. Manufacturers can offer cars to the consumer at a better price, period. Not only that, they offer it without you having to sit through 2 hours of high-pressure sales and having to double-check every goddamn form you sign to make sure some rate or term duration hasn’t “accidentally” been changed to a much higher value.

If dealerships were actually competitive they wouldn’t need this law on the books to keep their industry alive.

Turn it around: how does the enforced dealership model benefit consumers? What value is added by forcing people who want to buy a car to go through another entire group of salespeople adding their own overhead and cost to the equation rather than buying directly from the car manufacturer?

Musk’s motivations are anything but pure here, but this is one of those “a stopped clock is right twice a day” moments.

Unfortunately, Sony seems to be really hostile towards allowing most any video player apps on the PS5. They specifically went out of their way to remove DLNA support, and they only just allowed a DLNA-enabled video player on the store 7 months ago… and it’s subscription based.

Especially since the comment is still up and visible.

Now OP’s response under that where he posted “Guillotine Elon”, that was removed.

EDIT: You can also see this by searching his post history in the sub on pullpush. It’s literally the first result.

Yep. Underwood Ranches. You can buy it from their site directly or on Amazon. It’s good stuff.

Most of them have gone to BlueSky. A few are on Mastodon but rarely as their primary (sadly). A lot of artists have gone to places like FurAffinity, Pixiv, and to a lesser extent DeviantArt.

Unfortunately a lot of them have just resorted to being on Patreon, which is unfortunate.

Even the porn creators and erotic artists have left.

When you’ve lost the porn it’s game over man.

Oh no doubt, but they thought they could appease him somehow. Now they’re realizing that once you’re on his list there’s no getting back in his good graces. Peace was never an option.

Let’s not forget the embedded racism in the original quote from Terry: “CIA n*ggers glow in the dark.”

Yeah, but if they can do it that fast on their own, imagine how much faster they can get it done with help.

Besides, if China starts getting a little froggy Japan and South Korea are going to need a lot more than a few armaments to ward them off.