I wonder what these numbskulls thought of Tim Walz. He seemed to do the real, down-to-earth thing pretty well also.

He could have, yes.

Instead, he doubled down on it and continued his campaign essentially with the message “Yes, I really do want to take away certain guns. Vote for me, Texans!”

Yep, but the states with sales tax get tired of getting cheated out of their tax revenue. The specific example where I saw this was a major hardware store chain in Oregon (no sales tax) right near the border of Washington (6.5% sales tax). They asked everyone “Washington or Oregon” at the register and checked ID for anyone who said Oregon.

Quick search says that Washington considers it a “sales and use” tax, so anything purchased out of state, but intended for use in Washington is supposed to be taxed. Kinda messed up, really.

In some cases like that, where you’re in a state that has no sales tax, but near the border of one that does, they’ll actually check ID and charge you sales tax if you’re from the sales tax state.

So I’ve read.

They still blew up their launch pad and showered a protected wildlife area with particulate, metal, and concrete debris.

They then built and operated their water deluge system without obtaining permits.

Typo or no, they’re still taking a fast and loose, “better to ask forgiveness than permission” approach that is a detriment to a protected natural environment. They intend to test the limits of the Texas government’s ability to show disdain for the environment in favor of private enterprise.

It’s not just blind hate for Elon, they’re genuinely terrible stewards of the environment in south Texas. They constantly lie about their intentions and impact to avoid having to take responsibility for anything. Say what you will about how independently they operate from his input, this is definitely a company culture that he cultivates and promotes.

Eastern District of Texas is extremely favorable to patent trolls. It’s not a coincidence that they filed the suit there.

I’m really surprised as well. But if you think about where American culture was in the ‘50s and early ‘60s, there was a huge emphasis placed on being “normal.” You can be sure that most boomers were told by their parents or peers at some point to “just be normal” or criticized someone by saying they’re not normal, and there’s still plenty of conservative families raising their kids like that today.

I can only imagine that’s the nerve being touched by the “weird” criticism.

We already know what he looks like in a cowboy hat, and that ain’t it.

Not surprising. Musk has referred to the entirety of Bellingcat as “a psyop” before.

Well said.

I get Jon Stewart’s position and agree with nearly all of his criticisms, but I think the biggest thing he’s not acknowledging in his “why can France and the UK do this but we can’t?” argument is that this would absolutely not be confined to just the Democratic Party. Literally every step of the process would be decried as election fraud, cheating, “the steal of the century” etc. by republicans. If they got pissed enough to attempt an insurrection in 2020 when there was absolutely no credible evidence of fraud, just think where things will go if there’s this whole slew of unprecedented last-minute decisions that are nearly impossible to reconcile with every individual states’ laws. I’m not saying we have to bow to repubs demands, but the more excuses they have to claim anything isn’t above board, the greater the risk that the “stolen election” narrative gains traction beyond the far right.

We’ve spent the last 4 years witnessing how slowly our legal system works on huge matters like this. By the time the dust settles on all of the legal challenges, the resulting chaos will have already rendered the decisions nearly irrelevant.

It’s like he watched Beto O’Rourke commit political suicide over guns and thought “I bet I can do that on a national scale.”

How do you think smoking went from something nearly everybody did to being taboo? Maybe the labels don’t do anything for the last 10% of the population who still smoke today, despite the taboo, but those labels played a big role in reinforcing public awareness of the health effects of smoking.

As the holder of roughly $45 worth of Tesla stock, I voted against his pay package and every other shady, bullshit proposal on the ballot. My vote counted for almost nothing and I’d probably be considered an “activist shareholder” anyway, but it was worth the money I’ve lost to get to click that button anyway.

Only if you ignore that there’s also a segment of Democratic voters who would reconsider support for Biden if he took a stance that they perceived as anti-Israel. Democrats are a coalition party of compromises between factions who have to work together to find as much common ground as possible in order to have any political relevance in a first-past-the-post system. Biden has to walk whatever tightrope loses the fewest votes, and he seems to think that not doing a 180 on decades of US foreign policy is the best way to do that.

Then, 15 years later, when I rejoined the world of modern PC gaming, those games were all still available for download from my Steam account just because I bought the physical Orange Box back in 2007.

Unless, of course, you expect to rely on that permanence for archival purposes, in which case the internet is a fleeting, ephemeral fart in the wind.

I’ll just pull it up on this display that’s more than 9 feet away from the source…

The Battle of Endor is definitely the best space battle in a Star Wars movie. People give ROTJ crap because of the Ewoks, but to me they’re a non-issue, especially by prequel/sequel standards.