This is the poor man’s Oedipus Rex.

How the fuck do you think gas pumps work?

I’m done feeding the trolls.

Sure, but it’s on the list.

If it saves even one human life it’s worth switching to an alarm instead of immobilization, even if that means hundreds of breakaway cables get snapped by morons driving away from chargers.

1. It’s about hitting electric cars, self driving or otherwise.

2. Cars can still move with punctured tires, at least far enough that a would-be robber or carjacker could get dragged a good distance.

3. You smash the window and open the door. Now the panicked driver is speeding away, leaving you high and dry or dragging you along.

Being able to completely immobilize a vehicle while keeping it intact is a criminal’s wet dream. It’s incumbent on car manufacturers to consider that while implementing safety features.

Pry bar to open the hatch, like I said.

And yes, today people are walking around with angle grinders to chop off catalytic converters.

The difference being that not being able to start the motor with the door open is only a problem if the driver was being attacked in a parking lot.

It’s not too big of a leap to imagine a world where a person could immobilize a car at a red light with the plug cut off from a public charger. Wall up to a stopped car, open the hatch (maybe it needs a pry bar) and put the dummy plug in. Now the car is immobilized. Smash the driver side window and they’re in business.

Sure, there are some safeguards that can be added like requiring a current to immobilize the vehicle, but it’s far from the simplest or safest answer. Car manufacturers need to stop putting in hard limits and just use alarms instead. I bought a new Subaru that has collision detection standard. The hedge next to my driveway was overgrown, but I drove right through it. The car sounded an alarm and flashed a bunch of lights, but it didn’t engage the brakes, I was able to blast through an obstacle that I knew was minor even though the car thought it was a threat. If a manufacturer feels compelled to add a safety system, it’s possible to do so without taking control away from the driver.

What is this, a comment from 2005?

It’s less about their role in the long term and more about having another front open at the outset of hostilities.

Every Arleigh Burke not tasked with intercepting Iranian missiles is another one inside the first island chain.

Don’t you mean you h*te it?

Yeah, that’s what I said.

See, this is exactly what I was worried about. Now I’ve got to write a whole fucking essay because history classes never get past WWII.

“Relatively recent” here means “in the past few decades”. There was a period of time in the early 20th century where (due to a long domestic propaganda effort that, frankly, you’re going to have to read up on yourself) the racist connotations were significantly diminished.

During this time period, the Confederate naval jack was more broadly seen as a symbol of Southern pride. Perhaps the best example is the Dukes of Hazzard, although this was closer to the tail end of this period.

What precipitated the gradual shift to the modern interpretation was the Vietnam war. The army was racially integrated by that time, and black soldiers were encountering the Confederate flag that their Southern, white comrades sometimes brought along. For fucking obvious reasons, the “it’s not racist” argument didn’t exactly fly with them. To almost criminally abridge an interesting and important part of history, a symbol that those soldiers may not have ever seen or even really cared in civilian life was at the forefront of their minds.

It took years for that bad experience to move the needle of public opinion. To (again) abridge decades decades of history, that experience in Vietnam “trickled down” to the public. Over time, the mainstream view of the flag shifted from one of primarily Southern pride to one that was primarily (and later, overtly) about racism.

I’m gonna start and end this comment with the same disclaimer: I’M NOT HERE TO DEBATE THE MEANING OF THE FLAG, JUST COMMENTING IN THE CURRENT USES OF IT. THIS IS AN OBSERVATION OF THE BELIEFS OTHER PEOPLE HOLD, NOT MY OWN.

Yeah, there are a lot of people who still interpret the Confederate naval jack to represent southern pride. In recent decades the nationwide interpretation changed to basically “racism”, either wholly or in part.

This (relatively) recent change means that people who want to express southern pride but weren’t racists tended to move away from using the flag, instead opting for things like using their state flags. The other end of this is racists who specifically and explicitly leaned into the new interpretation and use the flag more.

There is a (very much) smaller subset of people who want to stick by the older “Southern pride” meaning and reject the more modern interpretation. While these people probably deal with a lot of funny looks and awkward conversations, they exist. Apparently there’s a large enough cohort that feels that way and support LGBT rights to warrant someone printing Confederate naval jacks on a rainbow field.

Again, before I have a dozen motherfuckers here to tell me why their interpretation of the flag is the correct one: I’M NOT HERE TO DEBATE THE MEANING OF THE FLAG, JUST COMMENTING IN THE CURRENT USES OF IT. THIS IS AN OBSERVATION OF THE BELIEFS OTHER PEOPLE HOLD, NOT MY OWN.

That one fucking guy wanted to go back. Apparently that’s some kind of “gotcha”, despite just about everybody else going from the North to the South.

Just ignore the foreign intelligence operatives and go about your business.

As someone outside of Florida, I would say that they can’t.

A Floridian wouldn’t allow things like “laws” and “rules” from stopping their ten year old son from getting hammered on a Tuesday morning.

What they mean is that the people in Florida have a different understanding of the word “legal”.

When most people hear the word “illegal” they think “there will be consequences if I do that”. When Floridians hear the word “illegal” it translates to something between “rude” and “fun”.

Given the quality of writing coming out of Hollywood for the past ten years, their changes may have been improvements.

You might want to look at laser printers. If you’re just doing black and white documents, whatever the latest Brother printer is will do a good job, do it fast, and not screech at you about your cyan running out.

It’s a few hundred bucks up front, but the toner cartridges print a ton of pages and don’t dry out if you don’t use them. I can’t recommend it enough if you have even a passing desire to make hard copies of documents.

Don’t you mean deception is the sword to victory?

Lemmy is full of lunatics. You found one.

Let me start by saying first and foremost the paychecks and severance packages are beyond ridiculous. Like fucking unconscionable.

Now, that being said yes, when the CEO rightly or wrongly (typically rightly) becomes the fall guy their career is over. If they manage to get another job it probably won’t be in a leadership position, and if it is it would be with a much smaller organization that simply won’t be able to pay them the big bucks. The best a CEO can hope for after a public downfall is to be put out to pasture.

I don’t feel sad for them. While their golden parachute might represent literally the last money they will ever make it’s more than enough to live off of for the rest of their lives.

There’s an even bigger picture, though. Their personal reputation is ruined, but so is their family name. With the amount of money and prestige they were building up they may have had aspirations of positioning their kids as the elites of the future. Family money and connections could have ended up with their children some day becoming Senators and Congressmen. If they end up taking the fall, their public failure will sully their name for a couple of generations.

The kind of people that become CEOs of high-profile companies are a special breed of psycho. They’re willing to accept huge piles of money to roll the dice on their own career and the reputation of themselves, their children, and their grandchildren on the off chance they manage to avoid the chopping block until retirement.