I think “fight wagon” is probably a better descriptor than simply “tank.”

Although, it’s funny in a way. At least in American English, we don’t really use the word “wagon” much anymore. And when we do, we’re usually referring to something like this:

So the idea of one of those bristling with guns is quite humorous.

This and a hundred other issues would be settled in the process of negotiating the breakup. Odds are only a handful of states would want them, as only a handful would have the economic base to support their upkeep. Nukes are expensive as hell to build and maintain. New York, California, Texas, etc. Like any divorce, you have to negotiate and find a way of dividing communal property.

My favorite incidents of bungled auto transcription:

First, on a a voicemail, the caller said, “this is _____ over at Rice’s pharmacy.” The transcription read, “this is _____, overt racist pharmacy.”

I mean, I suppose if the pharmacy is racist, at least they’re overt about it so people can avoid the place.

Second, I have some lecture videos on YouTube, and in one course we used a text by Hibbeler. A few times in the video I will say something like, “this is problem so an so from the Hibbeler text.” The captions have me referring to “the Hitler text.”

Apparently I was referencing Mein Kampf while teaching undergraduate mechanics, for some reason.

Why is my ass always itching?

Because you don’t wash it, you dumbass.

Honestly, at this point, I think it’s time to just call it a day on the very idea of the US as a single unified nation. The Constitution has been demonstrated, beyond a shadow of a doubt, to be utterly incapable of actually doing its job. It’s a 200+ year old document written in a different age, by people who didn’t have hundreds of examples of modern democracies to draw upon. It was a good attempt, but it’s horribly obsolete at this point. And our institutions are equally not up to the task. And it was written by 13 states who each joined willingly. If you gave each state a chance to join the current US today, how many would actually do it?

We need to peacefully dissolve the whole thing. Dissolve the federal government; grant every state full independence. The states can then come together into whatever number of new nations they wish to form.

This clearly isn’t working. Half the country has completely given up on the Constitution, and the other half thinks institutions and laws alone will magically fix the problem. We’ve crossed the Rubicon. Once a president is allowed to get away with this level of flagrant law breaking, once the courts have become this corrupted, once the system has become so sclerotic and fundamentally incapable of meeting the needs of the people? It’s time to call it quits. There’s no repairing a system like this. Even if free and fair elections happen, electing a Democrat in 2028 will not fix this problem. At best, we’ll get 4 more years of useless waffling, and then another fascist will get elected in 2032.

The US is a couple that has reached an impasse of irreconcilable differences. The US had a good run, but at this point it’s time to admit that it’s run its course, and it is time to move on.

The US isn’t even really a nation; it’s more of an empire. There are vast regional differences in the country. The cultures and desired governments of the people in the different regions vary substantially. But because we’re all locked together in this bloated dying husk of an empire, nobody is happy. There’s a reason the oldest countries in the world tend to be smaller ones. Empires are held together by force, not by common culture and shared values. They tend to collapse under their own weight and contradictions eventually. And the US is no exception.

And we shouldn’t mourn this. The US had a good run. It did some cool things and made some real advancements on the human story. But governments exist ultimately to serve the people. Can anyone really say with a straight face that the people of the US wouldn’t be better served by breaking the US into a series of smaller, more manageable nations that better reflect the will of their people? Would all the nations that border the Mediterranean really be better off if they were still united in the Roman Empire? Would all of Latin America outside of Brazil be better off if it was all still New Spain? Would the people of Asia be happier if they were still united in some post-Mongol empire? I don’t think so.

Sometimes you just need to let things die. It’s time to put the United States out of its misery. We can do better.

Oh, and for added physics fun, that extra 40 mph represents a 62% increase in vehicle kinetic energy and stopping distance.

That’s 186 mph. In the US, the highest posted speed limit anywhere is 85 mph, on some stretches of highway in remote rural Texas. So you’re looking at more than 2x the speed limit of the highest posted speed limit in the country. A lot of cars come preprogrammed with some speed governor in them. They usually top out at an already absurd speed of 125-155 mph.

So 300 km/hr is absolutely insane. That’s enough to get jail time in most states.

Exactly. So if we want to be pedants, earth or Earth would be fine here. Even if he’s in a building, that building is still on the soil. Even if he’s flying in an airplane, that airplane is supported by air, which it itself supported by earth. The only way you can’t be “on earth” is if you’re in space and/or in freefall. And Musk is too much of a coward to climb aboard one of his own rockets.

My prediction, built on assuming we’re in the stupidest timeline, is that Germany will try to help the Palestinians…by carving a new homeland for them out of Poland.

Ok, I really can’t understand the dynamics of this arrangement. Not with the info provided.

So you don’t actually build this product or service, you’re just a middle man? Why not just have the vendor include the missing piece?

I think crucial details are being lost in the vagaries.

Can this additional part be obtained from a third party?

Intellectual property is a lie. Pure propaganda. You can own physical things. You can’t own concepts.

Public domain is the default natural state of humanity. Copyrights, trademarks, and patents have only existed for a few centuries. For most of history, you could copy any song, work, or invention you wanted. Hell, for most of history, you claiming ownership of an idea would have been downright sacrilegious. God/The Gods/The Muses were the ones responsible for creative works; human creators were just the channelers of that divine will. In the Medieval era and earlier, artists didn’t even sign their works.

Again. This is the natural state of humanity. We naturally have the freedom to build and create whatever we want from whatever inspiration we want, including copying others. That is after all how humans learn anything. Everything you have ever done, every behavior more complex than simple biological functions is something you learned how to do. Someone figured out how to make even the most rudimentary objects in your life. No one patented the first bowl. Someone just figured it out and everyone copied from there. This is the natural state of human beings. Knowledge is meant to be shared.

At some point however we decided that in order to facilitate the arts, science, and invention, providing a limited time restriction on people’s rights was justified. We temporarily take away some of everyone’s freedom to creatively express themselves. In exchange, we encourage authors, inventors, songwriters, etc. to create high quality original works.

Over time, this purpose has been lost and the fundamental nature of the arrangement forgotten. Rights holders started spreading propaganda, using the term “intellectual property.” You are a victim of this propaganda. As if the ability to restrict the creativity of others is a natural right like the freedom of speech. Copyrights, trademarks, and patents are not rights. They are PRIVILEGES. They are a practical arrangement. To encourage you to create a thing, we restrict everyone else’s freedom to use that thing for some period of time. But it’s just a practical arrangement. It’s not something you’re entitled to as a creator by natural right.

Of course, the balance here has now all been thrown out of whack by corporations buying laws. Originally the term for copyright was just 7 years, renewable to 14. After that the temporary restriction on everyone’s freedom ended. That was still long enough for creatives to make a living off of their work. But now it’s been extended bit by bit, everyone’s freedom restricted more and more, longer and longer. Now copyrights take everyone’s rights away for generations.

There is a reason respect for copyrights is at an all time low.

Well we exist in the present, not the past. There’s not much to be gained today by sanctioning the Italians for the genocide their ancestors committed against the Gauls.

There is a difference between having a dominant ethnic identity and being an ethnostate.

That’s because Schumer is a Nazi collaborator.

It’s almost as if the lesson should be that Jews aren’t unique and are just like any other people. And if you put any group of people into an explicit ethnostate, that group of people is going to turn into Nazis.

The AI summons an extremely attractive and buff version of Charles Grey. He is holding a cup of tea and wearing absolutely nothing.

Uploading your consciousness to a machine wouldn’t really extend your lifespan. Think of it like moving a file from one device to another; the file isn’t actually moved, you just get a copy on the second device. You and your digital clone will also begin to diverge immediately as the lived experience of being a new digital entity would be different from continuing life as a meat person.

But your mind already operates this way. Human consciousness is naturally discontinuous. Your consciousness is essentially a program that runs on the hardware of your mind. And your consciousness is not a continuous thing. If you’ve ever been sedated for a surgery, you’ll know that when you’re sedated, you are just gone. You don’t dream. You don’t drift. You just don’t exist for however long you are under. The experience of sedation is the experience of death.

And beyond that, your consciousness ceases every time you go to sleep. Yes, there are some periods of the sleep cycle, such as REM sleep, where your consciousness is active in an odd state. But there are others where again, no one is home. There are periods of every night where your conscious mind ceases to exist entirely.

“You,” a conscious mind experiencing the universe, exist for less than a day. Tomorrow a new version of you will be spun up to experience the world, including all of your memories. But the you of your current conscious self will cease to exist this very night.

If I go to sleep, and instead of a new copy of my consciousness springing up tomorrow in my body, a copy activates on a computer, is that still me? Really, I don’t see why not. Both would have my full memories. Both would have my personality. Neither would be a direct continuation of my conscious experience. Ultimately, they’re both copies of my current conscious self.

I will not live past today. I, you, and every other human consciousness exist but for a single day (in normal sleep conditions.) We exist in a chain of such iotas of life, the self of each day passing the torch to the self of the next. Each self is united only by shared memory. That is how every human consciousness experiences life.

Everyone wonders if uploading your mind to a machine will extend your lifespan. What they should be wondering is if waking up each morning does the same.

Try to make the most of each day. Remember, you only get one.

A cubic meter of the core of a neutron star would still count as matter. While it probably wouldn’t literally destroy the Earth, I wouldn’t want to be on the same…continent…when that thing went off.

It can’t be the energy. It has to be a matter rearranger, not something that makes matter from raw energy. Consider a cubic meter of water. It will have a mass of 1000 kg. By E=mc^2, that water has a mass energy of 9e19 Joules. New homes in the US are built with 200 amp panels, delivering power at 120V. The typical new home can draw up to 24,000 Watts from the grid.

At this max output, it would take a house 120 million years to draw enough electricity to create a cubic meter of water from nothing but pure electrical energy.

So this thing must actually work as a matter rearranger. You provide it a supply of pure elements and it synthesizes from there. Or, if it’s fancy, it creates elements by rearranging nuclei. But it can’t be something that truly creates matter ex nihilo.