Not these Teslas, from what I understand. The type of glass they use is EXTREMELY resistant to shattering.

Even worse, I’ve run into fans who think the Terrans had the right idea.

I’ll bet you anything it’s taxes.

It was a pretty common peasant weapon purely because you could make one super easy, and it fired a thing you could literally pick off the ground. Sling a rock at a wolf or a bear and it’ll probably either be dead or get the hint of “ah shit that guy hurts to fight, I’ll go find some other bastard.”

Yeah, the big issue with saying “it’s your land do what you want” is that you start getting wildly-unsafe buildings and situations because “it’s my land I can do whatever” rapidly turns into “and I want to build something highly unsafe to live in because it’s cheap to do so”. This is how you wind up with tenement housing where one apartment catches fire and a hundred people burn to death because nobody forced the builder to consider evacuation routes.

Their home version of Spokesman is great.

Rage Against the Machine doing this concert would just be Tom Morello beating every one of them to death with his guitar.

I had a coworker assume that I was some sort of felon because of this.

No, just retail work in a shitty state that does not mandate any breaks for employees. You learn real quick how to eat a sandwich and be back on the floor in 2 minutes so your manager doesn’t jump down your throat.

Israel has plenty of their own homegrown defense industry, I do not foresee them running out of armaments any time soon, despite what your politicians may say.

The issue is that none of those have the energy density of nuclear power. A single mid-sized nuclear plant can power a small city, where that same city would need at least a half-dozen solar farms around the area (assuming there’s enough cleared land to support it - rooftop solar can offset, but it generally will not replace mains power), or tons of wind turbines (again, subject to area - not every place is a good candidate). Geothermal and hydroelectric are subject to that same issue - you can’t place them anywhere, there are very specific requirements to get one up and running.

I agree we should work towards 100% green energy, but nuclear is an effective option dollar-for-dollar and acre-for-acre until we figure out a good way to increase energy density of wind or solar to a point where we don’t need enormous tracts of land dedicated to them in order to support places where people live.

Did Star Trek ever do one?

Mhm, society persists even through collapse scenarios mostly for exactly this reason. John the Butcher in 13th century Scotland might have lost his entire village to The Plague, but those guys in the village 3 miles down the road still have people who know how to forage, or hunt, or grow food, etc etc etc.

Not in all areas.

Pretty much this. It’s the radium craze, or the ozone craze, or a whole bunch of other fads - everything has to have AI/LLMs integrated in some way or it’s not “interesting” to shareholders.

We sure do NOT have universally mandatory civics, not anymore. I graduated in 09 and my school district didn’t teach anyone anything beyond the basics of the voting system.

Pretty much this. The average gets dragged down by a HIGH infant mortality rate - nest predators from snakes to raccoons to hawks and vultures kill a lot of hatchlings, as well as things like simple accidents (falling out of a tree, for instance).

Considering his cabinet has stated they actively had to dissuade him, several times, from simply ordering military elements to “gun down” protestors during the Floyd protests in 2020…yeah.

Pretty much this. Elon was never interested in what he SHOULD HAVE BEEN: making an inexpensive electric vehicle that’s widely available. Tesla had the tech to do so, but they were being driven to make insane decisions like moving the gearshift to a touchscreen (gee, I love taking my eyes off the road to shift gears), or making “futuristic” doors that actually cannot physically open from the inside (whoops, guess those just can’t be recalled since DOT has literally no teeth).

Or they were just taking it home to store. Which, y’know, will likely result in that gas eating the plastic bucket in a couple weeks because gasoline is incredibly good as a solvent.

Also, I think Tesla saw the way the wind was blowing on standardization. Eventually, the DOT will enforce a standard plug, and if it’s not YOURS, suddenly you have to either remanufacture the cars you’re making, or otherwise refit them to work with the new standard.