Let me know when they can block my paper road atlas.

It’s OK! I’m saving big money on paying for haircuts and not needing to buy hair shampoo!

I lost all my hair due to Fedora Kinonite…

Counter-counterpoint: If you get pregnant, at some time in the very near future, somebody is bound to notice. Whether you say something about it or not.

As an 'Merican, I cannot say I have ever met anyone who has this kind of hangup about sex. You should see the stupid sex reveals some couples do these days.

It’s a funny meme sometimes, but remember that old Ben Franklin sexy-timed his way across Europe. He was a first order philanderer. And Britain’s dismayed complaint against US troops during WW2, “overpaid and oversexed.”

Personally, I like a Halligan tool for this kind of work. I’ve opened a few doors and broken some windows with one. Never leave home without your Irons.

That’s continuing the tradition leve stuff right there.

Nice!

A good excuse to get another cheap box to crash and burn!

This is why you keep 2 computers. One that is dull and as stock as you can. And then you have that beater box to get stupid with. Drive the sum biotch right into that kernal panic at 100mph just for fun.

So therapeutic some days…

Here is the thing about bunkers. Unless they have installed some way to power that bunker and provide water and food that cannot be destroyed, it’s a self-made trap. They can be ignored and the denizens will die in the cold damp darkness of starvation and dehydration. With a probable side dose of madeness.

American English has never be bashful about filing the serial numbers off a word and then claiming it as our own. It can lead, (lead/lead/led?) to confusion even among us native speakers. At least until we sort it out.

Personally I blame the French, (for no reason other than I can), for all the ills in the English language.

Today, which one you might choose has more to do with how you vibe with either one. So there is no “wrong” choice. But back in the early days, Gnome was the better DE. More polished and definitely more stable. I can remember the crashes and the total crash and burn of KDE from those days. That gave Gnome the leg up to becoming default for many distros.

These days. KDE Plasma is every bit as good as Gnome.

For many of us, it was the Gnome Wars and the Devs staged their coup and took over. Because who needs to listen to your customers? You’re a Dev and you know best right?

Gnome 2 was Da Bomba. Clean and fast with just enough user control to make you happy. I still miss Gnome2 some days. Then the War happened and we got Gnome3. And things spiralled into the hell that Gnome has become. I switched to KDE and I dabble in many other DEs for funsies. But never Gnome anymore.

These days, I think Cinnamon DE is about as close as you can get to Gnome2. But, even that is slowly evolving away as it must.

Gnome is the most popular DE for Fedora. Though KDE is popular enough to finally get Fedora to place it equally alongside their Gnome ISO. But I would bet Gnome has at least a slim lead ahead of all DEs.

Yeah, only once have I heard the whole ER seemingly go silent. It was when we brought in a young trauma victim, (car accident). The pandemonium of a 6 people working all at once, the voices calm but tense and a bit louder, and the er Doc standing in the corner watching and directing the action. We worked the code for maybe 5 or 6 minutes before the Doctor called it. Everything just stopped. People froze from what they were doing. And the whole ER was dead silent for what seemed like hours, but was only a few seconds before everything came back to real time.

Only twice have I had to hear the agony of a mother. Once when I did a drowning. We were searching for the husband/father. I found him in about 6 feet of water. (my big toe went into his mouth-- a feeling I will never forget). My partner and I got him shallow water along the shore. And I did the math and estimated he’d been down 25 to 45 minutes. So we agreed to call it. So I started walking to the house, all soaking wet, to deliver the news. I can still hear her wail right now as I told her and her young son that daddy was never coming home again.

The other time was when we were paged out to a 4-wheeler accident. And an 11-year-old boy somehow drove too close to a drainage ditch and rolled in about 20 feet down. I went down with a rope and found him pinned under the 4-wheeler face down in about 3 or 4 inches of water. He had been dead long enough to be beyond anybodies help. I climbed back up the ditch and explained to the mother her 11-year old son was gone. To this day I pray to whatever gods there are that he was dead before he drowned pinned face down under that 4-wheeler.

The worst part of ALL of those moments was when you were done and driving away from the scene, and you still had that pager on, and you needed to get your shit back in a row and fast. The next call was going to happen at some point. You needed to be ready to 100% focus on that call with no time, or too much time, to process what had happened.

As an old and retired paramedic myself, there are definitely parts of me, as a human being, that will never grow back. And I worked in a rural area where you work on neighbors, family, and friends mostly. It was never easy to explain to the family that might be present that not me or god could fix what was wrong. I also did a few suicides over the years. Never easy and they leave a mark that won’t grow back by morning.

The worst thing about any of it, was meeting a family member in a cafe or store in our small town. And they would invariably come up to me and give me a hug and tell me how grateful they were that I was there for them. Despite the fact I couldn’t do shit for the dead person beyond calling dispatch and telling them to send law enforcement to come and do their paperwork and secure the scene until the funeral home got there to haul the body away.

There is no real way to know about telemetry until they really get out in the wild. But, I wouldn’t think it will have much because of the minimalist design and approach to marketing. It also helps there is just one model that can be either a 2 door pickup or an SUV with some extra bolt on parts and only one paint color-- body wraps extra. And I think they have hit the sweet spot in battery options. You can get the standard 150-mile pack or the 240-mile pack. Most urban dwellers would be just fine with the standard 150 range. While still giving those of us that live in rural areas the ability to have just enough extra range to make those longer round trips we often need to drive.

I think the biggest thing they have done is to re-imagine just what customers want and how to actually manufacture it. It’s a throw-back idea about not selling expensive packages for multiple models, but one model that comes just one color. But you can choose to add things, or not, as you want them. And they, so far, want the customer to have the power to repair or add items and do the work themselves.

As I said, I do suspect the majority of Slates sold will be $30,000+US due to the pretty clever old school marketing method of letting customers choose what to factory install when ordering. A very good way to get people to over spend on wants and not real needs. The profit margins on installing radios is a lot less than letting the customer upsell themselves on those fancy rims and aggressive tires.

It’s a bold experiment in the automotive industry in the US. I think it can work and work well. There is a huge gap in the automotive market at the low end price range that simply isn’t being exploited. Slate can be the one to stake a claim to it.

The only one I can think of is the Slate. But they aren’t quite ready to open the doors to buyers just yet. They do claim manufacturing to start late this year. Though you can reserve a build for $50. They claim base price in the mid US$20K. Though I would think most will sell out the door for $30K to $35K when you start adding all the customizations most will go for.

I have hopes for Slate.

It’s a start. It may take time to make it work for “everyday” use, but if it’s possible now, it can be done better in the future.