well, the other side of that, I’ve been hit by a full size modern truck doing about 30 in the driver’s side door and all I got was a dent ;)

MURICA!

must be accompanied by the scream of a red tailed hawk*.

**The noise made by “bald eagles” in movies is not actually a bald eagle, they sound too wimpy, so they dubbed in another bird.

I prefer going back to the 60s and 70s, but when you do that fule efficiency drops my a huge amount, to have something affordable to drive regularly you’ll need a 4 cylinder from that time period.

Of course I only really use a vehicle for hauling things, so it has to be a V8, but on the bright side the big trucks that could haul massive loads from back then are actually smaller than the “Never leave the pavement, and if you carry more than groceries your warranty is void” trucks they sell now.

I was far below the average gas use when I had that big F-550 than the American average because I used it for what it was needed for, or to drive down the highway and park so I could pull out my bike and ride from there once I was past the “Oh god, oh god, we’re all gonna die!” stretch of road.

This is the same kind of “I KNOW BETTER!” fuckery Europeans call American tourists out on.

Remember that the United States is larger than the entierity of Europe if you don’t count Russia, and comperable if you do.

YMMV, and I’d wager most visitors are in ideal locations more often than not, so you see the best we have to offer… Unless it’s Florida, of course.

I also spend $100 a month for internet that often caps at 100k, that’s the speed of a dial-up shotgun modem from the 90s, tell me how your gigabit fiber in your hotel is cheaper and faster because the city you are in must reflect the conditions of the entire nation.

And NEVER use biometrics

Remember, people who don’t live here:

Our rails are almost all shut down, public transit is a joke in all but a few small areas, roads are dangerous to bike or walk on with many not even having a shoulder let alone a reasoable place for traffic that isn’t motorized.

You slmost have to have a car here, by incredibly shitty design.

And then the cars, now…

Between the fact that nobody makes a decent car anymore, they all fall apart just about the time your lease is up so you can’t even own one only sign eternal contracts for landfill bait, all of them spy on you, and have beacons that are tracked by countless parts of our surveillence capitalism infrastructure on top of sending their own reports on you to the automaker who then sells it to anyone ad everyone, insurance is insanely expensive, and now gas is nuts, as well… And if you have a diesel?

I don’t own a car anymore, and am not in an area with passable public transit. I have one chance a week, insanely early in the morning, to catch a buss for an eight hour trip that would take one by car to get to a hub… Which doesn’t even have decent local transit for the town, but does have a meeting of interstates so you can catch other busses to other cities. At leaast those city connections run at least once a day instead of a week.

You’re supposed to be tested when you renew your license, but the renewal period is anywhere from four to twenty-five years, with some places even longer. If you are not renewing your license they neeed an incident to reevaluate your ability to drive.

On the one hand it’s good that they have less control over locing down the ability of people to move around, especially since we have almost no rail lines, horrible public transit, and roads that are dangerous to bike or walk on.

On the other… You have to hurt someone, or damage something, in order to be told “Okay, grandpa, time to hang up the keys.”

This is 2026, and I’m American, so there are a LOT of ways to get shot for dumb shit.

I always hit “Factory Data Reset” before crossing a border, but now they aren’t just at (or nenar) borders.

Time to keep any data on a server, in a jurisdiction that tells the MAGAt motherfuckers where to stuff it.

Sadly hard to find a commercial service. Sync is in Canada, and they’re a compelte joke now that Carney is ruining the place. Tuta is in Germany, and they have AfD running a new Nazi takeover one chunk at a time. Proton is Switzerland which is good… For Citizens. Most of us aren’t Swiss, though.

Honestly we need someone to make a service like Proton, and put it in Iceland…

Which will be good, until that fuckwit Cheeto mistakes it for Greenland and invades.

Airport?

What is this? 1999?

Back before ICE who has NEVER stayed where they are supposed to be.

And if it’s not them it’s the dogfuckers at nenw FBI.

I can’t solder to save my life, but this still makes me take them off the list for potential future boards.

Granted, I prerfer RISC-V where posible, but a few things still need ARM.

Now I need to look around for a alternative to two Pi5s, the Pi4, and Pi Zero that were on my list.

…and this crap is going to normal cars, too.

Gas is so damn expensive, but anyting from this millenium is trash.

Well, I have a big enough backlog to never run out of games if I live to break world records, so fuck all the new shit let the industry die.