I usually operate under the opposite world view. If you've been personally affected by something, I no longer really trust you to be fair and honest and logical. I don't want to hear about setting speed limits from someone that lost their child in a car accident.

They are a pretty small part of the population though.

I honestly tempt fate for fun to see how good police surveillance tech is the last few years.

I let one of my cars expire the registration a few months Everytime, because I'm lazy and because I want to see if I get flagged by a popup system Everytime a police officer passes near me. My commute car is out of registration 3 months right now. And old cop friend told me they basically never tow unless it's 6 months. I pay the $50 late fee once a year and keep doing my experiment for the last 6-7 years. Still no real signs they care.

My fun car has out of state plates for 10 years now. Ive been pulled over once for speeding, and told the officer I just bought it. I've never registered it since I bought it from a friend a decade ago. They let me go. It makes me wonder if one day they'll say "sir, we have plate scanners of this vehicle driving around this state for a year straight.. pay a fine." Not yet.

Cops use those systems to make easy arrests for things like active warrants, stolen vehicles and they feed into systems that keep track of where licensed vehicles are and when.

In a way that's worse, because the systems aren't looking up your car or to target your vehicle for fines, but to look up and target you for arrest.

Same systems can be used to identify, track and arrest undesirables.

As a side note, I've gotten my dad into dirtbiking for the first time at 65.

He has padded shorts, and padding pants, and a padded shirt. He then wears my track leathers, even though he's on dirt. He's fallen a few times and he agrees you feel like superman.

He's started joking that if he makes it to 75, he's going to start wearing the padded shorts and shirt as regular daily wear.

I have always thought once I get to a certain age I might just start wearing a helmet...everywhere when standing. It will look silly, but maybe it's not such a bad idea.

Padded shorts with hip protection arent really visible in clothes. Wearing a helmet would make you look pretty crazy hah. But helmets are also designed to deal with impacts stronger than just falling over. For falls, people might do ok with just padded hats that were designed for just falls.

If I had to guess it would be people getting heavier, weaker, and more sedentary than the past.. making falls more likely.

Also people seem to like hard flooring lately instead of carpet. Even backyards are getting more cemented by the decade.

Also talker. And impact force increases with the square of distance so the extra height matters.

A good friend recently lost her dad to a fall in his back yard. Technically it was a second or third stroke in the past few years, but this time he also fell backwards onto a cement stepping stone in his backyard. So you're correct that these things can often be related. Another friend has never had a fainting spell in his life. But three years ago, fainted luckily forward I guess, and knocked out a tooth.

These people could have bought a dirt bike or mountain bike and had the time of their life. I don't get it.

I think I’d take directing big things at Google over riding a dirt bike…

I’m not actually sure what you don’t get.

I’m all for not living a lower level grind and riding a dirt bike. Most jobs simply aren’t interesting.

If you're a director at Google you can probably afford a pretty damn nice dirt bike if that's your jam

It’s the lack of imagination that’s sad.

Regretting not being able to create more shareholder value on your deathbed.

So very sad.

Depends on the shareholder. At Sergey Brin's level, that shareholder value shapes the future of humanity, a legacy affecting many more people and will last far longer than spending time with single, or even double digit number of children.

I can't really tell what you're trying to say, do you really think the shareholder value of Google is positively aligned with the future of humanity? As in: If Google builds a really good AI and makes a lot of money from that, this will be a net positive for the world?

You’re shifting the goalpost to be positive influence or not. That’s not what they were saying though.

Their point is that the sheer allure for many people of that level of influence is powerful and makes other options likely less appealing.

I'm in California, and cost per mile of electricity vs gasoline is pretty similar in a Gen 1 Chevy Volt. I get 35 miles per gallon. That's also how for I can go on 10kwh in the good conditions. If gasoline is below $4.50 a gallon, it's cheaper to just run the volt on gasoline than it is to charge it at home.

That's particular to PG&E, as I recall, not all the utilities in California are so horribly mismanaged or got sued for burning an entire city to the ground. IMO the state should burn PG&E to the ground and replace the entire management structure with people who don't suck.

It’s also the case for me in the Midwest. I drive a Chrysler Pacifica PHEV and it gets about 32 miles per gallon and 32 miles on a charge, and a 16KWH battery. Electricity is $0.22 during peak hours, which equates to a breakeven point of $3.52 per gallon. Non-peak is $0.18, which is a breakeven of $2.88 per gallon. Gas is usually around $3 per gallon so I have to remember to not charge it until after 7pm (this is a setting you can set in the car to make it automatic.)

I’ve since bought solar panels for my house so it makes charging a lot more obvious, but I think it’s actually quite common for people to be paying more for charging than for gas.

On a side note, you should look up "wood gas". There are YouTube videos of 110v generators running off wood gas, and while it takes a bit of setup, it's within the realm of what a country person could do in a weekend or two. By weight, I think I remember that it takes 4x of wood vs gasoline to get the same energy. So while a generator takes 6 lbs of gasoline (a gallon) to give you ~5kw, it takes 25 lbs of wood. Sounds bad til you realize how much a tree weighs.

True technically, but there's many people that almost enjoy working on their cars IF they are pleasant to work on. And some are. At that point the car is just an avenue for your hobby of working on cars.

My parents have a Lexus RX400H (hybrid), that even for me as a car guy is a nightmare to work on. It's technically never had a fault since 2007 with 215k miles. But changing the spark plugs was probably the third hardest thing I've done with cars, only behind dropping a transmission and doing a head gasket job on other cars.