fiasco

Similarly, if the Earth can't survive Exxon, it was never going to succeed in the first place.

I just have to keep on hammering this point, because it pisses me off so, so much. Many people seem to believe that, since regulatory bodies can be captured, that regulation shouldn't be done. This is called learned helplessness, and it's something malicious people inflict on people they want to exploit.

It isn't sticking your head in the sand to resist assimilation by an evil corporation.

It is possible to buy a car in less than an hour, though I agree that you can't buy real estate that quickly. New Yorkers might be able to pull off stocks, if the money comes to them while the NYSE is open, but I'm not in New York (or Chicago, for the Mercantile Exchange, or...)

It's kind of a bizarre question, though. I have several small business owner friends. Could I get them to mark up a croissant to $1M, with the understanding they'll cut me in on the revenue?

If not, then what really are the terms of the question? Arms length transactions only? How will that be adjudicated?

I owned an Alfa Romeo Spider for a while, which was Italy's answer to a question nobody asked: where else could I get an MG?

So we've moved from implosions to explosions.

I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints, 'cause sinners are much more fun.

Also consider a roll of electrical tape to cover any lights on the dashboard.

Plus being small, low to the ground, and with even weight distribution, it's like driving a slow moving cloud.

But isn't it such a weird coincidence that "apolitical" always happens to be the same as "whatever is best for moneyed interests?" Like being able to take free software and repackage it for sale?

I don't really like driving, but it is necessary. My (main) car is a 1993 Mazda Miata, which is currently being repainted bright yellow, and I'm gonna put a new top on it next. It isn't fast, but it handles extremely well and it's fun to drive. Or at least, it makes driving as fun as it can be.

I think anyone who's driven a Miata understands.

Free as in freedom has been political since, like, the 1970s. I think the more important question is, when did people come to believe that free as in beer is apolitical?

I hope this will help somewhat...

When an NT interacts with another person, I have to try and make sense of what they say and do. For the most part, this'll instinctively be done by imagining that they're basically like me. This leads to some hilariously wrong judgments, because the line of thinking goes something like—if my imaginary version of myself were doing or saying this thing, what would have to be going on in my/their head for their words/actions to make sense?

People tend to have pretty poor imaginations, so it's pretty easy for someone to get to, what they're saying/doing must be malicious. I think this is also what people mean when they say "projection," that projection isn't always intended as an attack, but it is almost always a failure of imagination.

It's said, "when someone shows you who they are, believe them." What's fascinating is that this needs to be said; it should be obvious. But this is basically my point: in my experience, people don't have a great conception of the reality of others, and laziness makes people fall back on just imagining (their concept of) themselves but for being a woman, being black, being ND, being trans...

But remember, for the NT, this is all done automatically, this is just the baseline NT social perception. Or at least my understanding of it. So for example, when you ask someone, are you competing in a beauty contest? who cares what people think? many an NT will take that as an accusation of frivolity; after all, why is that the thing you focused on? What's going on in your head, or rather, what would have to be going on in my head for me to ask someone that? I must not like them very much, so they must not like me very much. And so on and so forth.

I'm (probably) NT and I find this incredibly tedious, I can't imagine what it's like for NDs.