At best, “support our troops” was a version of that dumbass magical thinking that, in earlier times, held that the U.S. lost in Vietnam because Americans didn’t clap for Tinkerbell, err, I mean, support the war. Mostly, it was a thought-terminating cliché.

Yeah, as you rightly point out, it was never about the soldiers themselves.

Dammit, I came up with a Halloween costume too late. The plan would’ve been to dress up as a ‘like’ button, and get drunk.

Heck, people are still producing new games for the Commodore 64.

And Emmett Till could still be very much alive, had he not been lynched.

You say that, but “vote blue no matter who” is exactly this argument under the paint.

I’m on this kick of pointing out that the utilitarian ethical calculation still works with 100% Hitler and 100.1% Hitler. Harm minimization, baby!

Oh boy, if you haven’t, read its history. Its real history. Wild stuff.

To continue this thought, you might be interested to know how neuroscience tells us the brain works: In short, the unconscious mind decides and acts, and the conscious mind makes up stories about why. Quite often, the story is just wrong, or at least misguided. Those voters have a real reason that they don’t understand or won’t admit to themselves, and a million reasons that they give instead to explain it.

Yes, we need to drop the misconception that people rationally decide about much of anything, and learn about their real reasons.

See, that’s the thing: It’s the passing lane, not the fast lane. A lot of semis are speed governed to 65MPH, so if I’m doing the 70MPH speed limit, I need to use it to pass them.

The left lane, and how no, it’s not for going as fast as you want to drive.

They’re missing out, then.

Villagers: Let’s sacrifice a virgin to the volcano god.

Virgin: Help me, step-bro!

“Plot”: proceeds as one would expect

Yeah, the real question about him: Does he accept his payoff in rubles, or is he the kind of two-faced mercenary who demands dollars? (I know my guess.)

I left my bathroom clock on standard time, because it’s hard to reach. Now I have to remember that it’s correct again.

That last but is almost NMEA 2000, which standardizes exactly that kind of information, but in boats. It’s old enough that they based it on CANbus, but there are many repeater products to add IP devices (Ethernet, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth) to the network.

ETA: By which I mean to say, plenty of designs already exist in the marine market which could be used to bridge a car’s CANbus to consumer devices, if they wanted to.

Billy West? What a stupid, phony, made-up name!

I used to know a woman named April, and her two daughters are May and June. (Both still under age 12.)

A lot of people do, it just got me in this case because the meaning of break lined up with the action of turning onto county roads, so I thought it was some special thing.

True story. I remember back in the bad old days when Firefox had notorious memory leaks, so when building my latest PC, I put in 32GB. The monitor app on my desktop has only ever topped out at showing 30% of memory allocated.

We couldn’t get new parts from Yugoslavia, for some reason.

Oh, I was thinking of the definition of break, “a noticeable change in direction,” not brake, “to slow or stop by or as if by a brake.” Got it!