I think the “don’t hold it don’t own it” advice does make sense for a small amount of portable gold if you’re considering a scenario like a fascist government taking over and needing to flee the country with any wealth you can, predicated on the assumption that other countries are still relatively stable.

There are also a lot of silly people who hoard pounds of gold for apocalyptic currency which you’ve pegged.

In fairness, if the US dollar collapses, say, but the euro is fine and you find a way to get to Europe, you’re much better off with a few chunks of gold that will be worth relatively what you bought them for than with wheelbarrows full of hundred dollar bills which are now worth less than paper.

Supernote is an eNotebook and is writing focused rather than book focused, but it uses a stripped down fork of android and you can easily side load other android apps onto it including e.g. F-droid. You can use it without an account and with no network connectivity (loading content via USB), or your choice of cloud providers, including recently self-hosted storage.

I mostly read library books so unfortunately I have to go through Kindle, but you can use the Kindle app on the device and it works pretty well. Not as many features as a dedicated device, but the basics work great.

Major caveat: it’s not backlit so you need a book light/lamp/headlamp, which is a big pain.

I meant that they’re all behemoths rather than quality wise! But yeah, Chevy has improved and is ok now from what I understand, the rest I wouldn’t trust.

Sorry, I meant that they’re all too huge for European roads. Quality wise it varies considerably, Chevy group has kind of stepped it up and honda/the Koreans have slipped (though miles better than Stellantis group with Dodge and jeep still).

The Japanese and Korean vehicles for the American market aren’t any better to be fair.

Had a volt, I don’t even think they were selling them 3 years ago. I had a 2011 or 2012, one of the original models before the update, from from 2019-2022 or thereabouts. Had to replace the radiator, 12 volt battery, reset the traction battery, and replace the coolant system hoses. Again, huge PITA but got more than double the MPG of the 2001 sedan it replaced and held its value decently.

All cars period are bad investments. That’s being said, I had a volt for about 3 years and I saved more in gas than I lost to depreciation and expensive maintenance. I bought it before there was an EV that could do my daily commute that wasn’t horrendously expensive; they were a good transition vehicle 10 years ago before batteries and charging speeds improved, though they’re definitely a huge PITA to maintain.

Really this is one area wherr most US politicians for years have been equally bad, they’ve all been protectionist of the US auto industry and pushed poorly thought-out emissions regulation that makes cars bigger there

I doubt it, but they’re also not worse than any equivalent year gas car I’ve heard of

Most demographic information in the US (all?) is self-reported, and unless you were in the American southwest, Hispanic community prevalence and cultural influence in the broader US is pretty recent, so I suspect that not many U.S.-derived Native Americans are mislabeling themselves as Hispanic.

Traditionally it actually went the other way: Native Americans, while second class citizens in a lot of respects, were more respected than black people or dark-skinned immigrants. So, for instance, there were tons and tons of light-skinned black folk passing as Native and marrying into white families in New England especially. It was a big topic in genetics when things like Ancestry DNA reports became more common and lots of people who’s great great great grandfather was Cherokee or whatever found out he was actually an escaped slave who passed as Native.

That being said, most Latin American Hispanics are of at least partially indigenous descent, so in a broader sense most Hispanics in the US are indeed indigenous, they’re just descended from Nahuatl/Mayan/Quechua/Mapuche or some other indigenous ethnic group, rather than one of the groups that is today considered ‘Native American’ in the US.

David Sedaris in a commencement speech gave some advice that has really stuck with me and is quite apt, I think. To paraphrase, “you can’t win everything, so pick one or two issues to be passionately angry about and try to change and focus on those, or you won’t get anything done.”

Found the quote, Oberlin 2018 commencement: “Choose one thing to be terribly, terribly offended by, and be offended by this as opposed to the dozens or possibly hundreds that many of you are currently juggling… Stand up for what you believe in, as long as I believe in the same thing. Those of you who’d like to ban assault rifles, I am behind you 100 percent. Take the front lines, give it your all, and don’t back down until you win. Do not, however, petition to have a Balthus painting removed from the Met because you can see the subject’s underpants. The goal is to have less in common with the Taliban, not more.”

Or that he already crashed the economy during his first term, jfc

Especially if it’s going to weigh as much as a small RV

Him speaking at the RNC was not in and of itself bad–i heard him justify it later and he made some good points, that there are a lot of exploited workers in the base who could stand to hear the benefits of unions from a union leader instead of just hearing Fox propaganda. But to look at the tax cuts, the benefit cuts, and the tariff outcomes and double down on Trump makes it abundantly clear where his loyalties lie–his own pockets, and maybe his own prejudices.

Also a lot of what (good) trial lawyers do is cover all the small loopholes, so questions that seem silly are because Dr X-acto got off on murder by claiming it was an autopsy in 1798 or whatever. Or it’s a bad trial lawyer and it is silly.

Even if true it’s not relevant. He’s a Nazi in the US, if something goes south for him here he can’t flee to the US.

This is my theory, less that he wants access to memorabilia and more he heard that Nazis fled there and survived and he’s hedging his backup plan

Nonviolent protests work fine, great even, they just have to be disruptive. The Civil Rights movement was largely nonviolent and got results because they striked, took up commercial space so commerce couldn’t operate, and gummed up the works so productivity stalls. The suits won’t care about violence either if they have ways of escaping, they only care about direct impacts, be it directed violence or economic harm.

I don’t quite get how they’ve managed to fit a five-foot bed and two rows of seating in just 152 inches. Even if we assume no hood whatsoever and an inch thick frame that’s only 90 inches for the entire passenger compartment, which is pretty tight. Maybe the seats are thin and very vertical?