That is expensive! In Texas it is $33 for a standard driver’s license and lasts 8 years. All these recommendations to get a passport card make a lot more sense now. I was confused at first because passports here are way less affordable than a driver’s license and you can’t drive with a passport, so you still need that driver’s license in a car-centric state. Real ID started rolling out in 2012 so people have really been dragging their feet if they still don’t have one. I don’t think you can get a driver’s license or ID card here without Real ID. Also stores that sell alcohol don’t take a passport here either, so you need a state ID if you want to drink.

Do you really want to leave Republicans in charge of the legislature until Cruz is up for reelection?

xAI is Elon’s AI company. I don’t think the value at which he is willing to sell his one company to his other company applies much to anything outside of Musk’s companies.

It is normal for older people to be jaded. Having the young, idealistic age start out life jaded and miserable really drags the average down.

The person who shared this here specifically said [US President] Trump is losing soldiers which is a fairly specific indicator. You can look up which countries have a person named Trump in charge. The linked website is a US website writing for a US audience so they don’t write their headlines as if they are a global news organization.

Just because someone has a higher paycheck and a slightly nicer car doesn’t mean they have made it beyond living a paycheck to paycheck grind. Most of these people are living in a slightly more expensive neighborhood that eats up a lot of those slightly higher wages and they still have to budget for major purchases like a new car. Tesla owners aren’t a bunch of hedge fund managers living in mansions behind gates, separate from the rest of us. I don’t have a Tesla myself, but I live in a boring suburban neighborhood full of Teslas.

Not necessarily, it could be like Russia electing Putin into office. In 2008 he traded roles and became prime minister due to the consecutive term limits they had there, then he went back to the presidency and abolished that whole restriction so he could remain president for the rest of his life. Russia still has elections, but opposition candidates get disappeared. It’s more of democracy theater than actual democracy.

Fascinating, the term athletics refers to sports in general in the US. Track and Field is indeed the categorization I am familiar with.

The odds are pretty much nonexistent. You don’t accidentally load up an electric vehicle with a bunch of gasoline and fireworks, park it in front of a building with the incoming president’s name, rig the flammable material to ignite, and finally shoot yourself before it ignites. Supposedly his wife just broke up with him after Christmas, so perhaps he was feeling extra hopeless and wanted to do something extreme to get everyone’s attention.

Chick tracts are still around. Someone left this awful one on my car last year after this latest war in Israel and Palestine started up. The short version is it starts with environmental disaster fears over pollution and food shortages and ends with needing a world war against Israel to bring Jesus back from the dead to save our souls.

https://dn790008.ca.archive.org/0/items/chick-tracts/chick tracts/End times/The Great Escape!_text.pdf

My library has board game rentals, multiple meeting rooms, and maker spaces with 3d printers, sewing machines, and other equipment along with the traditional rooms of books for different ages and interests. You can have social spaces within a library, it doesn’t all have to be silent.

The word you are looking for here is impulsively, not accidentally. He purposefully went through the whole process of selling the house and experienced immediate remorse, but there was no accident involved.

42% of the state did, not everyone in Texas is a Republican.

The stickers do help, I have seen one before and then I remember how it was exciting in the early days that someone was very publicly making a big push to introduce a viable alternative to internal combustion engines. We know a lot more now about Musk and Tesla than we did back when the first cars rolled out. A lot of the early Tesla owners probably meant well and it doesn’t help that nearly all the infrastructure (at least in my area) is car-only and hostile towards other forms of transit.

His PAC is targeting multiple groups separately with conflicting messages instead of advertising to users across the platform broadly with messages that don’t contain contradictions. The PAC is trying to convince everyone that Harris supports whoever they assume to be each ad recipient’s big enemy.

He was a sore loser even in 2016 when he did win because he was upset he didn’t win the popular vote, only the electoral college. He had fake electoral maps he showed off that painted pretty much the whole country voting for him and he repeatedly claimed that he won the popular vote, but democrats cheated and that is why it looked like Clinton won the popular vote. No matter how this vote goes, Trump will act outraged that cheating happened and made his numbers underperform, even if he wins in a landslide.

My entire county only has one early voting location. I miss the convenience of voting in a random place like a nearby store when I lived in a more populated area instead of having to drive halfway across the county.

They couldn’t advertise and their reach was limited but they could still post. Now they are outright banned around the world on Meta platforms.

Laura Loomer. She was recently criticized by Marjorie Taylor Greene for being too racist.

The patient has insurance but once you have insurance you have to find healthcare professionals who accept your insurance, doctors don’t have to accept any insurance plan. The insurance company here has a list of health providers that accept their coverage (we call this in network) and you can go to them for care. The insurance company’s list is poorly maintained so many of the listed providers went out of business, stopped accepting the insurance plan, or stopped accepting new patients.

If you go to a doctor that is out of network, the insurance company charges you much much more for the visit if they cover it at all, or you may have to pay completely out of pocket.