I'd believe it. One time at a concert we all did acid and molly. At a certain point I needed to go down the stairs to another level, but as I attempted to go down, there was an usher telling me I couldn't go downstairs. So I said "Oh, sorry, my bad" and walked away. A few minutes later, my friends come find me and walk me down that same staircase, and the usher said nothing, which I thought was odd.
It was later after sobering up that my friends told me that what actually happened was I had walked right up to the usher, stared intensely at them for a solid minute, before saying "Oh, sorry, my bad" and walking off.
Another time, I had a buddy get incredibly high and was trying to run to the police station up the street because we were "mind controlling him", and then later that evening after calming him down, was watching porn and having conversations with the actors as if they were speaking directly to him. Not even masturbating, mind you, just watching porn to converse with them.
Let's be real, if you want an EV and a real truck, you're going to buy an F-150 Lightning, Silverado EV, or RAM EV and get a truck that's at least somewhat compatible with normal truck accessories, and has a service network that's not going to just offer you Uber credits when you need to get to a jobsite
I might add a couple of suggestions to make things as painless as possible. Get the H&K sound system and Tech package. The tiny screen looks super crappy in such a nice interior and the base sound system SUCKS. No, seriously, it's absolutely abysmal and is legitimately far worse than the one in my wife's base Kia Niro. I'm not super snobby when it comes to audio systems and mostly listen to podcasts and such, but it's barely passable even for that. Second is if you plan on getting a BEV, get one with a heat pump. It makes a massive difference in range even if it doesn't get super cold where you live.
Also, after having a 33kWh REx and now the larger 42kWh BEV, I don't miss the REx at all. It's not a road trip car by any means, but I got it from Atlanta to Detroit with zero issues, it was just a slow trip. I've driven it all around MI and done a couple of road trips to Chicago in it, and had zero issues.
No one ever does! Myself included, until I was actually driving back from a Model 3 test drive when they first came out, and happened to see one parked out front of the BMW dealer. I had completely forgot they even existed, decided to look it up, found to my surprise it was RWD, and drove back over to test drive one. I bought a 2017 REx a month later and loved it so much I bought my '21 S since I knew they weren't going to make them anymore. The normal i3 is good, but the S is absolutely the way to go.
The best way I can describe the tires is that they have far, far more grip than they have any right to given their size. For street use, the EP500s are more than sufficient and I've never felt like I was wanting for grip. For AutoX, they do okay, but definitely severely hamper the performance of the car. It's RWD, so you're not over stressing those narrow fronts too much when you really push it, but it still likes to understeer more than I'd like, but I think that's also a symptom of being unable to turn DSC all the way off, because it feels a lot more balanced when I put it in the "everything, including ABS off" mode.
I've got plenty of experience with hot hatches; my first car was an APR stage 2 tuned Mk5 GTI, and I regularly drive my friends' FoST and FoRS. It definitely doesn't feel quite as sporty as those, but I find it far more fun as an around town daily. We've also had an F-Type R, ZL1, and M3, and while they're phenomenal experiences and super fun to drive, any time you're even pushing them a little on public roads, there's just that incessant nag in the back of my mind both knowing the car can give so much more, but also that doing so is insanely risky. I feel like I get to push my i3 a lot more on public roads without being downright reckless, and it just makes it way more fun to drive because of that.
With all that said, the TL;DR is that they're way more fun than they have any right to be, and ignore preconceptions or hangups on the performance numbers you might have,
The i3s is a fun as hell hot hatch. I absolutely adore mine, and can't imagine ever selling it. It's much larger on the inside than you'd think, and I move a ton of shit with it regularly.
For real. I'm less than 5 years older than some of my wife's friends, and they were almost awestruck that I have basically ZERO ads in our house. Every device has uBlock, Sponsorblock, ReVanced, SmartTube, whole house has PiHole and a couple of other things. And these are CS majors and engineers, so it's not like they aren't at least semi tech-savvy. They just accept the ads as if they can't do anything about them.
But I say fuck it, because literally every content creator I like does zero sponsorship or ad deals, and they all manage to make fantastic content. I'll give them $1000 via their Patreon or merch before I'll watch a single ad for shit like Raycons or Raid: Shadow Legends. Ads are absolute cancer and the more ads you see for a product, the shittier it is, almost guaranteed.
FYI, he didn't make it "open source". It was a joke of a sharing agreement that basically said they could use your patents if you used theirs. It was purely so they could steal IP from anyone dumb enough to think that Tesla had some magic "secret sauce", and took them up on the agreement.
I can tell you right now, personally knowing people who worked with him way back on the first Model S, he has always been an absolutely unhinged shithead of the highest degree. He loved going into an absolute berserk rage dropping tons of F-bombs in conference calls, all because someone gave him an answer he didn't like.
otherwise your initial employees and partners are going to walk out the door and leave you with nothing.
Yeah, there's a reason the original people at Tesla all left, and he was kicked out of PayPal. Literally the only reason anyone tolerates him in any way is for the financial incentive, and that's the only way he's kept people around.
Twice as expensive as what? A Lucid Air sure isn't competing against a Model 3 if that's what you're saying. It's priced almost identically to the Model S, so not really twice as expensive. Also, in case you missed it, the Supercharger network is opening to all brands, so that selling point is not a thing for much longer.
There's literally no reason to pick a Tesla over another brand, unless you really enjoy paying $12k to beta test absolutely terrifying ADAS software.
I think that you really did a good job summing up an incredibly complex issue in a fairly neutral way. No matter how smart you are as a kid/teen, there's only so much you're ever going to see play out, and it takes some time to get all the "data points" to start seeing the bigger picture.
As for Israel/Palestine, it's literally one of the single most complex issues in geopolitics, and while it's easy for someone reading articles and watching TikToks to just say "if Israel just gave them their land back and everything would be good!", it's ignorant of a much, much, MUCH bigger picture.
This is not saying I support any of what's going on. I don't think it's particularly controversial to say that conflicts of any sort are fucking awful, but the reality is that if Israel just did pull out of the West Bank and ceded all the claims, there would be so many knock-on effects that are effectively impossible to predict, with none of them being particularly good.
Realistically, the only way you could ever hope to come to a "simple" solution that doesn't result in a massive loss of life would be with a time machine.
Batteries are rated for a certain continuous current draw, and if you try drawing too much, you're going to have a bad time. Some of these flashlights can draw a ridiculous amount of power, and if you're putting a cheap knockoff 18650 in it with no internal protections, it's not going to be a fun time.
It's the same issue people had with vapes exploding. The original included batteries might only be rated for a continuous draw of say, 10A, and they're adding these crazy high wattage coils trying to get 30A from them.
I don't know if you've ever owned anything with brushed stainless panels, but ding-proof they are not, and they're generally WAY more noticeable. They also still need to be clear coated, otherwise every panel will become discolored over time.
I had an accident happen on a dive trip where my dive buddy had a heart attack about 70ft down. Another diver and I see him struggling, and do an emergency surface to haul him up. We get him on the boat, Coast Guard meets up with us to rush him back to shore, and when we get back, they had an ambulance there for me as they were worried I'd get the bends from having to surface from that deep that fast.
I feel totally fine the whole time, get to the hospital and they ask me if I'm in any pain/check for symptoms. I tell them no. They have me wait on a stretcher for about half an hour, until a hyperbaric specialist can see me. He walks over (again, I'm just sitting on a stretcher in the middle of a hall this whole time), and asked if I'm feeling okay. No issues other than the worst need to pee I've ever had from the saline bag in me, and he says I'm good to go. Weeks later, I get a hospital bill for $7k, $5k of which was being seen by a specialist. Which, my college insurance didn't cover because I wasn't referred to by my PCP.
It took an insane amount of back and forth to convince them to cover it, but quickly turned around when I showed them the news broadcast from that day about the accident, and how bad it would look for them to try and throw a $7k medical bill onto a college student who was literally trying to save a dude's life.
Our medical insurance system is just a ton of fun.
16 years of a single ad-ridden service, maybe. Most people probably have more than just their lone Disney+ bundle or Netflix, so I'd say it's probably closer to 5 years, also assuming they don't continue to raise prices, which obviously won't happen.
I'd believe it. One time at a concert we all did acid and molly. At a certain point I needed to go down the stairs to another level, but as I attempted to go down, there was an usher telling me I couldn't go downstairs. So I said "Oh, sorry, my bad" and walked away. A few minutes later, my friends come find me and walk me down that same staircase, and the usher said nothing, which I thought was odd.
It was later after sobering up that my friends told me that what actually happened was I had walked right up to the usher, stared intensely at them for a solid minute, before saying "Oh, sorry, my bad" and walking off.
Another time, I had a buddy get incredibly high and was trying to run to the police station up the street because we were "mind controlling him", and then later that evening after calming him down, was watching porn and having conversations with the actors as if they were speaking directly to him. Not even masturbating, mind you, just watching porn to converse with them.
Drugs are a hell of a drug.