Yeah, the zwave/zigbee options tend to be more barebones on the local display, so I very carfeully looked at the wifi options to find the best of both worlds.

Of course my opengarage is wifi based too, but that's fine.

Nothing against wifi, just it's so difficult to tell a 'local wifi' from a 'cloud wifi' device.

Approval ratings get weird, someone with a lower approval rating can beat someone with a higher approval rating.

So relatively fewer people are "excited" about a democrat candidate. If they have to pick between that candidate and Trump, they may still pick the candidate as the best practical option available, but they don't necessarily "approve" of the choice they are making. People have a hard time mustering "approval" for a milquetoast candidate, even if that person is the least objectionable to a broad set of folks.

Meanwhile Trump is making a particular sort of folk very happy, in a way no other modern politician has dared to do. Most people may find it highly objectionable driving a lot of disapproval, but you will have the die hard MAGAs ecstatic about stuffing those brown people into vans and locking them up in El Salvador without any due process.

Yeah, I got some z wave thermostats for home.

I got an Emersonl "homekit" thermostat for my in-law and managed to get it on wifi without "cloud". Unfortunately you have to be careful because the follow on model requires their cloud service for online control.

It's a real shame that most every house is well equipped to do standalone hosting for remote access, but most of the investment has gone toward cloud connected to force the recurring revenue opportunity.

Well you can do that today. Find a tree out in the middle of nowhere and sit under it without any electronic devices. Then you are oblivious to all that stuff. You may be bothered by the fact that the things are still happening, but there are also plenty of horrific things happening in that time period you went to, you just won't be keeping track of them.

You mean the guy who came to this land without any sort of legal immigration status?

I corrected my typo, it was supposed to be no need.

Talking about him falling asleep can undermine his undeserved tough guy image, I don't think mocking his blue suit does anything but make it look like we are grasping at straws.

They are supremely loyal but relatively few enough to be outvoted by the other voters that more casually voted for him. It's harder for me to grasp, but there are folks that voted for him that wouldn't be going to his rallies or anything.

There's a lot of folks who are either.:

Vote republican by default, but a shock could change them.

People who vote for or against the status quo based on how the feel things are going. Trump lost in 2020 in part due to people voting against whoever was in office. Hilary Clinton probably would have lost in 2020 had she won in 2016. Trump won in 2024 in part due to similar sentiment to vote out the current party after the inflation that was likely unavoidable consequence of not collapsing from COVID.

Yes the MAGA cult is unwavering, and they are a huge factor in the GOP primaries and certainly an asset in the general election, but they are not enough to assure an election.

The thing was that they resorted to the tan suit and terrorist first bump bullshit because Obama gave them so little to work with. For Trump you didn't need to waste everyone's time when his administration is ignoring court orders, arresting judges, declaring warrants and due process unnecessary, and tanking the economy.

The tan suit stuff may have helped energize the base by preaching to the choir, but everyone else found it ridiculous and made them skeptical of conservative media. When you are inundated nearly daily with real terrible stuff, no need to undermine credibility by latching into this sort of fluff.

Looks like it's illegal in 17 states, some with various exemptions for using a single earbud either for anything or for select purposes only.

Depending on the earbud/phone design, even if off they can really reduce your ability to hear the world. Sure playing an open stereo too loud can have a similar effect, but it's much easier to drown out things when your ear is stuffed or fully covered, without some sort of audio passthrough system.

Probably a balance between it would make it cheap for them to produce, but also bring down the barrier to entry for third party manufacturers to compete with them.

Headphones are considered like ear plugs. A tendency to block out surrounding noises like horns and sirens.

This may shock you, but guns are banned more often than phones in school, and the bans are more severe as are the consequences.

The phone bans I have seen always allow phones in pockets and bags, just not out casually.

I agree, the third big single powerful person is certainly Xi. I suppose one can say the "sociopath" is more evident with Netanyahu than Xi, because for now China is able to sit back and let Russia and USA self sabotage to a weaker position while mucking with the rest of the world, while China gets to play comparative good guy in foreign policy. This is of course grading on a curve, they aren't saints either.

Maybe they hope they can tuck him away and go back to "managing" him. Maybe they can patch his image a bit if they can keep him away from anything important enough to piss people off.

I think the assumption is stated to placate his ego, to attract him away from continuing to tank his image. It's not that they want him with Tesla so much as they want him away from government.

Tesla as a company is in a damned if they do, damned if they don't.

When you look at the business fundamentals versus the stock valuation, it's clear something doesn't add up, and at least formerly elons image was a big part of it.

Then he went full mask off and tanked his image.

So without the musk cult, is there enough to support their over inflated valuation? What does a post cult Tesla look like, when other companies have proven they can catch up or pass Tesla on various fronts people thought Tesla might be unassailably ahead. The various potential horizontal growth opportunities like solar and home batteries have fallen flat, their robot demonstration was significantly faked, and they are late to the self driving cab game, at best. A solid company, but not worth more than all their competition combined as their current valuation suggests.

So I think the hope is that he gets preoccupied with "making Tesla great again" and away from screwing with government. Then hope that people kind of forget about his political machinations and things sort of go back to the way they were for the hopefully forgetful public.

I mean, a date can be a pretty safe and tame event. It's how you might get to know someone.

You shouldn't expect anything romantic out of such a date, and certainly makes sense to meet at the venue and the venue be very open and visible. But to say you can't even offer a chance to get to know each other without getting to know each other is a bit over the top.

Better chances in interest themed events and activities to have a promising match of course, but there has to be some opportunity to get acquainted.

That was what really shocked me. After finally having satellite radio incidentally, the audio was the worst digital artufacts I had heard in any vaguely credible audio. I'm one of those people who can't tell it's a 128 kbit mp3 and even I couldn't stand the satellite codecs..

So while RFK Jr. is dangerously and stubbornly doing some wrong stuff, this at least conceptually wasn't a horribly dangerous idea, though perhaps uselessly naive.

It was proposed as a voluntary sort of facility that someone could go do if they chose, and from how it was described, ability to leave whenever they felt like too.

Generally speaking, I view RFK Jr as dangerous due to his convictions, naivete, and belief in some gnarly conspiracy thearies, but not intentionally malicious.