Not sure why you’re being downvoted, season 1 of Buffy is pretty meh, but Prophecy Girl gives us the first example of what the series becomes, with the balance of humor and drama and horror.

It may not be the best answer, but it’s probably the nerdiest.

I definitely think it was a deliberate choice, but more in the vein of “look at this bumbling moron driving this piece of shit French car” as a way of further masking his actual abilities.

But the show started in the 60s, and it’s the same car. You could argue his trenchcoat and hat (de rigeur when the show started) were more affectation in later years, or accept that at some point those simply occupy the role of signifiers that “yes this is Columbo.”

He’s a sergeant.

Columbo. Neurotypical is debatable, a lot of his behavior is an act to make the suspect less guarded. But he drives a shitty car, is happily married, and isn’t “too old for this shit.”

That capex number in the article is a big part of it. $200 billion spent to generate $1-2 billion a month in revenue is wasteful, and people at the top are feeling the pressure to justify that expense.

“No, the name ‘Milka’ doesn’t refer to milk, why do you ask?”

That’s like half of Ed Zitron’s output, although he puts more detail into identifying the specific placid and compliant reporters.

In fact, it seems to be getting worse along a number of axes.

OH!

Books on local flora that cover what is edible. Lots of shit that grows in the wild or green spaces is edible (often after some preparation like blanching or roasting.)

I can. A couple of years is plenty of time to plant a garden, learn how to cook a variety of vegetarian meals using things you can grow, and if you have the space to invest in chickens or other birds for eggs. It’s also enough time to learn other skills and meet your neighbors, build up a network of trust and mutual aid, and be actually prepared for a crisis in a way that is sustainable.

Yeah, the question is framed poorly. Not all effects on one’s life are good.

Also, with the (possible) exception of kids who grow up in the foster system, I would argue your parents have the largest effect on your life, good or bad. Whether you recognize it or not.

If you read it in Kermit the Frog’s voice, it’s like you’re in the room with him. Minus the smell of meat-and-benzo sweat.

The Daily Mail article is dated today, so it looks like a new one.

The Daily Mail article says he’d killed elephants before, so ¯_(ツ)_/¯

“We wiped out the apex predators so now we have to be the apex predators” is an…interesting take on justifying trophy hunting.

You could just fund conservation for animals like lions and hyenas in the savanna, and other predators in other environments. It’s better overall, see the effects of reintroducing wolves to Yellowstone.

Andrew Ti has proposed that part of the problem that the VP exemplifies is that the Bay Area is too expensive for regular people to live in, so you have tech millionaires in their little bubbles never getting input from regular people. Specifically from teenagers. If Apple had taken the VP to malls in (say) Minneapolis and Dallas and LA and Newark, the people wearing it would have been roasted by teenagers, and the designers and engineers would know there was still work to do.

Apple Vision Pro seemed doomed from the get go, but they really made it worse by not launching a cheaper headset with Air branding half a year or a year in to actually drive market share enough to make it worthwhile for developers. Could’ve given it an A series CPU since we now know it works in a laptop so why not in XR or whatever they’re calling this.

I think Vision Pro was doomed regardless. Go back and watch the iPhone announcement, then the Vision Pro announcement. Every single person in the auditorium when Jobs is presenting the iPhone is thinking of the thousand things they can do with that device. In the Vision Pro announcement, there’s none of that energy. If they released something that left zero question as to its purpose, the price could sit at $3K and they wouldn’t be able to make them fast enough. Instead we got an Oculus that won’t support most games and costs 6 times as much.

Here’s a thought: push for “publicly held”corporations to be actually public. No secrets, trade or otherwise.