Kinda weird how you started by asking an interesting question but then spend the last two-thirds of your post going full-on tin foil hat.

Well worth a read, especially if you like Andy Weir.

Wasn’t that actually on the cards at one point?

You can pry my T440 from my cold dead hands or, at the least, give me a bit of notice so I can fish out my X220. Or my X80. Or my other X220. Or my T420… I might have a problem.

That car is a '93-'98 Fiat Punto. Not sure if that helps.

'tis 'tism.

'tisism.

Your right.

There’s a name for everything. There’s probably a name for there being a name for everything.

I thought it was going to be this but yours is good too.

Can we start a rumor that Antifa is exchanging secrets using QR codes or NFC or something? Honestly, I kinda just feel like that’s the kinda of nonsense the MAGA prats would guzzle down.

Whenever a few Europeans from different countries come together, there’s a joke that inevitably gets told:

Someone who speaks many languages is multilingual. Someone who speaks two languages is bilingual. Someone who speaks one language is English.

Glad that this works for you, but goddamn that’s some condescending shit. Maybe I want other people in my household - people who don’t give a shit about VLANs or Docker or transparent terminal windows - the ability to browse and watch content on their TVs and tablets with an easy interface that doesn’t require them to learn some specific incantations and a bunch of file paths? Fuck it, may after a long day I just want to crash on the sofa and watch Bojack Horseman without having to get two knuckles deep in an SSH session? Again, glad it works for you but holy shit your manner is tone-deaf.

Yeah. They went from counting pixels by rows to columns. A 16:9 widescreen 1080 display is 1920×1080, and most manufacturers are happy to call 1920 “2K”.

Counterpoint: DEGAUSS

Bwoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyonnnnnggggghhhhh… CLONK

Paradise City from Burnout was pretty amazing, especially given you were supposed to navigate it at 250km/h. Lots of three-dimensionality about it too, with tunnels, overpasses, rooftops, etc.

Even an Oxford comma couldn’t save that one.

It’s actually even wilder than that.

The earliest know pyramids date back to around 2600BCE, and Cleopatra reigned around 50-30BCE, so her reign is closer to the modern day than to the first pyramids by about 600 years. One of the earliest surviving pyramids, Djoser, was built by Imhotep (with help, I assume) during a period called the Third Egyptian Dynasty meaning, as it’s name suggests, the unified Kingdom of Egypt was already well-established by the time it was built. The First Dynasty started about 3100BCE so even ignoring the proto-Dynasty period of Egypt, that’s pretty humbling: if you drew a timeline with the founding of Ancient Egypt on the left and the founding of OnlyFans to the right, Cleopatra would be three-fifths of the way along it.

EU (and UK) car licenses cover a maximum fully-laden weight of 3.5T, which these trucks vastly exceed - some of them weigh well over 2.5T before you even put fuel in. Since US regulations are not currently being considered, it’s up to the importer to declare the maximum weight so they just pinky-swear that the MLW is 3,499.9999kg or whatever. It’s arresting to think that if these were judged fairly, most EU drivers couldn’t drive one of these but could drive a LWB Sprinter.

It’s also worth remembering that even in the US, trucks are commercial vehicles distinct from cars and it’s only because of terminal car-brain that they’re subject to exclusions and subsidies that makes it possible to use one just for commuting.

Because I read the actual announcement, and I remember something that all authors of sensationalist nonsense about EU laws want their readers to forget: any new law or agreement exists alongside all the existing ones. The actual agreement here is that vehicles can be imported from the US - in fact, it arguably makes it easier - but they will be categorised, regulated and taxed as if they were first registered in the EU rather than given special exemptions. That means they’ll need to meet EU laws on pedestrian safety, emissions, efficiency , and so on. Even ignoring that, these cannot be driven in the EU on a car license because according to the EU they are not cars. So the EU has not opened a floodgate, they’ve closed a loophole.

As I posted in another community this was crossposted to: This article is bullshit.

With the exception of what’s happening in the author’s imagination, nothing that’s is happening will make it easier to import or drive these in the EU. In fact, the EU, by respecting categorisations made in the US, will be mandating that these be treated as the dangerous, polluting industrial vehicles they are. They won’t be able to drive through town centres, in low emissions zones, park in car parks, be driven on car licenses, or be taxed and insured like a Fiat Punto any more. So instead of there being tens of thousands of incorrectly regulated one-off exceptions like we have now, there will be vehicles held to the same standards as all the others.