I still remember when all you got was two shallow depressions on the inside of the glovebox lid and those plastic gimmicky cup holders that hung on the window trim...
They never failed to fail at the most inopportune time.
Our process isn't anywhere near that elaborate. We're just making a quick check to see if a level has been knocked out of whack somehow. But we're not a machine shop either, we use the levels for verifying weight and balance on small aircraft.
In all seriousness, they make levels like this, they're just a more high-dollar, specialty item. At work we have a "true table", a tested flat and level metal surface, to check and adjust them.
We wait until he's completely fucked overseas relations, destroyed NATO, and handed the world to China on a silver platter. Then we impeach him and say "Oops, our bad! Who knew he'd be that crazy guys? Boy, do we have egg on our face! We're all gonna laugh about this later, I promise..."
Class act. Five of five stars. Best legislature ever.
At my work, we have some ruggedized Dells that are certified for extreme and/or explosive environments that you definitely wouldn't want to get hit with. I have to lug one in my carry on from time to time, I think they're 8-11ish pounds depending on options. Good battery life, pricey as hell though.
Not completely, but more and more I find peace of mind in analog and offline spaces. Physical books feel better than e-books, a real bike is more fun than a Peleton (cheaper too), and cooking my own food is better than GrubHub.
I have an educational background in IT, but I've worked as a mechanic for most of my adult life. I'm a tool using primate. Tech is a tool. If a new tool improves on the old and makes life easier, I use it. If it doesn't, it's not worth having around. When your job is fixing things, "ain't broke, don't fix it" makes a lot of sense.
I'm not going to bend over backwards for tech that I don't need just because a rich CEO tells me it's revolutionary. I can flip a light switch, lock my doors, make a grocery list without the help of an AI fridge, and write my own emails.
The Satanic Panic was around long before D&D and heavy metal music and it never really left. It just moved on to new targets. Someone, somewhere has always been doing something satanic as a plot, it's just easier to find people talking about it in the age of social media.
Same with conspiracy theories. The alt-right never invented anything new, they just recycled things that wingnuts and cranks have been spouting for centuries and adapted them to modern settings. Look at the parallels between "Hillary tortures children and drinks their blood to stay young" and the old Blood Libel conspiracy for example.
I go back and forth as to why I think this kind of thing is so enduring. Either people need to believe in some kind of evil because it allows them to feel good about being on the "right" side of something. It could make them feel smart to find "secrets" that people won't openly admit (because they aren't true). Or they feel some kind of cognitive dissonance if they don't have an enemy and invent one to quiet it. Or maybe it's just a convoluted effort to take control over something they aren't comfortable with in a "he who can destroy a thing, controls the thing" sort of way. Maybe all of them even.
I dunno, like you said, people are goddamn stupid and fucking nuts sometimes. Shame they're so often dangerous because of it.
I worked nights at a local Walmart once. In the first week I saw multiple drug addicts using in the store, a violent mentally ill woman yelling at her shopping cart because it dropped her frozen carrots, and a man openly masturbating in the women's underwear section.
Wish I'd had the presence of mind to make myself some armor.
One thing that gives me hope is that these chucklefucks will happily eat each other alive over the smallest imagined things. If they don't have a "big evil thing" to organize against they're just one giant fucking bucket of crabs, man.
I imagine that along with the arrest quota, there might be recruiting quota as well. It would be completely in line with how the rest of this administration operates, and large bureaucracies in general, for the people in charge of hiring to only worry about hitting their numbers and covering their own asses.
If there's not a rule that says "don't hire left-leaning reporters" and the guy was otherwise "qualified", the recruiter just wasted an afternoon of work and missed a coffee break because he backed out.
If the reporter had taken the job, his political leanings would have been his first supervisors problem and not the recruiters.
These two have a chance to do something right, to show real leadership and responsibility, and to kick the fucking doors open and shine the light of day on the whole damn mess.
How many working years do they have left? How viable are they as politicians? What purpose does trying to save their own image serve? Do they really think people give a shit about them anymore? Do they really think they're relevant as anything other than a symbol of why their party has failed the nation?
It's not shame. It's insurance. It's to make it difficult/impossible to file a complaint or win a criminal case in the event that the administration crumbles and someone tries to hold them accountable.
A bike just for weight loss or something similar can be cheaper, of course.
Dan John, a prominent figure in the strength and conditioning community, once argued that the best bike for weight loss was a cheap, steel framed, single-speed beach cruiser, especially if you lived in a hilly area.
They still make them? I haven't seen one in decades. That's like sighting something scientists thought were extinct!