The Johnny Cab Cometh

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Good science fiction isn’t. It projects the future fact via extrapolating from current trends. Philip K. Dick was one of the greats when it came to doing this, though more are familiar with the films based on his books – including Blade Runner (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?) and Total Recall (We Can Remember it for You Wholesale).

In the latter, there are Johnny Cabs – “autonomous” vehicles you get taken for a ride in. You no longer drive.

The future foreseen by PDK is coming to pass.

Flush with cash inflowed from years of rent-seeking, Elon Musk just announced “volume production” of the Johnny Cab – he styles them “robotaxis” – by 2024. These will have no steering wheels or pedals – and you’ll be along for the ride.

“It’s going to look quite futuristic,” he said. Maybe just like in the 1990 film, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.

“Helluva day, isn’t it”?

In the movie, Arnold dealt with it appropriately. Which he was able to do, because in the movie, there was still a stick – a physical control – to make Johnny Cab go.

But that was in the movie . . .

People ought to be more careful about using the language they’re manipulated into using – and thereby, accepting a different meaning.

“Your” mask, for instance.

Also this business about what are styled “autonomous” cars. The actual meaning – the actual fact – is the total surrender of your autonomy, to the “autonomous” vehicle.

Which is also not “autonomous,” if the word is used to convey the meaning it once had. (Like “vaccines,” which used to mean not symptom palliatives or genetically manipulating drugs but meds that conferred immunity upon the person who took them.)

The so-styled “autonomous” car is not independent of its programming; it does not decide, as it wills, to go here and not there  . . . as and how it decides to go. It makes no such decisions at all. It is a machine that goes exactly where and how it is programmed to go, according to pre-set parameters imparted by the programmers – who are the actual controllers of the car. And they, of course, are controlled by their corporate employer, who is controlled in turn by the government.

Visualize a kid’s electronic slot car set. The cars follow the tracks and move only when the person who holds the controlled squeezes the trigger. Now visualize Joe Biden holding the trigger.

So much for “autonomy.”

One can experience a preview of this by taking a ride in any new car with semi “autonomous” driving technology. You still control where the car goes – on sufferance, for the moment – but the programming controls how it goes.

And boy, does it go slow.

Until, of course, it decides to brake – which it often does fast as well as unexpectedly, because there’s nothing within 20 yards of the thing. This can be experienced as pass interference. It occurs when you attempt to exploit a gap in between the left lane squatter to your  . . . left and the car ahead of you, in the right lane – who is going just slightly faster than the car to your left. The gap gradually widens, eventually just enough to dart through it; your eyes and experience tell you there is more than enough room to safely execute the maneuver and so you begin to . . . and then the car brakes, for you. Its programming cannot abide a pass with less than one full car length or even two of free airspace and will – like a fearful and nearsighted old lady – apply the brakes if you attempt it.

In the Johnny Cab Future, no one will pass. Instead, the Johny Cabs will queue up in orderly fashion and follow the one ahead, all according to their programming. No speed laws will be broken. One speed will fit all.

Relax, enjoy the ride!

Also the wait for it. Johnny Cab will not be parked in your garage. It will be out there, somewhere – summoned by a tap on your phone (after having debited your account the fee plus tip – Johnny has to eat, too).

Maybe not even that. In fact, it is certain it won’t be even that. Your ride will be provided . . . provided you are in good social standing. Your digitized account will debited only if it is not frozen; your Johnny Cab will not arrive (or move) if you have been determined to be a racist-transphobic-misogynist.

Better be careful with using the preferred pronouns. Don’t let “your” mask fall down to your chin.

It isn’t a coincidence that the person and the company who have pushed electric cars by using the government to force electric cars onto the market are the same ones pushing Johnny Cabs. These “autonomous” cars are the end-goal in sight of what is styled “electrification” but which actually means the end of personal (and personally controlled) transportation.

Musk, et al, know most people can’t afford to drive electric cars and so will never drive electric cars. These people will have need of Johnny Cabs – to take them where they used to be able to go, autonomously.

. . .

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69 COMMENTS

  1. Driving isn’t that hard. Driver training and certification isn’t hard either, but governements will f*** up a cup of coffee, so we end up with overly complicated solutions to non-existant problems. If drivers were trained to maintain situational awareness, which is boring, then autopilot systems would be common by now. But for most driving is secondary to texting, eating, singing, conversation and the damn kids screaming in the back seat, so it has to be full-on autonomous or nothing.

    But then again, automation has always been the plan. The old future, featuring the Firebird II, ran on a radio-controlled highway. When building from scratch, as was done in the civil avaition world with Victor Airways, it came to fruition. But it’s a whole lot simpler to build direction beacons and markers than it is to tell a vehcile to follow curves, look out for potholes and deal with all the other vehicles.

    https://youtu.be/OBsoYtj_aNw

    • It is a fact that a person driving a car has to make critical decisions far more often than an airline pilot does. Airspace traffic is tightly controlled. Morons texting instead of driving while on “autopilot” are not. On a two lane road, you are meeting another vehicle at a delta V of some 100 mph or more, and they are 6-8 feet away. No airline pilot would dare to get so close to another aircraft, much less one going in the opposite direction.

      • My point exactly. If drivers were trained as well as IFR pilots the success of an autopilot system would be far greater. Especially if roadways were managed like airspace, with distinct flight plans filed, clear rules for maintaining distance, an awareness of other aircraft in the sky and understanding of the consequences for ignorning the rules.

        No one who wrecks while texting ever thought about just what they were doing. If they had they would have put the phone down. I have a commerical SUAS certification, so I have done some of the ground school training coursework that GA pilots go through. My impression of manned aviation safety is pretty much based on “Remember that time that thing happened and all those people got killed?” I get no such impression from anything in the automotive industry when it comes to driver training. In fact for the most part driver ed in this country is a joke about dated safety films and hubris. I’m not saying the roadways should be managed like airspace, but putting more emphasis on driver responsibility and awareness would go much further than mechanized safety systems. Oh some people might not be able to get their license, but apparently that’s already a big problem in some populations. 🙄

      • the amount of head on collisions in my area has skyrocketed in my region, often resulting in serious harm and death. It is absolutely a result of inattentive drivers with phones, etc….
        I’ve almost had it happen to me twice now, luckily I was attentive. One with my kid in the car with a differential speed of over 100mph, and it got to within inches of the cars hitting. I have since realized that our brains have a hard time picking up a car just slowly drifting over. But i’ve gotten better at identifying this risk, probably cause I’ve just been paying a lot more attention to it. I think I now pull right almost by instinct now on my majority of trips.
        Rural areas and rural two lanes seem to be worse.
        Bigger/heavier vehicles will fare better against smaller lighter ones in these very violent crashes.

        • Morning, Chris!

          Just yesterday, we were out and about – and almost got headed-on by a sail fawner in a crossover. They were coming at us, a third of the way in our lane, across the double yellow. I did not honk at the idiot as these idiots – when startled – can and are apt to do idiotic things, such as violently over-correct and make things worse. I used the shoulder to gain enough separation and we avoided a collision. I doubt the boob even knew it almost killed us all.

          • Hi, Eric,
            First of all, glad ya’ll are OK.
            As others have stated, most people do not understand basic science, which is both sad and ironic, because we live in a highly technological society which would not exist without a knowledge of scientific principles and their clever application to the improvement of human existence.

            These are the individuals for whom a Johnny Cab appears to be the only viable solution, to protect them from harming themselves, and us from harm by them.

            Ready Kilowatt already raised the prospect, upthread, of requiring a basic understanding of the physics involved, as well as the traffic laws, in order to *earn* the right to legally operate a motor vehicle. I wholeheartedly agree.

            In particular, it should be impressed on the minds of prospective drivers that a) velocity is a *VECTOR* quantity, and b) the laws of physics are the same for everyone, and do not get suspended on account of your personal emergency, your status in society, or your political views. Not to belabor the point, but F=ma is not a social construct, and energy is always conserved.

            Long ago, a CHP motorcycle officer told me that in any head on collision, CHP expects *at* *least* one fatality. No surprise to anyone here, and enough said.

          • “I did not honk … as these idiots – when startled – can and are apt to … over-correct ”

            That’s some fine defensive driving on your part, displaying uncommon applied observational skills and theory-of-mind. I think you understand this perfectly, but the danger was not only that the shitwit would over-correct, but that he would panic and haphazardly jolt in no particular corrective direction, making his pattern more unpredictable and more difficult for you to evade.

            People have always been pretty irredeemable, but now they’ve become true NPCs, posing random, lethal hazards in the high-stakes game of just going out to pick up a loaf of bread!

          • glad your ok Eric. It can happen in an instant and the percentages have been creeping up for a while.
            In my very close call of death I ended up overcorrecting cause it was so split second fast I ‘yanked’ the wheel to the right, and ended up in the shoulder and almost smacked a tree at 50+, also not good. I then didn’t yank left and made it.
            In hindsight the yank right was wrong cause just a decent turn right would have done it.
            I truly believe the other cars driver would have died, because of my pickup vs her small car, and I’m pretty sure my son and/or I would have been in the hospital. Just physics of 5000lbs vs maybe 2500-3000?
            I’ve seen studies that say ‘bigger vehicles don’t fare better in head-ons vs small ones’, but I call it propaganda.

  2. Am I the only one who thinks Elon’s “cyber truck” kind of looks like the Johnny cab? As ugly as it is useless.

    • Nope. I agree.
      First off, actual trucks have more and larger wheels & tires, so they can actually haul stuff.
      Ego-lon’s thalidomide baby isn’t even a respectable pickup, let alone a “truck.”
      And WTF does “cyber” have to do with it? IDK, but WGASA?
      Ugly, stupid, and useless, IMO.

    • Morning, Sicilian!

      To me, the “Cyber truck” looks like a cheesy prop from a ’70s sci-fi series, such as Buck Rogers. Cardboard spray painted silver. EV trucks are a paradox in that – on the one hand – they are better suited in terms of packaging for “electrification” as there is ample space for the huge battery pack. But on the other, they are heavy as hell to begin with and now you have made them even more so – and if you use the truck for work (such as towing or hauling stuff) the load will dramatically reduce the range.

      It makes sense like a papier mache toilet.

      • The make no more sense than an electric farm tractor would. These are not just vehicles. They are expected to do work, as in moving mass from one point to another, not just taking you out to eat. Your use of a car can be replaced by walking or biking. Your use of a truck cannot be. Unless you are of the goat roper variety that never intended to do any work with their truck, and would panic over a scratch in the bed.

        • very few understand the basic principles of mass and work. I can’t wait for the ev pickup debacle that’s going to happen soon.

      • I had a friend as a teenager who made a papier mache bike helmet!
        He only had a wee two stroke put put that would barely make 20 mph and rode it in the woods round his place. He hit a tree and the helmet cracked as he went down.

        Funniest thing of that year. He wiz one crazy dude but the laughs were great!

    • The Cybertruck looks RIDICULOUS! It is a fantasy symbol for virtue-signaling adults, like an $80K 4×4 with big tires and $20K worth of other mods…which one would never dare to actually take off road in the wild, but which makes it’s owner feel like a action hero when strutting before his peanut gallery.

  3. What if the reaaally long term plan is to take from the haves (USA, Europe, Aust. etc) and give to the have nots (China, Africa, SA) in the name of equity by forcing us all into EV, windmills, solar and other inefficiencies?

    Use of fossil fuels is the transition from poverty to wealth.

    • There is a reason why we abandoned irregular and unreliable wind and solar power in favor of Hydrocarbon fuels that were regular and reliable. I don’t call them fossil fuels because there is some modest debate as to whether they are or not.

      • John, I’ve reviewed many of the Russian reports on that. A good case can be made for that position. Only time and further research can say one way or another. But I find it rather interesting that the entire idea is actively ignored and suppressed in much of the world.

  4. You bring up an interesting point, and it’s down to the philosophy of how one should drive. I work with exactly this kind of thing, so I’ve seen much more into the autonomous car industry than most people. I can’t mention names, but very coarsely, European manufacturers are very much interested in delivering a car which listens to you, Asian manufacturers will deliver whatever the state wants, and the US is somewhere in between. Our auto industry is far more subservient to Uncle than they let on publicly.

    It turns out, from millions of miles of road testing, that a car following every rule of the road is unsafe, because it’s an impediment to other drivers breaking the rules and whenever you have an outlier driving differently from everyone else, this increases accidents. So, you will find that most self driving cars designed for the west will go with the flow of traffic, and run yellow lights, to fit in as much as possible. Chinese cars will follow every rule.

    Look up “the trolley problem” on Google. The short version is, what if the car can save five people by killing you? Should it kill its passenger to save five lives? This is where a lot of discussion is happening right now, and the decision is going to be different in different places. European cars seem to be leaning in the direction of protecting their passengers and not considering other possibilities. In China, for sure, the car will kill you to save those five lives once the tech is capable of doing this, while in the US, nobody’s talking about it.

    • That is part of what OBD3 is about (coming soon). Self driving cars will directly communicate with each other, respond to each other so as not to crash (haha), the problem is humans are completely out of the equation, computers, AI controls the whole thing, you might just tell the AI your destination (probably not the government will decide where, if, when you go, if bad off to the camp), if there is a computer glitch you crash and die.

      • >if there is a “computer glitch” you crash and die.
        Good luck proving intent.
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corpus_delicti
        “In general, all corpus delicti requires at a minimum:
        1. The occurrence of the specific injury; and
        2. some criminal act as the source of the injury.” <=
        cf., TWEP:
        Terminate, With Extreme Prejudice

        Some folks claim this has already happened.
        Believe what you choose to believe.

      • Hi Anon,

        In re: “Self driving cars will directly communicate with each other, respond to each other so as not to crash (haha), the problem is humans are completely out of the equation.”

        These cars will operate as if driven by Joan Claybrook. So cautious they barely move at all. Saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaafety first!

        • Car-to-car communication is completely failing on the technical side. I’m willing to bet money it won’t happen.

  5. The way things look these days we’re going to living in a world closer to a cross between Judge Dredd and Demolition Man but without the happy ending for a long time to come. Then again Sleepy Joe might have everything fixed by next Tuesday… As for the Johnny Cab robot controlling the cab with his arms it reminds me of the Cylons in the old Battlestar Galactica TV show controlling their fighters by hand (in the book series the Cylons were lizards, in the TV show they looked like robots). As a wrong thinker it’ll be shank’s mare for me or my old bicycle.

  6. Two great nuggets from this article:

    “Flush with cash inflowed from years of rent-seeking, Elon Musk. . .”

    “People ought to be more careful about using the language they’re manipulated into using – and thereby, accepting a different meaning. “Your” mask, for instance.”

      • I don’t have one of those either.

        And if the world were an IDLH environment we wouldn’t be here, and a stupid paper mask would not change that.

        Your perception of risks and their scale is waaay out of proportion, and needs to be recalibrated.

      • I’ve had the joy on multiple occasions of the “enjoyment” of working under supplied air. In a word “It Sucks”, I also hate wearing face diapers that don’t do squat about a virus that’s as survivable as the common cold but I was forced to wear to keep my job.

        • Indeed, supplied air is not fun. In my youth I was an avid diver. Within a year of getting certified for SCUBA, I spent most of my diving time sans tank. Three minutes down, three minutes up, was far more fun than dragging SCUBA gear along for the ride.

  7. Even as a kid I bristled at the retardedly absurd idea that the Johnny-cab robot controlled the cab with a lever, even when the robot was bolted to the floor of the cab just as much as the lever was. It’s just like in the George Lucas abortions, where one robot (in spindly humanoid form) sits in a driver’s seat using levers to operate another, bigger robot (some giant spider-tank nonsense). I always wondered if it was intended to be a deliberately-absurd gag by the filmmakers. I’m not so sure. I actually suspect the filmmakers knew that the dumb-ass audience wouldn’t get the idea of a cab (or robo-tank) driving itself, without the intermediating steering wheel with which the audience could identify as a method of operation. I think people of that not-so-long-ago era were so conceptually crippled that they wouldn’t be able to understand a similar Johnny-cab scene where Deckard had to hotwire an in-built control module. It took years and years of infommercial propaganda to get them even to understand the concept of a “self-driving car”.

    By 2009, however, the movie-going-goyim were ready for the idea, but only after sustained “education” by the media, through puppet-actors like Musk. In Terminator: Salvation, there is an updated version of the Johnny-cab scene, where John Connor (played by Christian Bale) does indeed hotwire a previously autonomous killer-robot-motorcycle in order to override and commandeer its controls. Here you see how an intricate narrative is gradually pieced together using both fiction and “the news,” which take turns revealing new points of “pending reality” as our gracious and clever host puts it.

    But in any event, these technologies are deterministically built in to the very Logic of Technology. As a (dare-I-say?) precocious little lad, I was able to grok that Logic without the sustained exposition that general audiences would have needed. Total Recall didn’t have time for a boring tutorial of, “Hi, I’m Johnny Cab and my servos are directly actuated by an electronic motherboard,” etc. Before such a concept could be depicted in a whizz-bang shoot-em-up cinematic form, the goyim had to be hand-held through a sustained campaign of lengthy infommercials disguised as “news reports”.

    But the outcome has always been there, waiting. That is to say, lying in wait. Built into the intrinsic logic of the very first microprocessor, just as the “Judgment Day” destruction of humanity was intrinsically built into the very logic of the time-travelling “Chip” that served as the basis for Skynet in Terminator 2.

  8. Your government is pushing EV’s? Why?

    China has infiltrated all levels of governments, taken control, (check out the leftist/communist takeover), your politicians bought off, paid to push the EV agenda.

    Who benefits the most from the EV vehicle conversion? china does.

    All the most important components in the new EV’s are all made in china. Then you are dependent on china for replacement parts, etc., in effect they take over the whole vehicle supply chain. Vehicle production then centralized in China.

  9. I think Arnold Schwarzenegger should be REQUIRED to use modern autonomous Johnny Cabs. Maybe that will keep him out of GMC Yukons which he likes to crash into Toyota Priuses, all while declaring “Screw your freedoms!” to us little people who don’t want to take Jabs or wear “masks.”

    • The crash and depression will be blamed on “climate change” and “fossil fuels”. This narrative will serve as a justification for the Kid-Sniffer-in-Chief to promote Tesla to a cabinet-level department of the federal government, with full authority to seize all evil hydrocarbon-powered automobiles and decommission them. Muskrat will be appointed the “Sustainability and Economic Reinvigoration Czar,” and the masses will cheer at the giant Tele-screen announcing this triumph, as they wait in their bread-and-injection line to be fed and augmented with the latest “Victory Vaxxines” that will reduce their caloric needs.

      So your dark vision of malinvestment correction will never come to pass.

      • That only works as long as people believe it, or at least act as if they do.

        I think those days are rapidly coming to a close.

        We shall see in due time.

        • At this point, the Machine is able to generate the consensus algorithmically. People have no choice but to believe that people believe what the telescreens tell them people believe. And all will act accordingly.

          People’s internal states no longer have any bearing on consensus reality. Consensus reality is generated by the Deep Mind at Its will and pleasure. There is no “society”. There is only the Signal.

          People’s “beliefs”—and even their behaviors—have no potential bearing on the unfolding of the Grand Narrative that issues from the telescreens. There’s simply no nexus point between the individual and the electronic audio-video phantasmagoria that passes for “reality” anymore. The masses are merely passive consumers/subjects/captives, who suffer what they must.

          You say, “We shall see in due time.”

          I say, “Open your eyes right now and behold!”

  10. Does anyone but pre-pubescent kids even pay attention to what these dreamers say anymore?

    It’s 2022, is E-loon shuttling people to Mars, as he had self-prognosticated?
    The “autonomous” self-driving car idea has largely been abandoned by the huge megacorps which had been pursuing that dream, as not practical.
    Cadillac’s (and others) pay $600 a month to use a car on occasions when you need it” has largely been abandoned from what I’ve heard, because of course, there aren’t enough idiots to sustain such a ridiculous idea….
    The Tesla semi? Where is that?
    Solar roads?
    A free country?

    The list goes on and on….

    But the science-fiction justifies the constant and huge subsidies in the eyes of the space-cadets who drool for a sterile authoritarian technological future- much like many of the kids of my generation whom I grew-up with in the shadow of the “Moon landing” who thought that anything NASA did was great, as they dreamed of living in colonies on the Moon (as we were actually told would be a thing by the year 2000 -LOL)- as if such a goal was a worthy pursuit….

    • The electric cars are being pushed, but I don’t know if it is the school system (I am assuming it is) or it is hearsay, and the kids are picking up on it. I took my young nephews out yesterday for pizza and a trip to the playground (both are between the ages of 5 and 10). We passed two Teslas on the way to the playground and the boys made a big deal out it.

      “Look at the Tesla!” Their aunt gagged.
      “Do you not like the Tesla, Aunt RG?”
      “Nope, they are plain looking.”

      An hour later sitting in the parking lot waiting for the pizza a Corvette LT1 drove through. I pointed it out “See, that is a real car.” The youngest looked at it and said “That’s nice. Is it fast?” I said “Very, and pretty, too. If you were to race your brother to the North Carolina border you would beat him by a half an hour, at least because he has to stop for a 1/2 hour and recharge. You only have to stop for five minutes.” He didn’t say anything, but you could tell the wheels were starting to turn. The oldest piped in “I still want a Tesla.”

      FYI: I will quickly mention how the boys told me we couldn’t play on the playground after school, because it was “illegal”. We did and lived to tell about it. I also took them around the bus lane (which apparently is a no-no) which the eldest found hysterical and the youngest had a conniption because I broke the rules. Their aunt’s response…”rules are stupid.”

      After dropping the boys off I was tattled on to my sister and the “rules” that we broke. My sister looked at me and said, “you can’t take them to the playground because of the liability.” To which I said, “What liability? The same liability they face all day by having recess during school hours?” My sister shrugged and let it go.

      It is obvious these boys need more “bad” influences in their life.

        • Never, Sean. She is much too old and set in her ways. The day that she feels the need to identify as anything other than a gas guzzling SUV is the day that I trade her in for the truly gas guzzling Chevelle. 🙂

      • The rules only matter when someone who is “important” decides that they matter.

        That doesn’t mean you can run around and totally disregard every constraint, but it does mean that most people, as a practical matter, have a great deal more freedom of action than they think they do. And, a lot of people are lazy…so if they don’t have to do something about it (or appear to, anyway) they often don’t.

        This is a very important life lesson.

      • Good for you RG,
        You might also remind your nephews that it was your tax dollars that paid for that playground. Glad you got them to think about how many “rules” there are and what use(less) they are. The indoctrination starts at birth nowadays; glad I managed to get through school with some critical thinking intact.

      • OMG!!!!!!!!!! It’s probably so much worse now. We went through this when my kids were in elem. and middle school (10-12 yrs ago?). It was the turning point for my kids lives and I couldn’t believe MY kids were saying things like ‘no we can’t, or ‘it’s against the rules’, etc…. I fought back and fought back hard, and it was very hard. I won. they are critical thinkers, bold, smart and not afraid to question ‘authority and rules’.
        You’ll love this RG: my daughter is just finishing college where she is attacked constantly by what I call ‘keyboard warriors’. She is called every name in the book, even on the schools radio program now. It came to a head a few weeks ago where the attackers called her out on social media that they were going to kick her a## at a party, and she showed up 5 to 1 (with the wrestling team as plan B in the background, smart). She confronted them and they wouldn’t even engage. She said they all hung out in the bathroom the rest of night.
        She said dad your right, they are all just keyboard warriors, I wish I would have figured this out years ago.

        • Hi Chris,

          Good for your daughter! Most people are wimps once you have them out in the open. I learned that at 13 when a older teenager kept picking on me on the bus ride home. The punk mentioning hitting me. At this time I had enough (this has been going on for days, maybe even weeks) and got up in the bus aisle walked over to the guy and said, “hit me.” There was about eight of us still remaining on the bus. I said, “you threatened to hit me, go ahead.” Now, I would have had no idea what to do if the guy did hit me, and I knew I was taking a chance. At this point the bus driver pulled over seeing what was going on. The other guys were chanting “dude, you can’t hit her, she’s a girl.” After what it felt like a minute stare down he turned around and ignored me. He was never unkind to me after that.

          Most people are talk, with very little action. I also learned one should never issue a threat unless one plans to see it through, otherwise you just look like a fool.

          • Good for you RG. Happened to me about that age too.
            And I think same age for my son too. At his timeframe there was anti-bully crap all over the place ‘you are not allowed to retaliate’. Really said that. He finally did anyway.
            I don’t think my daughter had this issue though. But she just did.

          • RG, that’s a lesson that everyone should learn. I simply do not make threats. If action needs to be taken, take it. But be prepared for the consequences. Preparation goes a long way to mitigate such consequences.

    • Hiya Nunz!
      I’m all for colonies on the moon – as a place to send Elon and all the rest of these techno-idiots. Of all the futuristic predictions made I’m still waiting for flying cars 😆. Though if they ever do come about they will most likely be reserved for our overlords, so they can look down on us peons.

      • If not for government interference, we probably would have colonies on the Moon by now. Maybe on Mars too, as base of operations for mining asteroids. Hard to get such things done when the state is extracting half our wealth to put ever more restrictions upon us.

  11. As I’ve pointed out before, even Johnny Cab tired of the gig, went to medical school, and joined Starfleet.

    Based on emails I’ve received from headhunters, I believe that at least four major road automation projects were running here in Austin up until a few years ago, but one, a major German company’s effort, gave up and fired a bunch of developers in 2019.

    Automation is much easier than an autonomous vehicle.

  12. ‘Now visualize Joe Biden holding the trigger.’ — eric

    Or read about it in the news every day:

    BIDEN ANNOUNCES ANOTHER $800 MILLION FOR UKRAINE
    BIDEN SAYS IN ORDER TO SUSTAIN UKRAINE FOR DURATION OF FIGHT, WILL ASK CONGRESS FOR MORE MONEY NEXT WEEK

    Like a Johnny Cab, ‘Biden’ is on autopilot: Ukraine good, Russia bad; EVs good, ICs bad; etc.

    Whether it’s due to obduracy or his control by others, Biden is a one-note Johnny whose tune will never change till he’s evicted.

    Slanging ‘Biden’ daily is as obligatory as eating and sleeping [and wenching, for some of our distinguished correspondents].

    • All of that “lethal aid” (or whatever they call it) is just burning tax dollars. It’s achieving nothing of any tangible benefit otherwise. Those weapons are just being destroyed and the fools that think they’re gonna do something with ’em are being “liquidated”.

      Apparently they just want to spend tax dollars and have Ukies killed.

      • Merkins love nothing more than to see piles of cash blowed up real good.
        That’s why the “Fourth of July” is the national holiday.

      • ‘All of that “lethal aid” (or whatever they call it) is just burning tax dollars.’ — EM

        Moon of Alabama takes it a step farther:

        ‘Likely many of those [weapons] will proliferate outside of the Ukraine and some of those weapons will inevitably hit those who now deliver them.’

        https://www.moonofalabama.org/2022/04/some-of-the-weapons-delivered-to-ukraine-will-inevitably-be-used-against-us.html#more

        Mere speculation? NO. It’s precisely what happened just last year in Afghanistan, where the Taliban gleefully collected billions worth of US weapons, ammo and vehicles that Biden’s woke warriors failed to remove in their chaotic evacuation.

        Now the senile old fool, backed by a baying mob of Uniparty Kongress Klowns, is DOING IT AGAIN, BIGGER AND BADDER.

        Stick a fork in it — this shambolic, tattered empire is DONE.

        • Jim: “in Afghanistan…the Taliban gleefully collected billions worth of US weapons, ammo and vehicles…”

          You mean the inflatable dummy-planes with painted-on, completely matte, opaque “windows” that were shown over and over on TeeVee?

          https://www.bitchute.com/video/f3ZLIDiZXVGx/

          All totally fake. TeeVee nonsense.

      • Somebody is buying those weapons, which means somebody is selling them, and getting fat and happy doing so. After all, weapons are the number one US export.

    • Hi Jim,
      Glen Greenwald had a good article out the other day about how the national security state minions are having a fit because Clowngress might actually do something to break up the monopolies of Google and Facebook. Looks like they’ve been doing such a great job of keeping the narrative of “Russia bad/Ukraine good” while blocking any contrary opinions that the deep state wants to be sure it stays that way.

      • As someone down in the trenches, I am a small town lawyer in a small town near a large metropolitan area. My clients for 30+ years are just regular folks. Very few believe anything the TV, Radio, Print media push. They mostly just want to get on with their lives. Same as it has been for the last 200 years. The difference now which is the reason for the panic by the authorities is they have options to find out the “truth” or at least some different opinions of the truth. Many do so, they know they and their children are being Fucked with a chainsaw. They are mad. It will boil over. the results will not be pretty.

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