> I'd wager most accidents happen where the most people are. Cities.

Sure, in absolute numbers. But..

In the US, highest deaths per 100M vehicle miles:

1.79 - Mississippi

1.73 - Arizona

1.72 - South Carolina

And the lowest:

0.56 - Massachusetts

0.70 - Minnesota

0.78 - New Jersey

Or, highest per 100,000 population:

25 - Mississippi

25 - Wyoming

21 - New Mexico

Lowest per 100,000:

4.9 - Massachusetts

5.7 - New York

6.5 - New Jersey

Maybe the average MS driver drives 3-5x as many miles as the average MA driver? I doubt it. Something else happening there.

https://www.iihs.org/research-areas/fatality-statistics/deta...

Fortunately deaths are only a fraction of the accidents though, and it's not even necessarily the kind of accident that bothers insurance companies the most as long as the driver only kills himself.

And your neighbor across the street, so there is now one of these watching you come and go 24/7.

As an outsider, how did silicon valley turn so fast? Or was it always ~50/50 with the dominant image reflected by what the powerful thought should be the dominant narrative?

I am an outsider too but I think there’s a mix of things like:

1. People being richer already due to Silicon Valley pay, think they’re immune to harm. It’s easy to be in a bubble in SF, where life is good, without truly knowing what it’s like to see ICE kidnapping children in black SUVs on the streets of Minneapolis.

2. If someone is fitting to the dominant demographic group (white, male, straight, born in America to citizens, etc.) then there is little empathy or understanding of what others are going through and what risks they face from the current administration and the far right shift in general.

3. Many people genuinely think they will belong to an ultra rich class in the future. They want to get into that same group through startups or whatever. And they don’t want that opportunity to go away.

4. People in tech skew younger. And the young often lack the maturity to understand how the world truly works. Sure the top 1% pays most of the income taxes. But they are also hoarding most of the capital and profits to begin with, so of course they would be paying most of the taxes. Those in this article view the rich as generous for paying the taxes they do, instead of realizing that everyone else is not competing with the super rich in a fair way, because they have to live paycheck to paycheck and any risk is existential.

> how did silicon valley turn so fast?

When the script says 'turn', they turn, they're actors with no agency of their own, they work for money alone.

Do you think he knows the difference? Or cares?

Trump himself, one of Epstein's most frequent fliers, was at one time one of the most openly vocal supporters of releasing the files when it was politically convenient for him to do so. He knew he was prominent in those files, but had no real intention of actually releasing them if he could help it. Elon is no different. When it was convenient to be outspoken about it, he did, despite knowing his name was included.

To some, anything sufficiently resembling functioning government is indistinguishable from communism.

Well, that's an interesting take. Even if a holstered weapon did discharge (no idea how likely this is for the specific weapon in question), why would someone suspect they are being fired at by a person with a holstered weapon? Poor/no training is the most charitable explanation.

I suppose enough people will grasp at this take.

Poor training seems plausible, if not likely. But then it's not murder / "extrajudicial killing".

Incredulity, like sarcasm, does not convey well in text.

No, really, the Sig Sauer P320 is known for unintentionally discharging: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46759664

Nonetheless, it was successfully implemented for about 100 years in the US.

I visited London several years ago, and in the house we were staying was a relatively short book describing, for lack of a better term, "British exceptionalism", and it resonated with me as an American. I don't recall that much, but I do remember the idea, for example, that the European Union was seen to be a good thing in the eyes of the archetypal Brit "for the continent", and not for the British isles. Always exempting themselves from international cooperation/norms/laws, etc. I think America inherited a lot from the British (certainly not an original idea of mine).

Yes Minister explains it nicely:

"Minister, Britain has had the same foreign policy objective for at least the last 500 years: to create a disunited Europe. In that cause we have fought with the Dutch against the Spanish, with the Germans against the French, with the French and Italians against the Germans, and with the French against the Germans and Italians. Divide and rule, you see. Why should we change now, when it's worked so well?"

> the European Union was seen to be a good thing in the eyes of the archetypal Brit

It wasn't, hence Brexit. We were dragged in via a Customs Union against the will of the British electorate at every turn.

Read the rest of the sentence.

Surprisingly this is not something explored in "Dune" among the Fremen.

What do you mean? When a Fremen dies they extract all the water from their body- Paul is given the water extracted from the Fremen he killed in a duel. And when the Fremen first encounter Paul and Jessica I think one of the first things they say is basically "so why shouldnt we just kill you for your water right now?", meaning the water in their bodies

I mean fremen killing each other for their water. There is much made of recovering their water after death, but not of inter-sietch raids to harvest the water of conquered.