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.

That’s Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn and a major investor in at least one “AI” company: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reid_Hoffman?wprov=sfti1

What fruit? What kind of coffee? Pretty sure there’s a substantial difference between a couple grapes and a caramel latte vs an apple and a black coffee.

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

Wait. Where are you that a bus pass changes price based on fuel?

The House of Pod did an episode about this, the host is a doctor and one of his guests for this episode is a surgeon and educator. Some good perspective on how this could happen and exactly how giant of a fuck up it was: https://shows.acast.com/the-house-of-pod-a-medical-podcast/episodes/bonus-sode-revisiting-the-mistakenly-removed-liver

Guns Germs and Steel is wildly oversimplified, and he implies a background in history when his education is actually in the sciences. In general anthropologists see his assessments as shallow, a pretty common issue with popular nonfiction writers.

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.

Holy shit, that makes Jared Diamond even more of a shitty person than I thought. (He cited the Rapa Nui people’s “destruction of their own environment” as a reason for their collapse. Even used the tagline “what did the Easter islander [sic] who cut down the last tree think while doing it?” for the book.)

OP says his home country is the US.

I get the request for reviews but is the Gmail thing just another version of that?

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.

The most recent season of Blowback covers how the Chinese resentment of Vietnam led to them joining the US in supporting the Khmer Rouge.