FWIW, you can order a V6 regular cab F150 work truck with an 8-foot bed. Still costs $40k, but it exists.

Ranger and Maverick can both haul plywood sheets with a few 2x4 slats in the stamped slots on the side of the bed and some tiedowns.

This is very specifically how Oklahoma's AG sold their case against the religious charter school.

[Oklahoma AG Gentner Drummond] said allowing a school like St. Isidore would open the door for state-funded schools to teach other religious beliefs, such as Sharia law or Satanism.

“While I understand that the Governor and other politicians are disappointed with this outcome, I hope that the people of Oklahoma can rejoice that they will not be compelled to fund radical religious schools that violate their faith,” Drummond said.

I actually watched the trailer, and this one looks... okay? It is trying to mash up Fast & Furious with Elf, and it could work, I guess. I would likely smile at the high-concept nonsense while sitting in a Doctor's waiting room.

At $250M budget, though that's gonna be a tough one. The pre-COVID rule of thumb was double to the budget with ticket sales to break even in the sense of "powers that be will be content and no one's career gets derailed." I have my doubts this is a half-billion-dollar movie.

I wish the Dems had felt more confident in 2020, or that Kamala Harris had proven to be a more vibrant personality able to take the reins in 2024. I wish the Overton window in the US were farther to the left. But that's not the fight in front of us; we are where we are.

I don't think anybody denies that Biden is in physical and a sort of general mental decline. He's old AF. I tend to think "turning it on" just takes a lot out of him and maybe requires a couple of days of R&R which you don't normally get as president, but I would hardly be surprised if they give him a little chemical helper sometimes. If taking a stimulant just makes you feisty and articulate and able to pop off a solid State of the Union speech then, again, that just speaks to your being old. Someone who literally doesn't know what they're doing will be the same idiot, but higher energy...

You know, like Trump.

You need to read it in the context of the other strips. Normally, someone in the first panel defies Everett's sense of decorum and general decent behavior (e.g. describing a way they took advantage of another person, or being unecessarily), and in the second panel Everett cartoonishly attacks them in a fit of righteous rage. It's all meant to be a wish fulfillment for someone struggling with the stresses of "modern" urban living. I feel like Larry David would probably have been a fan if he were around during its run, if that helps; just imagine the Seinfeld gang if they looked and acted like Kingpin from the Marvel stuff. I think the audience is invited to sympathize with Everett's sensibilities and to laugh at the catharsis of someone actually indulging their rage.

This one subverts the trope. It invites the audience to suppose the beggar will be destroyed, especially with the foreshadowing. However, simply existing and hoping for a little generosity does not violate Everett's personal code, so going against the perceived rational choice, he listens to his better angels, leaves a coin, and moves on. I can almost imagine the cartoonist starting to become a little troubled at how sincerely people, possibly total assholes, professed to admire Everett and so wanted to turn things around a bit.

Looks like Cobb Vanth to me.

"Facilitated open computing initiatives and exercised independent judgment and mastery of social engineering techniques and forum software."

Fair; I guess I should have run some data. I just used gasbuddy.com to run a similar track for what would have been my rather lengthy commute if my employer had asked us to return to office (and kept the lease on that building). Apart from a couple of outliers just outside the Dallas-Fort Worth airport, I'm only getting an 8% variance (about USD 0.23/gallon, versus your 25% and AUD 0.55/litre -- is that right?).

That said, Iwill admit that $0.10/gallon suboptimal average price is probably more likely than I thought, though with a less intense driving situation one would still be well under the $260/year "convenience premium." Outside the US and other oil-subsidizing countries, the numbers clearly work out very differently.

Not particularly helpful for you, but this seemed like the thread to chime in that in general with pizza, it's always MUCH better to go big. Pi*r^2^, folks. A single 14" Dominos is already pretty much identical to two 10" mediums, and that's only if you like to eat the crust. Always do your math by dollars per area, not diameter.

I was going to counter with random internet pictures of the "beach" in Lake Worth, Texas, but most of them are reasonably pleasant, if unremarkable.

the lens of his that stare decisis is a poor doctrine

I can imagine an abhorrent precedent like Dredd Scott leaving a bad taste in a young black lawyer's mind, but it's certainly an odd way to approach jurisprudence in a common law country, and it's a pretty shit way to regulate a complicated body of law that relies on litigation for clarity. Combine it with a simplistic version of originalism once stare decisis is discarded, and I stand by my statement: bafflingly literal and lazy, and I'll add arrogant. "I know best, the entire body of built up law that came before me is without value, and the decisions that real people make under their influence are gauze in the wind." It invites constant relitigation and enables the most extreme kind of judicial activism while claiming to be above that fray.

Woman: So when you're not swiping, what do you do?

Men 1-7: It sounds weird, but I'm really into WAR! ... Christoph Waltz was sooo creepy as Hans Landa! You have to see it! ... so each week both uncredentialled "historians" talk about their favorite times when thousands of men stabbed or shot each other! ... and then the good guy took his gun-knife and started prying teeth and slicing ears off the dead guys... literally an entire generation of men was decimated or psychologically damaged... But [Game of Thrones/The Walking Dead/Band of Brothers] is my go-to. What do you watch?

Woman: Mostly cartoons.

More seriously, I'd guess that many, maybe even most people have some level of morbid fascination with the type of violent, high stakes scenarios that people they identify with have been subject to. It's just kind of weird not to acknowledge that a lot of basically well-adjusted men (I flatter myself that I'm in that group) are into stuff that's objectively terrifying.