MangoCats

Well, that's a big component: how efficient / environmentally destructive is the mining?

Also, as electricity consumption in areas like China, India, Africa increases, they're going to start needing big multiples of the amount of copper used in the US/Europe/ANZ to-date.

Truth is, there's precious little I need from Amazon, let alone need in a hurry. It mostly comes down to wants, supplies for projects which are themselves entirely optional, etc. As such, I will let a "want" item sit in my cart for weeks until it is joined by enough other want items to make the $25 or $35 or whatever arbitrary limit they have set to erase the arbitrary $6.99 small order shipping fee.

I don't like to think about how much I have spent there, and elsewhere online, for things I don't really need. I do like to take arbitrary months off from buying anything optional, kind of like intermittent fasting - gives me time to finish out things I have started, clean up stuff I have abandoned, do things that don't require "stuff."

If I am typical, the world could boycott over 80% of their amazon.com purchases without even bothering to get the stuff from elsewhere, and 80% of the remaining 20% could be sourced elsewhere, perhaps for 10-20% higher cost, perhaps not even that.

And still do for live performance by cover bands.

They give me "Prime free for 30 days" every so often. The only difference I notice is that I can send in an order for one little cheap thing and get free shipping, instead of waiting until I have $35 worth of stuff to send the order.

The "faster shipping" with Prime isn't faster most of the time - frequently promises fast and actually delivers slow, which is worse IMO than promising slow and usually delivering faster.

They run bogus discounts for "Prime members only" that just steer me away from the products altogether - add up all the "Prime discounts" I might have bought in my lifetime and it's less than two months Prime subscription cost.

If I need something "right away" - that's what local brick and mortar stores are for. Prime is a sucky attempt at competing with a 5 minute drive to the hardware store.

In the 1970s/80s, the corporations just taxed blank media - because it was obviously used to pirate their warez.

Youtube (under Google)'s implementation of US copyright considerations is a huge problem above and beyond the abomination that is the copyright law itself.

Nice thought, but how will the rich demonstrate their status from a Vespa? Perhaps by paying off the judge so they don't get restricted?

The crosswalk light might help in the lawsuit after you are seriously injured or killed, if anyone submits video evidence at the trial.

I learned to drive in Florida. Saw my first snow while driving five years later, I was trying to take a (rented) front wheel drive minivan out to get breakfast and about 5" of snow had fallen overnight. I put it in drive and it barely moved. I cut the wheel and it moved a little, I cut the wheel back and it moved a little more. I tried saw-toothing the steering left and right and got up a little speed, finally getting up to about 5mph while sawing the wheel back and forth. I drove around the parking lot like this, twice, before deciding: people do this all the time, it has to get easier after I get going... as I started toward the exit, I noticed: the parking brake was on, I had been dragging the locked rear wheels around the parking lot behind me. I released the parking brake and driving in snow became 100x easier from there on out.

The U.S. death rate is about 750 / 100,000 overall, with about 14.1 of those 750 declared suicide (you can never really know, but the suspected actual suicide rate is a bit higher, to preserve insurance benefits...)

The current US death rate by automobile accident is around 13.4 per 100,000 - so, by those statistics, people are already slightly more likely to take their own lives by choice than they are to die in an auto accident.

Of course if you choose to walk, you're not entirely safe, the US pedestrian death rate is around 2 per 100,000, and that's with most people driving everywhere most of the time.

Another fun way to look at the end is lifetime odds:

Death by suicide: 1/87 Death by automobile accident: 1/93 (which seems to indicate in itself that deaths by auto accident are expected to decline, or perhaps have recently increased slightly?) Death by firearm (US): 1/91 Suicide by firearm (US): 1/156

Next time you're driving on a 2 lane highway at speed, oncoming cars approaching at a relative velocity of 100mph and more (50 in your direction 50 in theirs...) count oncoming cars. When you get to 87, odds are that one of those drivers will ultimately die by suicide... there's a little solace in the fact that most of them won't be doing it by swerving into oncoming traffic, and the bigger relief is that most of those that do, won't be doing it at that particular moment just before you pass.

As for guns - that's a whole different mess, but interesting that the numbers are so close.

Lifetime care for the additional seriously injured will be very expensive...

I live in a retirement center, here it is very obvious that driving licenses should be revoked when vision, reflexes and other driving skills reach the level of the average 75 year old. But, since the majority of voters here are retirees- instead they keep making it easier for the extremely elderly to keep driving themselves - because, of course the world can't take their freedom of movement away from them.