shads

I don't know your teachers or situation and I am going to wildly generalise here, but having worked with teachers, they were probably just their best.

They are teaching a syllabus they didn't write (you can only put so much make up on that pig) to a group of largely disengaged students, for generally insufficient pay.

They probably just wanted to make it through the day without contemplating self harm.

A spirited contrarian student who fancies themselves an intellectual can be dealt with the ideal way, engaging them, acknowledging the short comings of teaching content to a wide range of intellects/engagement levels.

Or the less ideal way, draconian authority. Sounds like you ran up against the former. Sorry that was your experience.

Well that is their special skill, and their happy place.

Its pretty notable that almost all the smokers I know have moved over to black market imports. $2+ per cigarette means that a pack of black markets charged at $1 per cigarette make it far to tempting, and there is a big enough profit margin on them that people will bring them in to the country despite enforcement actions.

They haven't been able to stop weed, or cocaine, or heroin or ice what makes them think they will be able to stop tobacco products, especially when there is a legal version of cigarettes and e-cigarettes out there that at first glance can be hard to tell apart from the illegal ones.

I also heard that there is a tobacconist who couldn't get a license in my old home town, so they pivoted to selling novelty products above board and illegal cigarettes under the counter. The council basically posed them the option of stay in business and break the law or shut down.

Because they don't give a shit about driving? They care a lot more about their family members that own car dealerships, or are involved with the petrochemical industry.

Or they saw that American rightwing grifters talk like this so they are cargo culting the fuck out?

I have written and rewritten my response here trying to find the right tone. I feel like we are closer to agreement here than might be immediately obvious. I think a lot of what we are seeing now is a result of 50+ years of people who find the idea of your republic distasteful seeking every method they can to erode it away. All the details are just components of this project, seems to me that MAGA is a result of years of stoking xenophobia and anti-intellectualism. Turns out if you spend decades laying the groundwork you can make the situation seem completely hopeless to a whole populace. I sincerely worry the long term goal is to perfect the formula for dismantling democracy and then start exporting it to the rest of the world.

Or I could be a fool, I don't know and I don't want to rewrite this again. Sorry that this was so rambling.

From my detached non American (but still a citizen of the planet so likely to get fucked hard by the way Americans vote) point of view, seems like Americans are continually letting perfect be the enemy of least bad. "Well since Democrats are kinda bad in these instances maybe we should just go fully fascist theological doom cult. That will force the Democrats to improve, or kill us all."

I'm kinda looking forward to finding out which Chinese OEM is building this thing and how they will be contorting the definition of Made in USA to apply it here.

The signs of quality and attention to detail are already there for all to see!

One was designed by solution focussed engineers looking to balance a host of competing factors, material use, strength, interoperability with systems manufactured by other companies.

The other was designed by fed up engineers based on the insane demands of a drug addicted narcissistic nazi.

Actually I am misremembering, apparently capacitors are bad for audio, so to get the best you have to have chunky inductors and circuitry to do powerfctor correction to get a PF of 1. I was remembering big chunky power conditioners that look like batteries but are actually huge iron core inductors. They get your audio equipment "closer" to the power generation, which "improves your soundscape". I'm sure he was using the stupid crazy priced audiophile powercords as well.

Oh, I was going to say you know a higher grade of audiophile than I do, but then I remembered that no I have met one. He had installed what was in effect a powerwall with supercaps and was generating his own waves through. His speakers cost more than my car, individually. I want to say Palladium Studio References. Wow yep. Thanks for that little blast from the musty vaults of deep memory... Well a 10 minute conversation 20ish years ago and a lot of "Ohs" and "Ahs" at his photo album.