I'm pretty sure they were protesting the war with Iraq (Bush the First) in response to Iraq's invasion and capture of oil wells in Kuwait.

But far more clear is my memory of the searing rage of a coworker that day. She was flying on it, the hatred coming out of her mouth.

It shocked me for a couple of reasons. She was close in age to me, just out of school. I think that my college years had led me to presume to most young people would be more sympathetic to opposition of general warfare. There was lots of talk of forcing military enlistment among people our age.

But the main reason was that the trigger for her rage was the temporary threat to her right to drive her car wherever she wanted to.

You think Americans are nuts about their guns, don't you ever threaten their right to kill people with cars.

Any sympathy she could have felt for the protesters' cause was gone because they blocked a highway.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal

When you remove the cheating and give adequate weight to those emissions, diesel for passenger vehicles makes a lot less sense.

I don't doubt for a second that they can read specific emails, but to suggest that they have bulk collection capabilities within Google or Microsoft is a stretch. NSA lacks the legal authority to compel that, NSA lacks the money to bribe Google or Microsoft and NSA likely lacks the political backing to put the biggest US companies in such a compromised position.

>I think the US is still among the countries that use SMS a lot.

Sure, but that's increasingly iMessage.

“The Fifty Shades trilogy was developed from a Twilight fan fiction series originally titled Master of the Universe and published by [E. L.] James episodically on fan fiction websites under the pen name ‘Snowqueen Icedragon’.”

A book nerd could come up with a much longer list, but I know there's a ton more illegal unlicensed! Harry Potter fan fic.

Mostly I agree with you. But there's a large group of people who are way too contemptuous of craftsmen using AI. We need to push back against this arrogant attitude. Just as we shouldn't be contemptuous of a woodworking craftsman using a table saw.