Start by defining your available power. How many watt-hours can you generate? A small 100W solar panel can provide an average of 400Wh of energy per day in the winter. That’s more than enough to run a 10-inch tablet 24/7 and LED lighting at night. I’ve seen 360W solar panels for under $100 on the used market. That’s a couple of KWh a day. Even a 100W bicycle generator and a 30 minute workout would power a tablet for 8 hours.

If power consumption is that big of a factor, perhaps separate devices for video, music, and reading would be beneficial. A dedicated music player can consume less than a watt. An e-paper reader requires fractions of a watt.

I have a folding 100W panel, a 30Ah 12V LiFePO4 battery, and a charge controller that I use while car camping. It keeps all the electronics running for a group of 4 without relying on a noisy generator. The battery is big enough to compensate for a couple of rainy days.

My backpacking setup is a 15W panel and a 30Wh battery. That kept my phone and flashlight charged for 2 weeks on the Pacific Crest Trail.

Damn. That would be me!

My GF worked for a thrift shop, and when I picked her up after work she was admiring a 2 foot statue of Venus that had just been donated. So I bought it for her. That evening she was cleaning it up and noticed the wooden box at the foot of the figurine was hinged, but locked. I opened it with a bent paper clip and inside was a bag containing - a butt plug and anal beads. Then we figured out that if you twisted the head, it pulled a dildo out of the body.

There’s no doubt that US sizes have become more generous. Size measurements have increased over the years by about 2 inches. A size 10 from the 50’s fits like a size 8 today. A medium shirt is closer to a large from 70 years ago.

We won’t have a clear winner. No matter which candidate “wins”, there will be widespread allegations of voter fraud. There will be protests. Biden will declare a national emergency. What happens after that? I don’t know. But I am prepared for major social unrest.

A large number of people from both major parties are absolutely unwilling to accept a win by the opposing candidate. I’ve never seen the country so divided.

There are plenty of companies that will sell your name, email addresses, phone numbers, street addresses, marital status, and relative’s names. They obtain the information from publicly sold databases. I had access to one that had all that, plus the registration info for the car I drive, my estimated income, my military record, my driving record, my political party preference, and pictures of my home that had been on the realtor’s website.

The scary one was when a phone center employee in the Philippines stole my wife’s debit card number and then did two big Western Union MoneyGram transfers to a couple of Filipino men. That means bad actors have access to the credit companies’ databases from which Western Union draws their proof of identity questions, like who holds your mortgage, where you lived when you were 10, and the make/model of your first vehicle.

If you’re well-off enough to be a financial fraud target, paying a company for identity theft protection is probably well worth it. Put fraud alerts in with all the major credit bureaus too. That usually stops identity thieves from accessing your credit. If you use 2FA with your phone, make sure your telecom provider will not transfer your number to a new device without in-person authorization and authentication.

Absentee ballot. Always worked for me in the Navy.

When you shop for a place to live, do you buy/rent nothing because nothing is “perfect”? Or do you weigh the benefits and detriments of each available option and choose the best one?

There’s a clear choice, and if you need to see what voter apathy gets you, look at Venezuela. We got a second chance because the Jan 6 attempt failed. If you don’t vote, the usurper might win.

Not recommended for lycra or spandex suits, or any suit that has elastic closures, particularly during the summer months. They will rapidly degrade in the heat of the car. My wife left hers in the car after a vacation (never used it). It was tucked in the trunk. Found it a month later and it disintegrated in the wash.

It wasn’t any particular scientific discovery that weakened religion. It was the popularity of science fiction that did it. As Arthur C. Clarke put it, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” People can now imagine how miracles are done without invoking anything supernatural. We might not have the tech to do it yet, but we have a pretty good idea of potential methods. That has placed a lot of “creator god” religions under pressure. Create life? Tech will eventually do it. Create a world? Sure, tech again. Given enough tech, a solar system can be spawned. Water into wine? We’re halfway there with Kool-Aid. We already have vimanas (those ancient Hindu flying vehicles). We call them airplanes or helicopters. We can destroy a whole city with a single weapon. So why should we worship a supreme being who supposedly did those things?

Assuming we can conquer poverty, religions that survive will be centered around improving the human condition. Worshipping dieties will eventually fall by the wayside. It will still be a long process. You can’t dispel faith with reason and facts. And people in poverty tend to embrace religion because it gives them comfort and hope that things will be better in the afterlife.

Animals were doing it long before humans even existed. Some birds will “bathe” in an ant nest because the formic acid excreted by the ants rids them of parasites. There’s even a word for it - zoopharmacognosy.

Long before recorded history, people knew what plants were helpful to treat or cure various maladies. Who knows what possessed the first human to chew on willow bark to relieve pain or reduce a fever? The earliest documentation of it was 400 BCE by Hippocrates, but it was probably common knowledge for much longer than that. The Chinese have been using various herbs to treat disease for at least 3000 years.

Every time I do a search, the bot usually provides enough info. The problem is that I don’t trust the bot because it’s been wrong before. So I still need to continue the search to find an authoritative answer.

That’s the problem with bots. If you trust their answers and they’re wrong, it can be a real problem. There was a story a while ago about an Air Canada customer service bot that was giving out bad info about bereavement travel. When a customer tried to get the promised refund, the airline admitted the advice was wrong, but claimed the bot was a separate legal entity, therefore they were not responsible for the advice it gave.

Critical Thinking skills. Imagine a world where everyone is able to sus out the lies, separate fact from fiction, and not fall into pitfalls of illogical thinking.

Me: I wish I could stop paying taxes. Genie: poof Wish granted! Me: Woah…I don’t feel so good! Genie: It’s a fatal heart attack.

I was with you up until you decided to hide under the insulation. Seriously? I start scratching just looking at the stuff!

My house is built on an old vertical mineshaft. I’d take the secret elevator to the bunker 300 feet below ground where my command center is. Then I’d take control of the gun emplacements hidden in the trees and the fleet of AI enhanced drones. When the agents are eliminated, the robotic dogs will drag the bodies to the incinerator shaft.

Or maybe not. You didn’t think I’d really tell you what awaits you Agent CraigOhMyEggo, did you?

That there is an all powerful supreme being that demands our worship or else we will suffer for all eternity after our death.

Based on telomere degradation. Recent developments may result in human telomere repair in the near future.

Where did I ever say that? Age discrimination is age discrimination. Either you’re qualified for the job or not, independent of your age. It seems like OPs question is a one-size-fits-all reaction to the geriatric choices forced upon us by the two party system. The real solution is to open the system up. Ranked-choice voting does that. You don’t have to vote for the candidate who has the best chance of beating the opposition. You rank your choices. First choice is the person who best represents you. After the votes are tallied, the candidate who gets >50% wins. If nobody achieves that, the candidate with the least votes is removed and the second choice of those who voted for them is used. This process continues until someone achieves the supermajority.

It has the advantage of doing away with the idea that you’re wasting your vote by not voting for the candidate who has the best chance of prevailing against the opposition. If your candidate is removed, your second choice receives your vote. Your vote ALWAYS counts. A side benefit is that we no longer need runoff elections. Everyone’s second (and third and fourth) choices are already taken into account.

No. That’s age discrimination. If you’re concerned that a person could be suffering from mental degradation, require annual testing for it. I know folks in their 90’s who are better critical thinkers than a lot of 20-somethings.

The problem we have is not that a bunch of old people run the country. It’s that a bunch of young people put them there because they were the only real choices they had. Fix the two-party system first by employing ranked-choice voting. That will break the stranglehold that Republicans and Democrats have on the US political system.