I’m having a little difficulty parsing that last sentence, but if you’re saying what I think you’re saying, I can only respond by saying:

See, e.g., Blish, James, Cities in Flight.

Unfortunately, we might be talking about a populist overlord. Forever. It’s certainly unlikely that the requisite tools to achieve immortality or near-immortality will be freely available. Bezos, Gates, (perhaps? Have to see the tax returns) Trump—those people could afford to live forever. Everyone else?

Besides, if I’m gonna live forever, I want it to be in a Heechee Prayer Fan.

Yeah, that’s too much like the Barbie-pink 911, or President Trump. We knew we could do it, so we did. But we never stopped to wonder about whether we should do it.

Yeah, but why?

“There is nothing like an Amphicar.”

Many years ago, I was at a friends’ Thanksgiving. We made so much food, and so many pies—at least two were pumpkin, and were magnificent. Interestingly, their two cats happily licked out the pumpkin filling cans.

It’s worth noting that during the cold war, when the US examined some aircraft that defecting pilots had flown to the west, they found surprisingly unsophisticated electronic systems—i.e., vacuum tubes. There may still be some debate, but most folks I know who’ve thought about this considered it a kind of hardening…

I like Joe. He’s got personality. But I think Elizabeth Warren would be a great candidate. I don’t think she’d come across as regional. And if you want a VP with some personality, might I recommend Al Franken?

I use a dynohub system, and the (rather expensive) headlight is bolted (theft-proof bolt) to the front rack. The tail light is mounted to the rear fender, and the wiring is concealed. So far, so good.

All hail the late Sheldon Brown:

Thinking about it, there are a fair number, though with being almost constantly connected to the web, I don’t necessarily install each of these until I need it:

Mine is blue and needs a Tardis sticker because it’s bigger on the inside.

Yeah, but at least let’s go with 105 level shifters. Campy, of course, would be better.

I have a 2010 Fit base model, manual transmission. It is, in most respects, a clone of the 1991 Civic Wagon I drove for 15 years. I preferred the more upright windshield on the Civic, but the Fit goes just fine. Mine’s at 120,000 miles and shows no signs of trouble. I get 41 MPG between New Haven and Hartford, and…

Srsly bloated. My first Honda was a ‘91 Civic wagon. Lovely car. Then (though in truth it had already happened) the Civics (save for the no-longer-available wagon) started to grow. Right now I drive a 2010 Fit, which has almost exactly the same dimensions as that ‘91 wagon. But I hear tell they’re going to get bigger,…

I assure you, we had rear-facing seats for our infants. I even rigged up a mirror system so we could keep eyes on them (a secondary mirror below the driver’s mirror, aimed at a downward-aimed mirror on one of the rear-seat headrests).

That’s likely true, and it’s a problem. When Child3 got large, we bought a used minivan. I hated myself for doing it, but... At least it also meant that everyone got a window.

Fair point. At the same time, some of the proposed solutions feel incredibly overkillish.