Appreciate the info!

Beautiful stuff, y’all. Keep hope alive!

Considering how under-funded and understaffed the IRS has been/is, they do a pretty amazing job with what they have to work with. Simplifying or redoing our tax codes again is a huge task that will take time. There does need to be some sort of progress though! We’ll see what type of government we’ll have shortly.

I could see the point being to spread the information on what is happening so that (hopefully) we could elect more people who would do something about it. There are some elections coming up where, theoretically, the power could shift. There’s also lobbying our congresspeople, which can have an effect if enough people do it. The power of incumbency, uninformed voters, etc… make this a shitty situation, to be sure. I’m still trying to have hope that enough people pushing for change can find success. If not, I’ll just be cynical at the bleak prospects of life.

I say all that to say, we should fight however we can, but definitely keep pushing forward!

While I can concede your point that it’s feasible and possibly even more practical to open from the stem, I gotta say that since switching to the other end years ago(because I saw a similar thread on reddit), it’s been super easy and I’ve had zero issues. The stem just has a higher rate of fucking up, but it’s not like either end will fully decimate the banana. Peeling properly after it’s opened is an easy fix either way.

IIRC, the reason sodium batteries would be better is we have abundant stocks of sodium, whereas the raw materials for most other batteries are limited and require more destructive mining. John Oliver just covered some of this on his show last Sunday. If that tech can be improved, hopefully there won’t be any deep sea mining for more raw materials!