Yes, not surprising for a company that was operating a slave labor plantation in Brazil up until the 1980s.

Here's an article where they'll pay a few days' revenue in fines for it https://apnews.com/article/brazil-volkswagen-labor-slavelike-condition-d14c2b397120104f42909e4f83482284

Can't wait for tomorrow's headline which will be some version of "Germany Helps US Anyway"

It was part of the spectacle and formality of the peaceful transition of power, something that got shot to hell around 2020 or so for some reason or other.

You can install router software on any computer

https://opnsense.org/

Fossil plants, not really. The hard part for them is getting them started again which can take hours. But disconnecting them suddenly won't hurt them. There are many layers of protective devices keeping them from overspeed events.

Nuclear plants are similar but they will continue generating heat long after they are disconnected from the grid and you have to have a plan for removing that heat or bad things will happen. This was what caused problems at Fukushima.

Yes solar panels and most renewables can be turned off easily if there is too much energy on the grid. The term for this is "curtailment". Some energy sources can't be turned off easily, like nuclear, large coal plants, and combined cycle gas turbines. So you will tend to turn off the easy things before the hard things.

The only major problem here is that this upsets the capitalists that own the generation; they don't want to pay for stuff that isn't producing money at every instance that it could be producing money. There are no real technical reasons why you can't curtail wind and solar plants whenever you need to.

Worth noting that a large amount of "renewables bad" you'll see is fossil fuel propaganda too, so be careful there.

A lot of bigger cities do have car-dependent sprawl around an unaffordable city center like Portland, Hartford, Burlington etc but a lot of the smaller towns are much more walkable and community-oriented, where you can probably afford a quarter acre lot within walking distance of a downtown. Brattleboro is a good example but getting pricey, Bennington maybe, Hanover NH, Montpelier, Farmington ME etc.

You're not going to find Boston-level amenities in i.e. Brattleboro but you'll get a minimum of a coffee shop or two, a brewery, a few good restaurants, shops, etc. plus small-town community and an affordable home

Any small town in New England

He only did those things because Vietnam was going so poorly so don't give him too much credit.

Why impose your preferences on that other person?

The return-to-office folks are not giving us the option of returning to work if we want. They're forcing us even when it's completely unnecessary. So yeah, you should have the option to bike to work when and if you want but the rest of us should have the option to opt out when it's possible to work from home. That's 100% not happening.

And then Harry Potter will become a cop

I am a time traveler. One second per second