It’s nice that their incentives finally line up with something I want. Now if only building surveillance into new cars was somehow unprofitable.

I had no idea so much of their power was from hydro! It sucks that a drought can cause such disruption to the grid but I admire their ambition (in power generation and in their car rules).

It’s easier to make your own electricity than to make your own gasoline.

All big companies do. The only thing mitigating that is regulations and the US is generally laxer than other places (like Europe and Canada) on safety standards.

No worries! And good luck!

Throwing in a little odd advice for the secondhand scene - even if the shops are bad, I’ve had some good luck with estate sales and cleanouts (where a family or realtor basically opens the home to anyone who’ll cary stuff away and save them the trouble and cost of throwing it out). It can feel kinda bad, picking through stuff in that context, but we’ve saved a bunch of nice old tools and kitchen stuff that way, and the houses generally have everything else you might need for a house. Personally I think the best BIFL stuff is old and made before they really perfected enshitifying their products.

The cleanouts I’ve been to we found through postings on our local free groups (which I also really recommend) or word of mouth, but I used to know some folks who went to them professionally, looking for merchandise for their own businesses, so they must be advertised somewhere normal people would find them too.

I got to visit a car museum once - I was surprised to see that there was a brief window where gas, electric, and steam cars were all equally bad and folks didn’t seem to know which format would become ascendant.