grue

If it's listed as an "N-speed indexed shifter with friction shifting mode" then the indexing is only going to work with N-speed cassettes, but the friction mode would work with anything. I could be wrong, though.

the court would probably start from the position that you are actually infringing a valid patent (it was granted after all)...because there is the assumption that every claim is made in good faith

In other words, one big aspect of patent reform needs to be fixing the patent office itself so that it hires patent examiners who are actually competent to evaluate the applications for prior art.

Creating new states from territory that nominally belonged to an existing state (in the sense of claiming everything west of their established territory) but was actually unexplored frontier was a little different than carving a chunk out of an existing state with fully-established borders after the fact.

Aw man, no more new Rodek/Kurn content in Star Trek Online. 😢 (For those who don't know, he's been a voice actor in that game from 2017 to at least 2023 -- I can't remember if he's been in the latest episode arc or not.)

and they’re all probably as big as US vehicles.

Key word: "probably." Which means you don't actually know.

Chances are, you're mistaken. But hey, post a pic and we'll compare. I'm betting it'll end up like this, though.

Most fire departments have something like this:

Okay, but look how short that is compared to the American equivalent:

More specialized departments close to industrial facilities, airports can be also much bigger. This one is currently the biggest weighting 52 tons.

Okay, but look how short that is compared to the American equivalent:

The longer the truck is, the larger the turning radius it needs at intersections. The larger the intersections are, the faster regular cars drive through them. The faster the cars drive, the less safe it is for everybody else.

Deciding how large a vehicle a street should accommodate is called choosing the design vehicle. You pick that, and then the whole street is designed around it.

Guess what: here in the US, we often send even trucks like the second one I pictured -- the one that's even longer than your "industrial facility and airport truck" -- to residential neighborhoods. Fire departments want to own trucks like that and we just fuckin' let them. And that's why our neighborhood streets are too often designed like goddamned airport runways!

Edit: Oh, and by the way...

I agree that the US have way too many way too big trucks but this…

Ambulances and firetrucks in Europe and Asia are smaller than most american pickup trucks.

… is just wrong.

The MAN TGM 18.330 you cited has a wheelbase of 3,900/4,200/4,500 mm (source).

A Ford F-150 Super Crew with an 8' bed and an F-250/F-350 Crew Cab with an 8' bed, both of which are considered pretty typical American pickup trucks, have wheel bases of 163.7" (4158mm) and 176.0" (4470mm) respectively (source).

He's playing a little fast and loose with the notion of "most," but otherwise, no, he's actually not wrong!

No, you're missing the point. It's not about the emergency vehicle itself hitting pedestrians. It's about the fact that having a very large vehicle, such as a ladder firetruck, as the "design vehicle" for the street forces engineers to design in a larger intersection turning radius, which increases regular cars' speed through the intersection. That is what decreases pedestrian safety.

See also: https://nacto.org/publication/urban-street-design-guide/design-controls/design-vehicle/

Sanders is a populist, though -- frankly, a much more genuine one than Trump. Populism isn't always right-wing, nor is it always demagoguery.

Sanders' problem is that (again, being an actual populist instead of a fake one), his platform is very unprofitable for the corporate elite, including the media, and so they sabotage and character-assassinate him in every way they can.

I have always used Firefox on all my devices, except for one: the Chromebook I was forced to buy because of compatibility with my college's test proctoring spyware.

On that device, not only did uBlock Origin quit working the other day, but today Chrome even kept disabling uBlock Lite with the error message that "This extension reloaded itself too frequently". It could be some kind of legitimate bug, but it sure feels a lot like foul play on Google's part.

Brave was astro-turfed by crypto-scammers for way too long to give people suggesting it now the benefit of the doubt.

Imagine having an OS that doesn't come with a proper package manager (and Firefox installed by default, for that matter).