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What do you think of this tweet from Donald Trump: “A vote for today’s resolution by Republican Senators is a vote for Nancy Pelosi, Crime, and the Open Border Democrats!”?I think it tells me something about Trump.He’s got no arguments against the resolution, so he’s doubling down on old false statements- that “the Democrats” are “for open borders” (they aren’t) and that immigrants are criminals (nah, they tend to commit fewer crimes than native-born Americans).If I put myself in Trump’s shoes, I can see where I’d be terribly afraid of this resolution- it is about making the results of the Mueller Report public- and if that information becomes available generally, it could impact his political support.As things stand, Trump as an individual, his administration, his business organization and companies, and his family all face significant criminal liability and are the subject of multiple simultaneous investigations. A public release of the Mueller report could crack open even more of them, or it could move public support.Being president gets Trump some time. Staying president is perhaps the only avenue that keeps him out of court (and possibly, prison). Staying president means he needs to maintain his political backing within congress.If just 10 GOP senators were to signal that Trump had lost their backing, or if enough of the GOP decides Trump hurts them too much politically, he could be impeached and removed from office- and then, all those lawsuits and criminal charges held in the wings would descend upon him.He’s not a young man. He faces the very real prospect of being tied up in litigation for much of the remainder of his life. His family face legal liabilities as well.If I were to wake up one morning in his situation, I’d be pretty frightened about the future.When I read this tweet (which name-checks Pelosi (always a signal to perk up partisan ears), and doubles down on 2 false arguments) I get the sense that Trump is afraid, willing to say anything to shore up his political support.

Parked Space And Heartbreak: The Breakup That Nearly Cost A Chicago Woman $100,000Sometimes, relationships just don’t work out.Sometimes, two people will end on bad terms, and they’ll start lashing out at each other. Out of spite, two exes will often do petty things just for the sake of hurting the other.You know, small things, like burning their clothes or turning mutual friends against them. Even at the absolute worst, the average breakup revenge usually isn’t much worse than a vandalised car.Sure, it’s still a felony in most parts of the world, but the damage usually doesn’t total more than a few thousand dollars.Usually…I’m about to get into a special case, an outlier. And a very expensive one, at that.A Love Story Gone BadAccording to some shaky statistics I found in a blog post online, at least 531,925 breakups happen every single day, all over the world.[1][1][1][1] That’s over half a million people’s relationships going up in flames every single day.And on one fateful day in early 2009, one of those breakups occured between one Jennifer Fitzgerald and her ex-boyfriend, Brandon Preveau.Brandon Preveau and Jennifer Fitzgerald first began their relationship in May 2006, according to legal documents. In this timespan, the couple did not marry, although they did have a child together in October of 2007.[2][2][2][2]Despite their history, the couple split up sometime in January of 2009, according to court files. Jennifer took their child, and Brandon took the car: a 1999 Chevy Monte Carlo that he had purchased from his ex’s uncle in 2008.Despite paying all the fees associated with the vehicle (registration, title, insurance, etc.) he put the vehicle’s registration in his then-girlfriend’s name. Brandon may have been the one using the car, but legally, the vehicle was the property of Jennifer Fitzgerald.The couple then went their separate ways, with Preveau driving the car to O’Hare Airport every day, where he was employed by United Airlines. Brandon would park in Parking Lot E every day, a public lot belonging to the City of Chicago.(This is the car in question)And one day in 2009, Brandon Preveau drove in to park the car in Parking Lot E and never drove it out.A New Chicago RecordI never knew that anyone kept track of things like these, but the amount of tickets racked up in Jennifer Fitzgerald’s name was actually a new record for the city of Chicago.As documented by the Chicago Department of Finance, the car in question racked up a total of… wait for it…$105,761.80 USDThat wasn’t a typo. Over a period of three years, the Chevy Monte Carlo received exactly 678 tickets, for a plethora of infractions, includingExpired plates or temporary registrationHazardous dilapidated vehicleWindows missing or cracked beyond 6″Rear and front plate requiredNo city sticker or improper display[3]Taken To CourtImagine if you were in Jennifer Fitzgerald’s shoes.Stuck with a bill of over a hundred grand in parking tickets, from an ex who’s either so spiteful or so irresponsible that he’s gotten you into this mess. This six-figure mess.If I was in her shoes - and violent retribution wasn’t an option - you bet your ass I’d want to settle this matter by legal means.Which is exactly what Ms. Fitzgerald did. Representing herself in court, she filed a lawsuit against the City of Chicago, her ex-boyfriend Brandon and United Airlines.What exactly went on in that courtroom is not known to me, but a case file that was publicly released summarises the events of the case. It’s 85 points long and filled with legal jargon, so I’m going to summarise it as best as I can.Spoiler Alert: She Gets The Amount Settled To Less Than $4,500 USDJennifer Fitzgerald (the plaintiff) was able to prove the following to the courtDespite the deed being in her name, she was never the owner of the vehicle in question as it was paid in her ex-boyfriend’s tax refund money, and the liability insurance was also paid for in his name.Brandon Preveau was the legal owner of the vehicle from the time of its purchase to the time of the suit.Therefore, Jennifer Fitzgerald was not responsible for the tickets the vehicle accrued during this timeAlso, the court found that both United Airlines and the City of Chicago had an obligation to tow and scrap the car on and after November 17th, 2009[4]So, yeah. The total was reduced to just under four and a half thousand dollars. A down payment of $1,600 was paid for by Brandon Preveau. Fitzgerald agreed to pay the remainder of the total over the span of three years, in monthly payments of $78 each.Formal Jargon Is Over, It’s Conclusion TimeHoly shit.Imagine being that petty. I don’t know the intimate details of this relationship, nor do I want to. But I seriously wonder what happened between them for things to escalate this expensively.Can you imagine being so bitter towards an ex that you’ll accrue a hundred grand’s debt in her name? I bet you Brandon thought he had the last laugh for a while there. That is, until his ex sued him, his city, and his employer, which happens to be one of the biggest airlines in the world.And she won.This is one of the rare instances when real life seems stranger than fiction.Stay vicious.Footnotes[1] Break Ups Happen Every Day[1] Break Ups Happen Every Day[1] Break Ups Happen Every Day[1] Break Ups Happen Every Day[2] Scorned lover's 'ultimate bastardry'[2] Scorned lover's 'ultimate bastardry'[2] Scorned lover's 'ultimate bastardry'[2] Scorned lover's 'ultimate bastardry'[3] http://theexpiredmeter.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/ticketlist.pdf[4] http://theexpiredmeter.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/fitzgerald.pdf

There is a big problem with trying to answer this question.We cannot assume we know where Tesla is with this.All the other players here, are attempting to operate autonomous ride sharing, and are publicly beta-testing such services in limited areas where they have approval to operate self driving ride shares with a supervising person present to take over in emergencies.Tesla is not doing this. They are planning to eventually operate a ride sharing service, which they said will be a combination of company operated cars and owner’s cars who share their car while they are not using it. They do not have a self driving ride share fleet driving around. This leads people to make two false assumptions:Since they don’t have Level 4 test cars operating in public, while all the others do, they must be far behindWhat they do have operating in public, is only Level 2. So that must be all that haveYou cant make either of these assumptions. Tesla is using a combination of real world testing of their released self-driving features, plus computer simulations, plus closed course testing, to test their self-driving. They are leveraging the fact that their cars are mass produced, and sold in many countries, to both gather wider data than their competitors, and to perform their real world testing without showing all their cards.For similar reasons, it is unreasonable to think they are not further than their current Autopilot public release. R&D teams at technology companies by definition can always be assumed to be far ahead of anything publicly released, especially in cases of features which affect the users safety. It is truly silly to assume that a software development team isn’t far ahead of the things they have actually released, especially when customer safety and government regulation are going to have a huge drag on what actually can be released.This all means that Tesla is the wild card in this race. They might have hit a wall and be barely past Level 2. They might have Level 4 working with critical safety bugs that prevent its full release. We have no idea. But we do know that they claim they will do it using only the camera, sonar, and radar currently installed in all cars since 2016, which at this point is over half a million cars, with likely close to another half a million to be sold next year. This is a Trojan horse. If Tesla hits Level 4, it will have a 1 million+ car deployment literally overnight, with 1 million+ test users.People can talk all they want about the technical details of why they think Tesla isn’t close, or won’t succeed. But for them to make a definitive claim that Tesla is either way behind, or way ahead, based on public information, is nonsense, because unlike the others we have little way to actually gain any insight into their progress, beyond those features they decide are safe enough for customers to use them. This is a huge distinction from the others - Tesla faces way more liability (and bad publicity) if they deploy unsafe features, because they are deploying them to large numbers of customers, rather than a small number of employees. Therefore, they are going to far more conservative about feature deployment than the others. It is unwise to take this distinction as a lack of capability, rather than a mitigation of risk.TL;DR - we can’t answer the Tesla vs X self driving question because we have far less information about where Tesla is at than the others.