Excellent write up. I hear people ask about this all the time, why the USA defaulted towards SMS/MMS/iMessage when other parts of the world didn’t. It is not the case of now but the history of the technological development and saturation of the technology within the younger demographics that got us here naturally. We didn’t have to make a choice of which platform to migrate our friend/family groups too because we had enough of the functions we needed built into all of our phones along the last 30 years.

It doesn’t come down to what is the best platform right now, it comes down to what was the best, and easiest, platform to get all my friends and family using when my country/region/friend group/etc got smartphones. There are large swaths of the world population where their technology exposure was landline>TV>Internet cafe>smartphone. Where the beginning of their online presence was through an Internet cafe and then very soon after (within years) they had a smart phone. In that model their first interaction with instant messaging was not phone to phone but computer to computer and they used messenger/instagram/whatsapp/wechat and etc and those social networks of friends migrated with them from the Internet cafe PC as the main point of access to a Smartphone as the main point of access.

Have you tried an al pastor burrito from Los Robles Cafe in Paso? Thanks for the rec of Suprema Market

I am with you here. I have a 2003 BMW Z4, not as expensive as people expect it to be, fun to drive and have had very few problems with it. 114k miles on it.

Though I have not had to do any major fixes on it I do sleep better at night knowing that I have several friends who are car guys that have all the equipment and tools to pretty much fix anything on it, within reason.

Also, lots of enthusiasts for those cars out there, plenty of forums with 20+ years worth of documentation from people fixing their own roadster and helping others fix theirs. Small car, physical buttons and controls, well engineered, fast, fun and reliable.

I can tell you are a person of refined quality and sophistication; you didn’t forget to add Gunter!

Well done!

My first thought upon seeing the picture;

“Why is Ice King not wearing his crown?”

It took me a few seconds to realize it wasn’t him… the similarity has to be intentional.

And your reply did the same for me, hope you are having a wonderful week! 🖖

I spotted it too, it is well reasoned with an excellent flow of thought. I appreciate that others see it too and commented on it.

This is very important context to the headline, thank you for providing it because of course I read the comments before I RTFA.