Bimfred

Three years? A low energy transfer orbit gets you to Mars in less than a year. In the past, theoretical crewed missions were planned with an 8-9 month travel time. With enough propellant, could get that down to just over three months. And that's with chemical rockets, not some hypothetical nuclear or torch drive.

Less self-aware? They had a shot that just said "VFX: Car on fire" in the first few minutes of the movie.

What power do you have when there's no one to subject to it?

ISS's radiators. It's processing data on the station that would otherwise be transmitted groundside and processed here.

There's also Santa is sick of your shit.

They get to claim it because we let them. Every time an article comes out with "____ is a Nazi dogwhistle," there's a set of people who don't want to be associated with Nazis (or insert relevant disliked group of choice) who will immediately drop whatever the thing is. This creates a cycle where something does eventually become a dogwhistle, because everyone who didn't use it as such has stopped using it altogether.

TL;DR: Fuck 'em. Don't let those assholes control how you express yourself.

Or that everyone else is just as horrible as they are, so they'd feel justified in being a sloppy fart of a person.

This is bullshit. I've been staring at it from every angel. They'res no hippo in this picture.

Your friends are constantly spewing EM radiation at you. So is your home. The trees outside. The very sky. There's no escape. Even if you were to enclose yourself in a Faraday cage and exist in complete darkness, your own body would still be bathing your surroundings in EM radiation that bounces off the cage.

I live out in the countryside. The nearest store is about 2.8km away. Put on some good music, get an ice cream for the second half of the trip, it's a lovely walk. I could catch a bus back, there's a stop right by the shop, but my timing is generally shite. If I'd be halfway home by the time the bus comes, I'd rather just walk.

They're not producing fuel to continue the same reactions, which would be a violation of conservation of energy. They're producing fuel to run a different reaction. Less "perpetual motion machine," more "spinning a turbine to charge a battery to run an EV."

Edit: A better analogy is cracking water to capture the hydrogen, to later burn it in a fuel cell.