Technically, I think the Internet is considered a mesh.

I know of nothing trying to replace the Internet, but some wireless projects like Amateur Radio Emergency Data Network (technically can't use encryption on amateur radio bands), Meshtastic (messaging), MeshCore (messaging), and Reticulum (messaging, simple pages, BBS-like stuff). Any community could also try to set up a wifi mesh with something like the BATMAN protocol. Wireless meshes have all sorts of problems though. They must be carefully planned to get decent bandwidth because everyone's using the same "wire" (radio bands). Also, governments could easily jam or DoS them.

Can states not sue companies that accept payment from citizens within their state?

I've seen reports that Trump was going to go for Greenland and his advisors shifted his attention to Iran instead. There was also that time Trump leaked Macron's message where Macron said he'd support Trump with Iran if he backed off Greenland.

Cuba's current government won't let US businesses extract Cuba's wealth and exploit their citizens.

These markets were illegal for so long because they can easily turn into assassination markets with plausible deniability.

I was going to mention the same thing. The recent AI craze and productivity studies are another similar thing. Same with return-to-office. Our rulers (the owner class) put power and cruelty over rationality.

I've known actual skinheads that liked this movie, along with Higher Learning (long time ago; I grew up in a very insular and racist town). Related to Poe's law I guess.

Grave of the Fireflies would be another good one too (at least for something like ages 10+).

I seem to recall 12 Monkeys being kind of confusing.

I never heard of pirating NES/SNES/Genesis back then, so I don't think it was very common. Renting was pretty cheap, and you could always trade or borrow games with friends. We didn't get a computer until the late 90s when the WWW was taking off, but yeah, pirating games is probably one of the first things I did. Downloading a large number of RAR files from warez sites over dial-up, taking multiple days, IIRC. And ROMs and emulation. Someone in my school would put cracked PC games on a shared network drive, so you could play them in the library. Later, I went to a technology focused high school, and we'd all play (cracked) Half-Life or Unreal Tournament multiplayer before class started every day (usually with the teacher).

Yeah, these are 0.5C cells, meaning they can safely discharge 157A (I would be using them for offgrid solar), so those little nickle strips would melt. I think TiG welding these would be extremely dangerous and produce too much heat (and I've never TiG welded before; just badly MiG welded a couple times). By "welding" in the description they mean commercial laser welders.

I don't think those would work for these large batteries. I have one that I use for small cells though (i.e. 18650/21700).