Senate seats can’t be altered much shifting the lines on the map because there’s two per state, what you take from one you give to the other

Senate seats are ALWAYS state-wide elections, with no district lines to draw or gerrymander. Gerrymandering still arguably has an impact on senate elections, but it’s a secondary factor of reducing turnout and not a primary factor of just picking the best districts.

I feel like you can do both these days, can’t you? Hades was one of the first to break this ground.

This isn’t a “comic book” universe, but the parahumans story universe (Worm and Ward) fits this pretty well.

Without spoiling too much of the story, characters all get powers in response to traumatic events. The powers they get also tend to reflect the type of trauma that occurred, so if they lost an arm they might get a healing power, or if they were trapped in a burning building they might get the ability to phase through walls and a resistance to fire. All of the powers in the setting tend to follow this approach, and stay within the rules of the setting.

What is this garbage? If I own a house/gold/collectable/toilet paper during covid/… and the value goes up, am I supposed to pay taxes?

Yes, you are supposed to pay taxes on that (or on the house specifically). It’s called property taxes.

If the value goes up, you pay more taxes the next year, if the value goes down you pay less.

I’m not sure the ownership situation of the company, but it is also independently in bankruptcy so I think that is being dealt with later

Gravity and vacuum are not mutually exclusive - you always have to deal with gravity forces, although they become negligible pretty quickly when you get into and then leave orbits.

As to the specific claim, I suspect that the experiments they are currently doing (in vacuum chambers on earth) have gotten to the point that they are measuring the propulsion system producing more thrust than it’s own weight (T/W >1), which would technically be enough thrust to overcome gravity. Even if it wasn’t practically useful for actually getting to orbit, that amount of thrust on a reactionless motor would be incredible, and would totally unlock the solar system for us.