Ah, like Harry Potter and fantasy!

There's nothing wrong with that (everyone has to be introduced somehow), but that doesn't make it a great work of fantasy. So, based on what you've said, I doubt I would find The Three-Body Problem to be a great work of science fiction. Though maybe a way to kill a day when I have nothing else going on.

When I was younger, I drove a pick-up for a short time. During that winter, I put sand bags over the rear axle to avoid fishtailing on ice. The handling changed completely. The bed still slid while turning, but was much more responsive...as soon as I stopped turning, the bed stopped sliding. It was an odd sensation, really.

This is the kind of attitude that I like. Willing to use some of your disposable income on an experiment that you think might make the world a better place.

I remember this being a discussion with trash compactors back in the day. The trash takes up less space, so good for landfills...right?

Except that the compression removes air (and passages for air to infiltrate), which has the oxygen microbes need to do their decomposition work. So you get a smaller pile of trash that hangs around for longer.

So does compression increase or decrease the net amount of garbage in the world when integrated over time? Dunno. I suspect it depends on the garbage.

Just to note, Clinton did not give China MFN status. Clinton extended the existing MFN status for China. Congress made this permanent in 2000.

Instead of accepting the automatic annual renewal, Congress tried to place limitations on China's MFN status in 1991 and 1992 (due to Tiananmen Square), which then-President Bush vetoed, and while the House overruled the veto, the Senate did not have the votes to do so. In 1993, then-President Clinton promised to tie MFN to human rights progress, though he never followed through on this. I guess it's for this reason (that he promised to do something and never did) that people associate President Clinton and China's MFN status more than they associate President Bush with it.

https://www.everycrsreport.com...
https://www.theatlantic.com/id...

The latest Ken Burns docu-series on the Vietnam war touches on this a bit, too, though related to the M-16. One soldier told the story of a fire-fight that went south for the Americans, resulting in quite a few dead. When they went back afterwards, they found that a lot of the M-16s of the dead were jammed. The solider telling the story painted it as common knowledge among the troops that this happened.

I'm not a war hawk by any means, but sending soldiers into combat situations with faulty equipment? Not knowing if your gun was even going to work? Seems like someone should be sued for that.

That's when I pull out Valgrind. Computationally super-expensive to run, but I've found more than a couple nasty memory bugs that way which led to unpredictable behavior.

Coincidentally enough, the other windows on this virtual desktop are trying to do that as I type this. Because it's so expensive, I have a few minutes to check /..

I am curious as to the best way to buy music directly from artists.

I used to think Bandcamp was the answer, but if a label controls an artist and puts up their Bandcamp page, that money goes through the label. Bandcamp takes their 15 percent or so, and then the label takes whatever they take, so that doesn't seem any different than any other distribution channel in terms of directly supporting artists. I felt mislead when I learned this, as their FAQ states that "80-85% of your money goes to the artist", when it's more "80-85% of your money goes to the label/artist".

BMG Rights Management (revenues of 700 million dollars in 2018) is a label on Bandcamp. So it's certainly not just small labels, and the help desk told me they don't reject accounts based on the size of the label.

So...I am still searching for the perfect way. I guess their website, and hope they don't redirect you to iTunes or Bandcamp?

Greek?

I may be a nitwit, but that's my first guess. I've read Romans were considered uneducated if they didn't speak perfect Attic Greek.

"Cow catchers" in my part of the country.

Huh, never knew they had so many different names!

I really like LaTeX, and I use it for a lot of stuff that I do.

The only real downside is that many other people don't want to use it, which clearly makes collaboration more difficult. And the lack of convenient track changes. I've tried Overleaf (which requires payment to track changes for longer than a day or so, in addition to storing my documents on someone else's server); I've tried pasting into a .doc file. Both work, but are not terribly user-friendly.

But for nice-looking documents, references, formulas, and open-sourceness, it's tops.

It's probably less straightforward than you'd think. Though I suspect that you're right.

There was a recent case heard at the Supreme Court about something similar: MANHATTAN COMMUNITY ACCESS CORP. ET AL. v. HALLECK ET AL.. New York City designated a private nonprofit corporation, petitioner Manhattan Neighborhood Network (MNN), to operate the public access channels on Time Warner’s cable system in Manhattan. MNN suspended two presenters after they produced a film critical about MNN, which MNN aired (and then suspended them afterwards). The respondents sued, claiming violation of free speech.

The Supreme Court ruled that MNN is not a state actor, and therefore not subject to the First Amendment.

The details are beyond me (IANAL), but interesting to read. Page 1 and 2 in the above link have a good summary, with more details in the subsequent opinions.

Maybe he'd be happy because they would use their money to create other movies, which he may enjoy? So investing in a genre he doesn't care for is robbing him of a chance to be entertained by a genre that he does?

I don't want to put words into his mouth, but that's the best explanation I can come up with.

I'm not sure this is the case. What are most people using these services for? Are they using them to commute to work? That seems unlikely.

Are they using them to meet friends, go to the bar, go to meetings? That seems more probable.

In the case of meetings, they would likely still have to go. That's work, after all, though some meetings may get cancelled, or be done over the phone/video chat.

In the case of meeting friends and going to the bar/dinner, the situation is probably the same.

In either case, I bet there is a significant portion of people who would decide not to do something if Uber/Lyft didn't make it easy to get to. The comments around this story seem to be ignoring that situation, even though it might be really important to the discussion. It would be good to have some kind of data on this. For me, personally, if I have an optional activity to attend and there is no convenient way to get there, I will often change it or not go.

Raw dough can also be dangerous because of the flour, not just the eggs.

https://www.cdc.gov/features/n...

Flour is not typically processed to kill germs. In the past few months there was a fairly big recall of products from multiple companies due to a possible E. coli contaminated lot from ADM Milling Co.

https://www.fda.gov/safety/rec...
https://www.fda.gov/safety/rec...
https://www.fda.gov/safety/rec...
https://corporate.aldi.us/file...

So, eat raw dough at your own risk, whether it contains eggs or not.

I fully agree that biscuit dough is not so tasty, even if the final product is magic.