Tulip bulbs either rot or sprout eventually. In both cases, they lose their value.

If I can't understand them, I abuse them and then hang up.

I had a job once to take a postscript printer/typesetter file and reconstitute the original document. It was a technical dictionary that had accidentally been deleted with no backup. It wasn't that hard, thank goodness. I did the entire job on a UNIX-based PC in AWK. Obscurity can be lucrative. ;)

and the middlemen have taken their cut at each step.

To prove your point just look at the Velocity of Money. It's at a historic low. The money out there (mostly in large corporations - Apple $300 billion in cash) is just pooling. Adjusting interest rates will do nothing except shut down that part of the economy that relied on low interest, like real estate.

Hey Seri who the bleep is ChatGPT? Any relative of yours?

Maybe they were trying to figure out how hot each groin was. An easier way would be to go to a bar and look, but that's just my method.

I've played chess most of my life. How do you cheat at chess? Do you have a mega computer looking over your shoulder and sending you ideas for the next move? How? I think I read the accusation that he had a vibrator in his butt or something ridiculous like that. If he cheated like that when he was 11, he's a genius.

Apparently, all those sharp pencil boys and girls never took econ 101. Look up "elasticity of demand," and you'd discover that there is a sweet spot in pricing that generates the most revenue. Jacking thee prices is a sure way to go bust.

Which is why AOL is out of business.

I was warned for saying that Musk was an idiot. I changed it to dope and they took it.

The promulgators of bitcoin want the central banks to hold crypto currency to give some validation and value to these ephemeral things. Crypto currency have no inherent value. Central bank backed currency has, at least, the faith and support of the issuing government. Millions, perhaps billions, of people know what $1 will buy but what does a bitcoin get you? You can trade it in for dollars with the gullible right now, but tomorrow it might buy nothing.

Back in the 1970's I was fired from a job as a TA/RA for a famous professor. He asked me to harshly critique his main project so that he could better answer critics when he finally published. I did an excellent job and proved that his fundamental assertion was incorrect. About a dozen PhD dissertations an a couple of academic appointments aments went down the tube with the project. I was encouraged to leave the university which I did. I've had little to do with academia since (except a couple of years as an adjunct in an unrelated field).

My Alexa device is sitting in my basement, unplugged.

Does it have a rotary dial?