If there were only 17 deaths out of 400,000 infections. Than, apologies, we need to nuke China off the map. Because the ONLY way that could actually occur is if the China had in fact genetically engineered the virus to target specific genetic markers not commonly found in Chinese ethnicities.

I really do not believe China is able to do such, and am much more likely to believe that China, as seems to be the case with many other totalitarian regimes is reporting false metrics. Occum's razor...

I agree, there is something in how they cut the trailer that just really doesn't do it for me. And I think it is the fact that the characters just did not seem to display any chemistry and endearment to one another.

I was also highly disappointed with the casting of Perrin Aybera. One of the rare times we have a role casting a very stocky character, and once again...they cast a thin man who doesn't even look like he could wield a large hammer.

An engineer would also realize that Google's headquarters location would cease to be a determinate cost of employee factor as they could hire new workers cheaper outside of the area.

And one also has to understand that in order to work from home, us workers are now dedicating a room or portion of a room in OUR homes as a cubicle/work area. We pay the utilities. We have had to buy all the additional office equipment (monitors, printers, CHAIRS that can be sat in for an 8 hour day) and the utilities (electric, heat, etc) and maintenance (cleaning, vacuuming, etc). These are ALL areas in which corporations are saving money by the costs being shifted to the remote employees.

If they are going to cut the pay, are they going to provide a workspace - extra monitors? a desk? a professional grade chair? etc? ALL things I had to dish out $$$ for when COVID hit.

So here you have people working from home, potentially reducing commuting costs. So what do corporations seek to do, profit off of it. Meanwhile, as corporations relinquish leases on commercial buildings saving millions on office rental costs, utility bills, cleaning services, etc. And that burden switches to their employees who must now dedicate a portion of their home toward office space and handle all the utility and maintenance costs. The corporate culture is, lets profit off of this...

I think ALL remote Google employees should decide that if Google enacts the policy, they all logon, but do not do any work until the policy is changed.

Half of people loved 3D and half hate it. It all depends on the feel of it upon the eyes. Additionally, the quality of the content being a big influence as well.

But one of the major reasons 3DTVs failed was because of how content was marketed. A new movie would get released to DVD/Blu-Ray. In theory, the 3D versions were priced $5-$10 more than the standard versions. However, in practice, this was far from the case. The 3D versions would see a $5-$15 markup on the MSRP. However, few of us were purchasing Blu-Rays at their MSRP prices of $29-$35. Usually, they would be priced around $15-$25, and sometimes even cheaper with sales. The problem was, the 3D versions were rarely included. Owners of 3DTVs often found themselves faced with the conundrum of a new Blu-Ray being $15 while the 3D version would remain priced at $29-$45, 2x-3x more expensive. Many chose to not buy either.

On the digital side of things, the digital editions rarely included 3D versions, very few 3D movies were made available by providers like Xfinity or Netflix, and the whole promise of sports in 3D never really manifested. So when you have a feature that only appealed to half of purchasers, and content costs that were triple. It was doomed to fail.

Audiobooks have a similar problem. Go to Walmart, a Blu-Ray runs between $5-$25, with most being $15 and under. A new CD runs between $5-$15. Go to Audible.com and look at audiobook prices. They range from $25 and up, want to listen to Stephen King's "The Stand", that'll cost you $63. Here's the thing, an audiobook is essentially a narrator reading a story, and can be recorded by a single individual in a home studio. Unlike a music album, you are unlikely to repeatedly listen to an audiobook. That album you can get for $5, entailed an artist or band (1-5+ people), 1-2 studio engineers, a graphic designer, and likely several others involved in it's production (versus one individual in a small home studio). The Blu-Ray you picked up for $12, which you may watch a few extra times with visiting friends entailed dozens if not hundreds of actors, director, cameramen, editors, graphic designers, make-up artists, stylists, seamstresses, stunt crews, and potentially thousands more. When you evaluate the market value pricing of audiobooks to albums and films, you see a mark-up that is essentially akin to pricing a Kia Sorento ($24K) on par with Tesla Model X "Plaid" edition ($114K)

Our surface navy is extremely vulnerable and in a "Great Conflict" will be completely wiped out in the first few weeks of open warfare. The railgun offered a number of advantages.

- long endurance at sea due to no need to refuel and re-supply, (you could have a nuclear powered submarine equipped with a couple rail guns surface, fire volleys at a target, and then re-submerge never needing to come into port.

- missiles can be shot down, while the technology is at its infancy, the next war will push that extremely quickly. One thing that was always commented about the Iowa class main guns is that those slugs don't just get shot down. Railguns being an extremely fast solid projectile would have a similar benefit, at best one could deflect it off course but would not simply explode like a missile

- Railgun equipped vessels could be designed for increased survivability. Not only are the slugs used by railguns not prone to explosions. Ships could be designed to store sheets of slug blanks molded into the hull superstructure to add protection to crew and sensitive equipment areas. Essentially, the ammunition could be stored in a way in which the ship would take a sheet and machine to finished form. Not only reducing resupply needs, but while the sheets are in place they would functionally provide added armor. Before a missile impact reaches crew quarters it would first have to penetrate the ships hull. Then penetrate the stored sheets of slugs. Potentially saving lives, and protecting the drive and control systems.

The railgun offered a future-forward path. It sounds like the navy is just going to go with status quo, and do what the navy has ALWAYS done. Fight the last war.... build battleships when carriers were the future. And now, we build $8 billion carriers that will be sunk in the first week of war.

Gee, VW, that's only $5,500 for my annual commute, or $460/month. That on top of what will likely be a $1,200 auto loan payment. And then there is the fuel costs.

The irony, I was just thinking about the iBuz electric VW Bus, and how I thought it was supposed to debut next year and wondering if it was on schedule. Guess I am scratching that one off my interest list.

I just went thru this with a friend on Facebook, and showed that the average adult lifespan increased by about 6 or so years. The real change was in the reduction of child and infant mortality rates. If someone survived their youth and reached adulthood, they basically lived nearly as long as we do today minus about 1/2 a decade.

This is well understood, and yet, article after article keeps trying to portray the image that most people in the past died at 40 years of age. Patently false, many lives into their 70's, 80's, and beyond.

Can we STOP with this!

VAERS is a HORRIBLE EXAMPLE to use...

I do not even consider it scientific data. It is fundamentally flawed in how it collects data. I am pro-vaccine, but very anti-VAERS.

The reported data is a small subset of actual incidents. A large portion of doctors refuse to report potential vaccine incidents - even when those incidents entail known and medically documented reactions. Believing that vaccine reactions are uncommon, they will dismiss reactions offhand. Second, there is a conflict of interest, as doctors are administering the vaccines. So the VAERS database is largely useless.

This is BAD, for a number of reasons.

> First off all, the dubious unscientific nature of VAERS database empowers those who are opposed to vaccines.

> Second, it impedes the usefulness in catching manufacturing defects. (And can we be honest here? ALL manufacturing processes have bad batches. I used to work for a company that manufactured chemical testing standards. One time we had multiple reports of a bad batch. After we re-tested multiple times, and had our material independently tested, we were able to show that the actual NIST standard was off. It happens.) We want to ensure that if a particular batch has a higher than average number of negative reactions that we can be alerted, quickly pull that batch of vaccines, and assay them to ensure they were made to spec.

> Third, the current implementation has no way to detect unknowns. See the hypothetical situation below.

SCENARIO: A new vaccine is released. After a year or so, the internet starts to see a large number of mothers claiming the vaccine is making their kids bones brittle, citing incidents of their kids having broken bones shortly thereafter. The internet community basically rebuts that kids break bones, nothing new their, and anecdotal evidence does not make for a valid argument. CBS Morning News does a report on it, and conduct a study with a few dozen kids testing bone density before and after vaccination, concluding absolutely that there was no difference in bone density and that the vaccine was NOT causing kid's bones to become brittle.

Let's review two data collection methods...

CURRENT SYSTEM
VAERS - Almost no incidents reported. Doctors know that it is ridiculous that a vaccine would cause kids bones to become brittle, therefore very few have submitted reports. [Right now, pretty much all pro-vaccine folks like myself are nodding their head that this is the correct way. YOU ARE WRONG]

ALTERNATIVE SYSTEM
Collect ALL Data & Mine It - New system requires ALL incidents of any nature that occur within 96 hours after receiving a vaccination to be reported. And any serious incidents within 2 weeks of vaccination to be reported - regardless of the nature of the incident (fever, breathing episode, broken bones, rashes, ANYTHING)

In the current system, using the VAERS data, the above scenario would report back that there is no issue with the vaccine. However, with a truly scientific method applied, in which all incidents are collected and recorded and then reviewed. The data mining showed an increase in excess of 50% in the occurrence of broken bones in children who had received the new vaccine.

This leads one doctor to conduct a small study on the vaccine. He is an ear, nose, and throat doctor. He postulates and theory, and after conducting a study with 40 children affirms his speculation. The vaccine is causing the body to produce a slight increase of fluids in the inner ear. This results in affecting one's balance and coordination. It turns out that the vaccine was NEVER making children's bones brittle, rather it was impeding their ability to balance, resulting in an increase of accidents while doing routine recreational activities like bicycling, skate boarding, etc.

The end result of this, is that the FDA issues new guidance in regards to the vaccine advising doctors to inform vaccine recipients that the vaccine may impair balance and to avoid any activities which require dexterity to avoid injury. The result far less children suffer injuries, the anti-vaccine rhetoric for the given vaccine declines, and science wins twice.

The current VAERS system, would NEVER catch the above scenario because it is NOT scientific in its approach. It violates the scientific method in pre-filtering data collection based upon the pre-supposed bias of the reporters. "Bad Science" gives "True Science" a BAD name...

- Jason

Kind of laughing at the news about the hedge funds that went bankrupt shorting Game Stop, only to have the gamers game the hedge funds at their own game. Buying up Game Stop stock driving the share price up so that when the shorts came due, the hedge funds owed millions.

Like, um, Game Stop's customers are entirely gamers who spend hours upon hours perfecting and honing their skills to beat puzzles. And the hedge funds are shocked that when they took actions that hurt these gamer's beloved retail chain, that the gamers figured out how to win.

***

Hedge Fund: "Let's short the stock, promote the business' pending failure to drive the stock down, profit on it. Then we can turn around and use those profits to buy the company cheap post bankruptcy. Strip it of it's value, screw it's long term employees over, and then sell it for a hefty profit."

Gamers: "F-U. Hey team, massive multiplayer co-op game against rival faction. Everyone join in and let's take these bass-turds down!"

Hedge Fund: "What do you mean we just went insolvent? Isn't their a government regulation that protects us from having done to us what we do to other companies? What do you mean there isn't one? Well call up all the politicians I have donated to and have them pass a regulation now!"

Should those be shut down too? Do we sacrifice our tools of free speech in exchange for a win?

And are we dumb enough to think that this will not be done to us as well?

Uber/Lyft
- use own vehicle
- work your own hours
- choose your own routes

Sounds like a contractor to me. Government sues.

Government Contractors
- have to use our equipment
- have to be at our site
- have to work when we tell you too

Sounds like an employee to me. Government does jack-$|-|

You paint them with a coating similar to stealth craft. Light and radar absorbent matte black coating.

Been saying this for years...

Also, in regards to trim commonly sold at Home Depot. There is cheap pine, more expensive hardwood, foam trim (often with the faux wood pattern), and PVC trim. The latter tends to be fairly durable and weather resistant. I cannot tell which is used. But if it is the more solid PVC then I would not be concerned. Consider for a moment that the majority of homes built today use vinyl siding far thinner. If it is the soft foam type, commonly used on mobile homes, etc. Then there may be cause for concern. But it may be minimal.