Well, I worked 8 hours a day, 4 days a week for the last year and a half before I retired this past January. I got paid 20% less, but, hey, I was retirement age, anyway. I found that I usually got as much work done as in the five 8 hr days a week I was working before that. Only usually, because there were a couple of times where a push was needed to get something done on a day I was off. It made a big difference in how good I felt about working, much more than I had thought it would.

How many data center back-up generators run on natural gas rather than diesel? Very few, I would estimate. Not that diesel is good for the environment.

A vaunted example often given is CAT-scanning. But it's merely glorified ray-tracing . . .

It's much more than glorified ray-tracing.

Almost any random group of "computer vision" experts of the time with a few mathematicians would come up with a similar solution.

I don't know how many "computer vision" experts there were in the 1960s when it was first invented, but it was a physicist and an engineer that won the Nobel prize for the CAT scan - I'm pretty sure they were well versed in the mathematics required, as much of it had been developed decades earlier.

. . . without patents it could have become cheaper and ubiquitous faster, even if started a few years later.

A CAT scanner installation could cost a million dollars before a single royalty is paid. (Though there is a huge range in price of scanners and costs for preparing the infrastructure for it)

Base-load is all things you keep running unless you have a good reason to turn it off. . . . Otherwise nuclear would not even be base-load, because it can scram at any time.

No. Baseload is the minimum demand in the daily curve. Nuclear generation is not a load.

The phone is much better at making pleasing images than representing reality... but very seldom do you want the picture to represent true reality.

The majority of photos I've taken in my life have been for the job (I've taken a lot of photos at construction sites). And I definitely preferred them to accurately represent reality than to be pleasing images. The switch from using consumer-grade office cameras to "just use your cell phone" has definitely been a detriment to that, even as some of my coworkers seem to think their phone takes better pictures (that were actually just more "pleasing" in my judgement).

Now I'm going to have Simon and Garfunkle in my head all day.

Ah, memories. The summer that song was a hit, I was working in a big photo development and printing lab owned by Fujifilm handling consumer photos of mostly Kodak 126, 110, and 35mm cartridges and rolls. We found it amusing to hear that song repeating on the radio at work all day.

With such a large country, of diverse landscapes and diverse ways of live and diverse ways of thinking, it is best to NOT have all power centralized, one size does NOT fit all.

And our Federal system, especially the presidential elections reflects that...otherwise the entire country would be ruled by just a few states, mostly on the far east coast and west coast...and Texas.

Those people don't know or really care about the needs of someone in Montana or Iowa.

You are conflating limiting the federal government in deference to state and local governments with the effect of rural states' over-representation in the Senate and Electoral college, which is anti-democratic.

Unionized Parcel Smashers

Back in the 80s & 90s we used to send and receive plans & specs by UPS, unless the more expensive FedEx overnight was really needed. Until we received a set of backgrounds (transparent mylar architectural drawings for us to draw the mechanical systems on) with a bunch of creases in them and tire tracks on the package.

It looks to me like they did get the message: "The cuts mostly effect managers and contractors."

How is ending contracts with contractors cutting jobs, or were those contractors actually employees disguised to avoid costs like unemployment?

I'm old enough to remember when pilots carried large brief cases around full of maps and charts and the like.

Those were still in use by major airlines 5 to 10 years ago. And the documents with maps, charts, checklists, and emergency procedures are still in use, they're just located in an electronic document reader, rather than in a flight bag full of 50 lbs of paper.

i will NEVER let a doctor or nurse jab me with a needle ever again

Good luck if you ever need a transfusion, then.

What is you use case for "a load of cards"? I can think one needs a payment card a in some places a train/metro pass.

The commuter rail service I used to take actually started to require a smartphone app for certain tickets, included the discounted day pass and ten-ride tickets. (You can still buy a paper one-way ticket with cash on board, or a monthly at a vending machine or a rare ticket agent)

Both cubicles and open floor plans are about cramming more people into a given area, not increasing productivity.

In my experience, it's more about saving the expense of walls, doors, and separate lighting, HVAC, and fire sprinkler layouts for each private office, plus the ease of wiring and remodeling work. (I've worked on plenty of cubicle offices, new and remodeling)

One example is that to cut costs, Boeing eliminated in house project managers to contracted project managers. https://www.jacobs.com/newsroo... [jacobs.com]

That's a project/construction manager for construction of buildings/facilities, not for manufacturing aircraft. Having been in the consulting engineer side of construction for more than 40 years, I know that it's a very common practice for companies to hire outside entities for project management and construction management when expanding or remodeling their facilities Boeing is an aircraft design and manufacturing company, not a construction expert.

Is this more signaling, like we did in the '80s regarding buying a Japanese car over something made by Ford or GM?

To be fair, the Japanese cars of the 1970s were cheap and high mileage, but not known for good quality, and that reputation carried over into the 1980s (together with a "Buy American" push, fueled in part by high unemployment).