Something about resistance is futile, right? Or is that Borg's law?

I sure hope your answer was, "What the hell are you talking about? I see the moon during the day all the time."

Oh, yeah, I'm not arguing that. You'd think given a few millennia someone would try something besides rock and feather, or any other light object with significant air resistance. It's mystifying how religiously they took Aristotle on all subjects, by the way, not just gravity. Nearly everything wrong with science for the next thousand years can be attributed to him, or a misinterpretation of him.

Math, according to my possibly faulty: Aristotle tutored Alexander the Great, who peaked around 320s BC. The Macedonian era was either the last gasp of Greek superiority or by some accounts post-Greek. Rome was already on the rise, and soon to eclipse it. Greek history definitely goes back another thousand years before that or more, though by 1600 BC I think you're deep into the realm of Homer already.

I'd like to fact-check the number of years between Aristotle and Galileo. That one is off by about 1000 years, says my memory.

And then they bill you $200 for the visit to the address they have no rights to modify.
Possibly they go ahead and break your existing equipment, too.

I wish I could get this. When my local (Charter) calls me, it's always an up-charge of $40 or more. Of course they want to sell me phone AND TV, and pretend like it's such a great deal because, if I pay $40 for the TV, the phone is basically free. I don't want the phone, and I don't want TV for $40. I'd gladly take it for $5, though. No amount of fishing around has gotten me that offer, though.

Zed's dead, baby. Zed's dead.

Because if the phone I currently have seems okay for a year and then turns into a nonfunctional piece of junk, I'm not very likely to buy another one next time?

I used to think I wanted to own everything. Then I moved 20 boxes of books 9 times in 11 years, half of the time not even bothering to unpack. I eventually realized while I've got several hundred books that I value and revisit (good stories, reference, push on my kids when they're old enough, whatever), there's a large majority I'm happy to read once and not again, and also very happy not to have to store/organize/move.

I've been using Pandora recently and very happy with a lot of new suggestions, too. It's been many times more effective than other sources in pointing me at music I've never heard before but really like.

For fine tuning, an interface might be nice, but just in case you overlooked it, I think the thumbs-up/thumbs-down on individual songs as they play does help with tuning.

I don't think that's true. Fully 50% of Silicon Valley job postings are for "XXX Engineer" and most of those are programming positions.

Shouldn't the DIAF acronym work into your analysis somewhere?

This only remotely makes sense if the jobs are interchangeable. You seem to be implying they should fire an H1B programmer and keep the factory worker or middle manager, but unless one of the latter two can step up and do the programming, it's not going to work very well.

At least I'm guessing most of the H1B employees aren't doing middle management or factory work. I could be wrong.

Once you've got an audience it may be doable, but there's still a huge grey area in the beginning where you need to somehow reach the hundred thousand people required to find two thousand people enthusiastic enough about your work to be willing to support you. Patreon makes the business more easily sustainable once you're famous, but it doesn't negate the need to first find a way to become famous.

An email from Amazon, to authors:

The numbers are always a little vague ahead of time. There's a pool of money allotted each month, and that pool is divided among books that are viewed. Originally KDP select was just for lending, but is expanded to include this, now, too. Historically I've seen values around $3+ per loan, often around $3.25. It depends on your pricing and royalty scheme whether this is "good" or not, but at 70% royalties, if you sell your book for around $4.64 or less, this is higher than what you'd make for a straight-up purchase, and if you sell your book for more you're probably "losing" a little money compared to a sale. The thing is, both the lending library and this Kindle Unlimited program basically make the books "free" to the user, so they may be more likely to try something new without the risk of committing money.

I don't think Amazon differentiates royalties based on sales numbers. It's a flat 70% for most books, but 30% for some of the cheapest. (I forget what the cutoff is, but it's easy information to find.)