The drivers will brick chips which have not violated any IP laws.

Anyone is legally free to use any USB product / vendor ID they want.

Where you violate the standard is by using an unassigned (or not assigned to you) ID and slapping a USB logo on the device.

The killer drivers are not able to see if the chip is mislabeled or if the device is inappropriately using the USB logo. In other words the drivers can kill 100% non-counterfeit, 100% legal devices.

Why, do you have research to indicate that mental toughness is such an important factor, and that amateur high school kids have more of it than professional runners ?

amateur high school kids who are raised in a culture which, from birth, will punish them for outwardly showing any sign of weakness or intolerance for pain.

Do you understand just how severe their passage-to-adulthood rituals are?

What's truly amazing is how people try so hard to find any excuse to deny the genetic evidence. "Eugenics deniers" are far worse than "climate change deniers" in that the scientific evidence for eugenics is far greater than even that for anthropomorphic global warming.

It was nice of you to completely ignore the argument for "mental toughness" AKA "I had my penis mutilated as a grown-ass man and would have lost everything had I shown any sign of discomfort during the process".

If you've never competed in serious athletics (where there are a thousand people younger, stronger, and hungry waiting for you to fail so they can take your job) breathing down your neck you might not understand just how important a skill swallowing pain is.

Imagine having enough money to buy a small aircraft (and time to get a license to fly it) OR a new luxury car, but not really feeling rich enough to justify buying both

Except for the fact this car has the performance characteristics not of a private jet, but of a $40,000 used Cessna with half the seats removed and rocks in one of the fuel tanks. Anybody who can afford this can afford a comparable fixed-wing aircraft easily.

Are you dense or are you intentionally conflating the concept of mean time to failure with guaranteed (minimum) lifetime.

How is 'pride' anything more than a word we give to this emotional drive to maintain status?

It appears to me that you're nitpicking on the word GPP used for being overly broad, for not digging deep enough, though you dismiss it with a quite broad wave.

Hardly.

How is pride anything else than a costly signal that you're virile enough?

From an evolutionary perspective that would be very meaningful.

War is mate competition carried out by other means. There is no other rational for it (war is always economically irrational, although this is not generally understood because it "just makes sense" to so many people that war is somehow a good idea.)

You speak in bold assertive tones about studies and ideas (including kin selection) as if they were established truths.

You claim there is no other rational reason for war, while there is an entire rich field of study on the possible motivations for war amongst humans.

For example it was Ernest Becker who (if not developed at least) popularized the (widely held today) believe that humans war for reasons chimpanzees can't. That (and I'm going to grossly oversimplify here) our death-denial systems rely on an outsider, rely on an enemy, and if one looks past the economic value of many wars (and yes war is often economically rational too) what one will find is a clash of death-denial stories.

And, yea, let's get onto that untruth - that war is somehow always economically irrational. Seizing buffer lands, trade routes, ports, or natural resources is hardly irrational.

Wow, you kids with your high uids.

This kettle is calling your pot out. I'm a noob.

Show me a city where the (wild and domestic) animal biomass approaches double-digit percentages of the human biomass.

not like the wild animals and fish don't piss and shit into our water

The wild animals don't tend to piss and shit birth control hormones and other still quite bioactive medications.

This.

The subsidies for fossil fuels by first-world western nations (and China) (those in a position to fund green energy technologies) are a small percentage of the total. Most fossil fuel subsidies are done by oil producing nations as a form of population pacification. The idea that these funds are available for redirection is ludicrous.

ty

in some cases they're no better than gambling (ie: buy tokens to feed into this jackpot like system to win a random digital item!)

Not that I disagree with you, but what part of the gaming industry isn't preying off of exactly the same neurons as gambling? Nearly every game, be you buying the game itself, in-game purchases, or DLC, is getting its revenue almost entirely due to exploiting pleasure-seeking behavior.

Again, as was pointed out by someone else to (one of) you, AC, I made no assertive claims which needed a citation. I can hardly be charged with "I'm right even though I did the exact same thing." Such false equivalence is a cheap crutch.