Seriously, please.

There is no need to believe in a phone-slowing conspiracy, just like there was no need to believe that Google or Apple was tracking users and saving location data, and there was no need to believe that Google was sniffing and storing unencrypted wifi traffic wherever its street view cars went, and there was no need to believe that government was saving all of our emails...

Sure. Tell me another good one.

I do the same thing. I let whatever wants to grow, grow, so long as it doesn't mind being no taller than about 4 inches. We have all kinds of strange things living in our yard that I am positive would not be there if we had your typical toxic waste pit of an American yard.

We're also in the woods, and I make no effort to remove felled trees (except to remove trees that are threatening falling on the house), allowing them instead to decompose on the floor of the woods like they are supposed to.

What is alarming to me is the presence of several invasive species. We have asian giant hornets, land planariums (which are ***seriously*** bad things to have), and other asian insects that presumably hopped rides in shipping containers from the far east.

These invasive species have no natural predators and their populations are soaring. We had a tree fall this summer in a period of heavy rain, and the root ball was just infested with planariums. These things compete with earthworms for resources, but do not excrete anything useful into the soil, so areas that get infested with them cannot grow flora very well, and trees can die.

Goes to show you don't necessarily have to get someone for what you want to get them for to have the same outcome.

It's really all about appearances. If an employee leaves and then wants to come back as a contractor right away, it creates the appearance of impropriety. For example, let's say you are being audited and you tell the IRS that you cannot participate in the Audit because your computer crashed two days after receiving the audit letter. The appearance there is that you received the letter and then destroyed incriminating evidence.

The IRS does not like this one bit, and takes such maneuvers seriously. Anything that an entity or person does that seems suspicious will be assumed to be criminal, especially the "convenient" loss or destruction of evidence.

This has only to do with labor laws and how contractors can be reclassified as regular employees under certain circumstances. For example, an employee cannot "quit" and then come back right away as a contractor to make more money. The IRS does not like this, because most of the time it is done by employees with extraordinarily long commutes or other ways to take huge deductions from their gross.

It also prevents companies firing employees only to hire them back as contractors to avoid paying benefits and FICA taxes.

Microsoft is only making sure they do not run afoul of labor laws. Because, you know, in its zeal to "protect" workers, the government would be all too happy to fine Microsoft millions of dollars and then not give a dime of the fine money to affected workers.

It's 106 miles, not 100.

I get hijack letters from them all the goddamn time. I have about a dozen domains and I constantly get "expiration" notices that are really transfer authorizations in the fine print. It's sleazy and deceitful, and they deserve to be shut down.

I can't imagine how many suckers fall for it and end up paying $40 or more for domain registration... does DRA even allow outbound transfers?

Um, no. Congress created the Department of Commerce and delegated all of its authority to regulate commerce back to the White House.

So, the US Government is trying to capitalize politically on its effort to "save the environment" by removing tariffs it only imposed on Chinese solar panels LAST MONTH?

I see what they did, there.

In 2005, I installed soft-start digital dimmer light switches throughout my house. Since then I have not had an incandescent bulb fail.

If one ever does, I will replace it with another. I still have a couple of cases of pre-ban assault light bulbs in my garage.