All I really hear you saying is these four:

1. money

2. money

3. money

4. money

Not only do they facilitate and encourage posing, the whole reason for "web 2.0" and "social networks" is absolutely nothing but posing on a global scale.

You are of course spot on and everything you said goes double for a Harley. Everyone I know who ever looked at a Harley did so for the "legend" and the noise and definitely not the technology.
Theoretically the e-engine would give this bike some crazy pick-up just like all those e-cars have shown us but of course that does not matter even a tiny little bit for the typical chopper and Harley rider.

You are technically right, the worst kind of being right. You are completely neglecting the multitude of e.g. psychological issues that cause people to eat so much they become morbidly obese.
This is not such a simple issue and oversimplifying it in a condescending way will not help this problem practically all first world countries are facing.

So if I actually buy and wear some overpriced "headset" that has built-in brainwave receptors then companies could be mining my brainwaves? Well hold the presses everyone! Next thing you know there are people who will "hack" into my bank account because I decided to print my login information on a tshirt!!

The main article is a farce. There is no "remote" reading going on against your will, you actually have to wear some useless "headset" and then be exposed to pretty obvious material ("flashing" straight or gay couples or candidates, really??) so "they" can gather all that information. This is akin to monitoring someone's heart rate and pupil response which also requires you to be strapped to certain machinery.

Well and while you are here whining and not making any better suggestions, Seattle went ahead and decided for one of the not-so-great options and they decided employees deserve more rights than big, fat corporations in that case.
You thought these topics are easy to solve and the solutions should be clean cut and perfect? I thought you said you were on both sides of that discussion.

Do not bail out GM and its subsidiaries and daughter companies like a chump like the German government did for Opel. You will get screwed in the worst possible way and GM will still close shop and move east the second they don't need your free guarantees anymore.

This is generally true for EVE as a whole. It has a fantastic game concept, it is a really great game and CCP is one of the few companies actually trying to sell new ideas. Actually playing the game can be extremely dull and much too real and serious for its own good and many actually cool things are happening outside the game with EVE being a platform for the results.

The thing is: you do not need a humanities degree to get a working understanding of the things you are wishing for, though admittedly for some of the STEM "nerds" it might take as long as that but it is not like there aren't just as terrible humanities "nerds" as well.

But unless your humanities studies were focused specifically on communication and not e.g. on history or philosophy, I don't see what "humanities" has to do with improving your communication skills. And with everyone preaching "soft skills", I wonder how many IT or science related degrees worth their student loans don't already offer "soft skills" and "communication" trainings and courses.

You do not need a PhD in linguistics to communicate well, on the contrary it might make matters worse and you will find just as "awkward" humanities majors as you find in "STEM".

If you are trying to do any "networking", which everyone seems to agree is oh-so-necessary these days, from the comfort of your office chair and you yourself have nothing valuable to offer so you have to fall back to easily accessible means like open groups or open profiles on social media then the only people you will meet are others like you who have nothing to offer but who are also trying to claw their way up some social ladder.

Pretty much any form of networking that will actually give you valuable access to influential people is going to be a lot harder to get and will somehow be limited. These people can choose and they don't talk to or share their influence with "nobodies" who got nothing equally valuable to offer but try to get their foot in the proverbial door by stalking on facebook or xing.

I prefer to use my computer for actually DOING something else than spending all that effort on just keeping it running.

There are more than enough examples of ridiculous amounts being spent on not much more than popularity or a whim. Why is it so surprising people are willing to spend a lot on legendary and very rare instruments from several hundreds of years ago?
Maybe our modern-day instruments can hold up to those legends simply because today violin makers are standing on the shoulders of giants like Stradivari? A brand-new violin still costs a fortune and the most famous violin-makers today still select their clients very strictly. You essentially have to apply to even be allowed to pay them all that money.

And without trying to be too "voodoo" about this but as a musician myself, I am wondering just what kind of effect this privilege of playing such a rare instrument could have on the violinist. Maybe part of the "myth" is simply that the feel-good knowledge of playing one of the most legendary instruments out there can slightly improve an artists performance to push it to where "magic" happens?
World-class athletes do all sorts of "magic" to push themselves beyond their limits, to get just a slightly better performance. Why should the same not be true for performing star musicians?

Real world examples: in certain towns in Austria the red-green phases are synced up to the speed limits in such a way that you will continue having "green" when you stay within the limit.

In the Netherlands, speed limits on the freeways are set to prevent traffic jams from building up and people are quite likely to follow the limits because they know they won't get stuck in jams that way.

He was also vegan, made it on Times' cover and was indeed considered charismatic back then.