It's true, they had a shortage of shadow puppets, the early form of Netflix.

I wish more would choose Jainism over Islam and Christianity. Many crave some kind of religion, and if such people picked the more peaceful religions there would be fewer busybodies trying to force their beliefs on others.

can the researchers really say with confidence that the civilization would still be with us today?

Nobody claimed it would otherwise still be around. You are putting words in their mouths. It only solved, or at least partly solves a mystery. Usually declines of ancient cities can be traced to invaders, civil war, damaged soil, plagues, etc. This one had no known comparable cause.

Is it possible the smoke & soot from the city changed the local weather?

They have to wine and dine a few gov't officials before that step.

They found out somebody accidentally installed Boeing bolts.

The inability of people to clear student loans with bankruptcy generally, was a fantastic gift by legislators to universities and lenders who otherwise needed to actually evaluate loan risk.

US Federal Debt in 1995 was about 65% of the GDP. Plus, the US was looking at a booming (fake) dot.com economy and expecting to reap the benefits of significantly reduced defense spending due to the end of the cold war.
Yes, when you're flush with cash (and helps being a Democrat) it's easy to promise $ for anything and everything.

In 2020 it's 132%.
1/4-1/5 of the US budget ANNUALLY is borrowed.
We *can't fucking afford to buy everyone lunch any more*.
https://www.investopedia.com/u...

It's ironic that Biden's comment "lines up to Ukraine" as oyu say, when largely the problem today is his Boss's/Clinton's meddling in Ukraine (ie about as critical a Russian sphere of influence as it gets), toppling Putin's puppet, and then doing FUCK ALL in 2014 when Putin boldly invaded Crimea (because Mr Obama was desperate to have RU support for his pointless, unenforceable treaty with Iran as a way to ensure Mr Obama's historical "legacy").

Just to maybe jog your memory a bit: Mr OBAMA was the first that told the lazy ass free riding Euros that they need to start paying their way. Not Mr Trump.

https://www.france24.com/en/20...

Mr Trump was merely "classless" enough to HOLD EU economies to their promises of years before. HOW GAUCHE!

Thought you might have forgotten that bit.

Another thing is China kind of "herds" factory workers in a way the US cannot. For example, they limit housing options near factory towns so the space can be dedicated to factories, large-scale NIMBY-ism. If a company folds, workers' temporary mini-housing makes it logistically easier to move to a new town, but it's hard on families.

Thus, biz owners have a kind of de-facto slave class that's relatively easy to shift around as needed.

This is also a form of subsidizing industry. China has managed to combine capitalism and communism in ways that give it an advantage, or at least keep it a manufacturing superpower.

As mentioned elsewhere, spreadsheets are probably the wrong tool for the for that particular job. Just because one can make a giant sheet in a spreadsheet tool doesn't mean they should. It won't have sufficient indexes to quickly do JOINs or equivalent, for example. Nor proper caching of a data, having more of a file-centric design.

For one, if a handful of work-groups need Excel, that's not a reason for the rest of the company to use Excel. Most Excel uses will be mundane things. They can allow justifiable exceptions.

but the financial staff know Excel and they know it very, very well.

Software tools/frameworks I knew well were ordered tossed because the vendor or support structure faded. It happens. Why are financial people given that latitude when almost nobody else is? Change is annoying and creates a learning curve, but inevitable in the work-place. I knew cases where employees quit over frustration over replacement-ware, but management said "we are doing it anyhow, live or leave" (paraphrased).

And I'm surprised there are not products dedicated to big org financial analysis. There might be, but "we don't wanna learn something new" lobbying may be stopping it.

Excel probably has other scaling problems they didn't mention in the article but just learned work-arounds, yet they are likely stretching Excel to its limits risking more problems, familiarity or not. Oracle Essbase allegedly is a big-org financial modelling tool. I don't like Oracle the company, but Essbase & competitors may be a better tool for that particular job. See what other big orgs use.

Let me guess ... the wells were in "schools" and "hospitals" ... right under the rocket launchers, lol

Well gee; that just totally obviates my point, lol

which matches their brain-cell count