Ugh. Acrobat actually craps itself on forms now. The check boxes keep disappearing during scrolling, and I have the latest reader.

"The amount of raw materials used is significantly higher meaning the ecological impact is greater."

It isn't and that's also not how it works

No they did not. This story is about how they didn't. Learn to read, coward.

This isn't about a trademark. It's about a patented specification.

This is true. And the Republicans are the party of Nazis.

It's also a way to get around the prohibition on setting different prices for SNAP recipients. For example you can buy over the net from Costco with SNAP on Instacart but not directly. And the prices are higher there than on their site.

No. This is nonsense. Nuclear fuel production has a massive ecological impact. Nuclear only looks good when compared to coal. Stop doing that.

Seems to depend on location. In my home city in Europe, it was 3-4 times a day, even shortly after the war.

Numbers mean nothing once enough inflation is involved. But back in those same days, a mailman could support a family on his salary. Not a luxury life for sure, but enough to rent a place and put food on the table. Women working was still a somewhat new thing.

Yes, this stuff is moving digital as well. At different speeds in different countries.

Gyre is a more official name for the Pacific Garbage patch, as there are presumably few kids in it

Not really IMO, moderation is broken by design at best

I don't see a rash of bans, but I do see the same abusers of moderation given all the mod points they can use every day.

You can thank student loans for that. Earlier generations got their schooling subsidized, but now people have to get loans to pay for it themselves instead. Colleges therefore could raise tuition. Then a bipartisan effort in Congress was launched to make sure we couldn't discharge those loans through bankruptcy like you can gambling or other personal debts, which was led by Joseph R Biden. I think we know how that turned out, forgiveness for a few of the worst abused players, and blaming inability to keep his campaign promises related to partial forgiveness for all buyers blamed on Congress while he went around them to fund genocide in Gaza.

And we all know that won't happen.

The thing with fines is that all the people ACTIVELY involved have interests that don't align with the public and taxpayers.

The shops are ok with fines if they happen rarely and in manageable amounts. Then they can just factor them in as costs of doing business.

The inspectors need occasional fines to justify their existance. So, counter-intuitively, they have absolutely no interest in the businesses they inspect to actually be compliant. Just compliant enough that the non-compliance doesn't make more headlines than their fines. So they'll come now and then, but not so often that the business actually feels pressured into changing things.

You misunderstand wealth.

Most wealth of the filthy rich is in assets. Musk OWNS stuff that is worth X billions. That doesn't mean he as 140 mio. in cash sitting in his bottom drawer.

Moreoever, much of the spending the filthy rich do is done on debt. They put up their wealth as a collateral and buy stuff with other people's (the banks) money. There's some tax trickery with this the exact details I forgot about.

So yes, coughing up $140 mio. is at least a nuissance, even if on paper it's a rounding error.

The actual story that got buried is that the filthy rich are now in full-blown "I rule the world" mode when their reaction to a fee is not "sorry, we fucked up, won't happen again", but "let's get rid of those rules, they bother me".