Technically they can't ban them but they can't throw you in prison for using one. And they can throw people in prison for running them of course.

This is the ultra wealthy and the ruling elite moving the take over the last form of media where regular people can access information without their consent.

But hey, the girl who hands you your coffee says Merry Christmas now so that's a fair trade right?

And if you don't understand what that means that's the problem.

Actually he tried and partly failed because it was only partly legal.

That might not stop him from trying, and unless Congress or the courts rein him in, it won't stop him from doing it. As I pointed out above, in this case it's unclear that anyone would have standing to sue (not taxpayers; it wouldn't be tax money -- maybe nVidia or China, but they like the deal), so stopping him would probably require Congress to act. And what are the odds that the Republican Congress would grow a spine?

"Not be possible" is too strong.

It's clearly possible unless Congress or the courts prevent it, even though it is clearly illegal. But Trump is doing lots of things that are clearly illegal, which is why the courts keep issuing injunctions to stop him (and then SCOTUS keeps staying the injunctions to let him go ahead and do it anyway, at least for a while). In a sane world, the fact that an action is illegal would be a stronger constraint because the president would have to be concerned that Congress would impeach and convict him, and he would have to be concerned about potential criminal liability. In the world that exists, the GOP leadership in Congress refuses to do their job to rein in the executive, and SCOTUS has declared the president above the law so there are few practical limitations on his power.

So far, the only thing that seems to really make Trump back off is when the stock market crashes.

Nevertheless, a slush fund of several billion dollars per year that the president is truly able to spend with complete discretion would be a significant additional increase in power because it's not clear that anyone would have standing to sue, so courts could not intervene regardless of constitutionality. Congress would be able to intervene, of course, but, again, the GOP-led Congress has almost completely abdicated. I had to add "almost" only because they actually did stand up to him on the Epstein files (sort of; the bill left Pam Bondi with near-total freedom to withhold anything she wants, not legally, but practically).

No, Trump is more secretive than most other presidents. You're confusing "unfiltered and disorganized" with "transparent". I do have to grant that he's incredibly transparent about his corruption. Well, maybe. He has been transparently corrupt in lots of ways, but it still seems likely that there's more corruption which he's keeping hidden.

Thanks, but even looking at the full context and with that definition, I'm missing the joke. So why haven't the moderators rated it Funny already?

I think it might even be more errors in Excel than 1/5th, but I'll go with your cite.

I like a nice spreadsheet - I use them for design applications in electronics. But some of the stuff I've seen bean counters and a few others always evoke the "Hold on a second, something's not right here!" response.

But many people believe that if it is in Excel, it is correct.

You mad bro? You never heard "A fool and his Money are soon parted?

I apologize profusely for introducing humor into a place with humorless people. May you always have to use software you hate.

I tried it once ugh - not ready fro prime time. One of my guys seems to love it, he must have a really low bar. I have people on Windows, Mac and Linux. And Microsoft has no solution for that. Unless things have changed a lot, Windows office doesn't do well when trading files. I remember when people were making posters in Poerpoint, the files they made were on a Windows machine, and PowerPoint assumed that was the size print to use. When we changed it to our large format printer on the Macs, it exploded, nothing was where it was supposed to be. Colors wrong, images distorted. Finding where the text disappears to was a game of "Where's Waldo"

True but even sports cards traditionally they are given player in a given years, TOPS or whoever printed however many Babe Ruth cards they thought they might sell in his rookie year, and later when he turned out to be a sensation, people wanted those early issued cards.

Pikachu as far as I know is ageless, and Nintendo can decide to issue more of any given card, there are no real rules that anyone would slam as a rug pull or be able to reasonably say - well the 're-issue' isn't worth anything they there would be if one of the Base Ball card companies decided to print more TreyYesavage 2025 season cards, in 2032.

I have to disagree regarding the human cloning. However I think it is being hidden quite carefully because it is illegal.

Having said that, I think the most interesting clone candidate would actually be John Henry. I'm sure there are some gene samples available since he didn't die until 2007.

Pretty sure "gyre" is intended as a joke, but websearch failed me [just] now. Care to clarify the joke?

The "future shape" I was thinking of actually involved smartphone-enhanced clothing. Still don't understand why no one (that I know of) is making clothing with suitable adaptations for smartphones. Also shower proof pouches for people who worry about missing a message when they are in the shower...

Then there is absolutely zero problem. The falsely accused are of no importance, mere collateral damage in reshaping society.

We are blessed to see that false accusations hardly exist, and when it happens, it is inconsequential.

Except perhaps to the person whose life is destroyed.

Your post reminds me of a local Dentist who was accused of Rape of one of his patients. He was utterly destroyed. She claimed he sedated her, took her to her home and raped her.

He went on trial, and as it turned out, they were having a consensual affair. What happened was they were caught by her husband, so to avoid issues, she claimed rape. The trial was just providing proof of the ongoing affair, and how her story did not add up - like the drugs the Dentist presumably used wouldn't render her unconscious (as well is immediately waking up when her husband found them. Took only an hour, and he was found not guilty.

Meanwhile, the local womanist. crowd went haywire. They either refused to believe it, or the best one - that if they found him not guilty of rape, than the millions of women who were, would not report it. So pretty obvious that lying, destroying a man's career, and if convicted getting 25 years was of no consequence at all.

The same thing has happened to sports teams, one of my favorites was a young lady who had a three way with a couple football players, she was caught and claimed they raped her. Destroyed their lives, even after it was found that she lied. Just a blip on the radar screen of importance.

IOW false reports are irrelevant to justice.

You do know there are many other forms of employment that are not as you call them, corporate indoctrination.

I'm the CEO of a Charitable 501C3() (3) corporation that served the public good. Am I indoctrinated - you made a blanket statement.

I also work for an institution that is involved with a lot of money. I kind of assume you are extreme far left, if not, you might consider not having your posts imply that you are a Marxist/Leninist. Whatevs.

But here is the problem. There can be people who want to do social good, and don't care at all about post graduation compensation. Give them three meals and a place to sleep, they are okay. There are also people who are concerned with renumeration. I personally don't need the money I am paid now, I already have sufficient resources. But I'm not going to refuse pay. I have a skillset that is worth money. I'm just so curious how I fit into your rigid worldview. I'm the same person when I'm doing the charitable work as I am when working for money. I even use a not insignificant mouth of my money in support of that charity.

Here's the earth shattering part possibly. There is room for everyone. The altruistic self sacrificing types, and those who are not as altruistic, and might be chasing money, in many cases to support their families and insure an estate for their offspring.

I know a wide spectrum of people, there is a wide spectrum of good and evil in each group. I know some well to do corporate types who are the kindest people you'd ever meet. I know some real assholles too. On the other hand the same applies with people considered wonderful because they are helping others. Some are nice, and some hate anyone that makes more money than them, especially those indoctrinated corporate people. Assholes are everywhere.

I much prefer judging a person by the contents of their mind and their personality, rather than your presumed social position metric, where a person's goodness is inversley proportional to their paycheck. But you do you, homie.

We were actively hiding the cost of college by giving colleges direct Cash subsidies from state and federal governments. They were passing those cash subsidies onto the students in the form of lower tuition. I do not know how much simpler I can explain this to you.

If you look at the actual operating expenses of colleges they have not increased substantially in the last 40 years. You will find some increases because there is more technology. Yes 70 years ago colleges did not need computers or advanced medical equipment to train doctors on. They also didn't need staff to keep all those computers and all that equipment running. So there is some increase due to do technology.

But that increase is relatively small. And can easily be accounted for by the new technology.

Meanwhile all of those subsidies are gone.

Suppose what we should have done is when you went to college we should have handed you a check and had you walk it to the finance office so that you would understand what the cost of college actually was instead of hiding that from you.

The reason we didn't do that is we were fighting a war with people who pretended to be socialists. So you needed to get socialism because that made America stronger country that could actually stand up to those enemies but we didn't want you to get comfortable with socialism so we hid socialism from you.

We did the same thing with the housing market where trillions of dollars were spent on infrastructure to subsidize baby boomer houses so that they could actually afford to buy houses. We also heavily subsidized the loans they got for those houses.

But if you really want to piss off somebody over 50 try explaining to them that they received a massive amount of benefit from socialism.

Everything is a grift. Capitalism is breaking down, or rather it's being broken down by monopolies and billionaires. So people have to try to find money any way they can and since you can't do it the traditional way of competing in a free market, because there is no free market anymore, you have to try to grift your way to a living.

So NFTs but even dumber because we now have an asset that isn't unique, is only rare in context, and probably lacks any meaningful anti-counterfeit controls etc.

Every time it appears Gen-Z has a solid lead in race to be dumbest generation, the now middle aged Millennials groan and say hold on there youngin hold my beer!

To which Gen-Z replies, eww you still drink that stuff.