Been a while since I've flown a budget airline. On the normal flights I've taken, there's always a few people (usually older people) with paper boarding passes.

For an additional fee.

THAT, I believe, is the main part of this change. Ryan Air already doesn't even break even on the pure ticket cost. It's the horrendous extra fees that make it profitable.

Which cost, exactly?

We are speaking about paper boarding passes the customers themselves print. The gates read the barcode and don't care if it's on paper or a phone screen.

So which cost, exactly?

That's putting it mildly.

Smartphones can crash, run out of battery or any number of problems. On important trips I usually have a paper boarding pass with me as a backup. Only needed it once, but I'm just one person with fairly normal travel amounts. Multiplied over the number of people flying Ryan Air, statistically speaking this happens constantly.

Frankly speaking, I think it's a gimmick to milk the customers for more money. Someone at Ryan Air has certainly done the calculation, estimated how many people can't access their boarding pass at the gate for whatever reason, and how much additional money they can make by forcing all these people to pay the additional fee for having it printed.

Mostly true but not entirely. For the moment at least there are still applications such as airplanes where fossil fuels have no reasonable alternative. But yes, a large number of things that we currently power by burning long-dead dinosaurs could just as well work with other sources of energy.

And yeah, I think the whole world looks at the Middle East and is thinking: If you all so much want to kill each other, why don't we just step back and let you?

Some born with golden spoon in mouth boy is learning the expensive way that no, money can NOT buy everything. The laws of physics don't care how rich you are or how much money you throw at them. :-)

Obviously, sooner or later we will want to do things that require our physical presence. And be it because the ping time to Mars really, really sucks.

Robots are way easier to engineer for space than humans, even though space is so unforgiving that that's not trivial, either. The same is true for other planets. Building a robot that works well in 0.2g or 5g is an engineering challenge but doable even with today's tech. Humans... not so much.

But let's be honest here: We want to go out there. The same way humans have found their way to the most remote places and most isolated islands on planet Earth, expansion is deeply within our nature.

So, robots for exploration to prepare for more detailed human exploration to prepare for human expansion.

And maybe, along the way we can solve the problem that any spaceship fast and big enough to achieve acceptable interplanetary travel times (let's not even talk about interstellar) with useful payloads is also a weapon of mass destruction on a scale that makes nukes seem like firecrackers.

Has What If? already done a segment on "what happens is SpaceX's Starship slams into Earth at 0.1c" ?

Won't happen, at least not with my books.

There is a reason writing the last one took two years. Many of its passages have very carefully considered wordings. Intentional ambiguities. Alliterations. Words chosen because the other term for the same thing is too similar to another thing that occurs in the same paragraph. Names picked with intention, by the sound of them (harsher or softer, for example).

I've used AI extensively in many fields. Including translations. It's pretty good for normal texts like newspaper articles or Wikipedia or something. But for a book, where the emotional impact of things matter, where you can't just substitute one words for a synonym and get the same effect - no, I don't think so.

This is one area where even I with a general positive attitude to AI want a human translator with whom I can discuss these things and where I can get a feeling of "did she understand this part of the book and why it's described this way?".

China calling Elon. Come in, Elon! :)

It's weird how the Pedophile Trash always want to argue the definition. Sex trafficking of minors means pedophilia, you disgusting subhuman worthless kidraper.

REPUBLICANS demanded the date, and Trump promised to veto the law without it. Shut up and shoot yourself you Lying Treasonous America Hating Klan Shitbag Retardican.

This is false, you Lying Klan Fuckface. REPUBLICANS insisted on the timer and Trump promised to veto unless the timer was in the law. This is very clear from the record, just as clear as the fact that every one of you America-Hating Retarded Repukelikan Klan Shitbags is incapable of honesty.

The Pro-Lie Nazi Republicans are incapable of being honest. It's that simple. Every one of them is a disgusting, inhuman malignant sociopath.

If they want to win, the people need to see and experience the true impact of the laws passed by the Republicans.

That has been happening. More importantly, people need to see that Democrats are willing to stand up and fight rather than just rolling over for every nasty thing the Republicans are doing.

The Democrats are just terrible at strategy. Really, really bad.

In the sense that the elder Democratic Party leadership kept trying to play by the rules while the Republicans proved they are dishonest sociopathic fucks incapable of fair and honest behavior, you are correct. What we are seeing right now is that the younger Democratic leadership are taking charge and not playing along with Republican dishonesty any more. And again, part of the Democratic Party regaining support is proving by action that they are willing to fight.

Add to that, government shutdowns are just stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid. The laws have already been passed, and now we just have to write the check to pay for what was already done. And trying to use it as a tool to force Republicans - many of whom would be happy if the government were shutdown forever - to negotiate? Not going to work.

Democrats negotiated and the party consensus is that Schumer "caved" last March during the prior budget negotiations. And what happened right after March? Republicans promptly RENEGED ON THE AGREEMENTS anyways, first canceling many promised policy votes and then using "rescission" to remove approved funding from various programs. The Republicans proved that they cannot be trusted.

So now the Democrats are actually fighting. And they're making it clear that this time, they're not just going to cave. And the proof that it's actually working? Look at Tuesday's election results.

EVERY open governor's race went Democrat, and not only that, all three beat the polling predictions by a pretty big margin.

California voted to redistrict and say "Fuck Texas" by an almost 2/3 majority.

Pennsylvania retained all 3 Democratic supreme court members by double-digit margins.

Dear Retarded MAGA Fuckwit and Likely Pedophile:

Why aren't the victims naming the people who victimized them? Because they are scared for their safety since many of the offenders are in powerful positions, like Treasonous Pedophilic Sack of Criminal Shit Donald Judas Trump.

Oh, and BTW, was Epstein accused of pedophilia? The official charges were: sex trafficking of minors and conspiracy to commit sex trafficking of minors. Read that again and again until you understand it, you Dishonest Fucking Lying Pedophile.