There are obviously many reasons why Spotify and other industries definitely don't want you to think clearly! If you want to call it a conspiracy, that is accurate. A conspiracy to distract, prevent clear thought, prevent the forming of deep social bonds, and of course spend money unwisely. Like was said in the summary, Spotify's goal is to get you to waste your time.

Have you asked yourself why this is so?

What if you listen to podcasts? What if you're not afraid to be alone with your thoughts, or meditate in quiet? Why does life have to have a soundtrack? What did people do who in the 19th century when they had to walk for days without a steady supply of algorithmic music? What would happen if you contributed meaningful statements instead of rhetorical, mindless questions?

Would have to say no. Trump sees everything as a zero sum game.

Apparently good conversation, thinking, and occasional good music don't mean anything to that person which is a sad commentary on where we are today as society.

Seems that years ago the courts ruled that CC companies' demands that retailers hide CC fees in their prices to all customers were illegal, and retailers can and should charge a separate fee depending on the credit card's fee level. In my opinion prices should reflect the cash price and then at the till, the buyer pays the entire CC fee. I'm sure the CC companies don't make it easy for a retailer to find out what the fee is before the transaction is run, though, which needs to change.

I use a credit card to make business purchases and most of the business vendors I buy from do implement variable fees, and have for years. For my card with the highest fee, I typically get charged around 3%. The reasons for using a CC card with high fees is that its a way of getting a bit of tax-free travel out of the business. In the US the IRS ruled years ago such rewards are not taxable. In other jurisdictions they certainly can be.

Of course for personal CC cards the rewards wouldn't make a lot of sense when you, the buyer, pay for them! It's quite a racket these companies have had going for a long time.

Wouldn't call this bloat. More of a bug that is unreported: I seem to be the only one experiencing it! This has been happening to me for at least six months. I probably should run it under X11 for a few weeks and see if that behaves better. I suspect it will somehow.

I stick with Firefox because of uBlock origin, and also because I can still manage to force the UI with CSS to look somewhat closer to the way I want it to.

No it is off topic. Not sure why what happened in 1979 to a different aircraft applies to this incident.

The preliminary reports coming out now don't support your assertions at all, particularly the bit about retracting the the slats stalling the wing. The plane did not climb because ultimately 2 of the 3 engines failed.

Firefox does not competely freeze for me but it does very frequently start to get laggy and consume 100% CPU. Even with just a couple of tabs. I have to restart Firefox pretty much every day. I've gone into the CPU profiler and it seems to be something in the glib event loop that is spinning. I'm also wondering if the Wayland back end is part of it.

They don't have to actually secure anything, though. All they have to do is stand around and look intimidating. And maybe arrest the occasional voter and demand proof of citizenship. Make you feel like a criminal when you dare to vote. These deployments are not about security. They are about reminding people who's in charge and discouraging voting among certain demographics.

Meanwhile I feel really bad for the national guard troops. Many of them know they are being deployed dishonestly. They are being taken away from their jobs and their families half way across the country to do nothing of any real value to the country. I've read the morale of deployed members in the DC area is very low.

Life imitates art I guess. Aunty Wainwright did this back in the 80s in her shop on Last of the summer wine. Although her method was a bit more hands on and personable.

No Samsung ad-displaying fridges? That's good news.

Trump was not elected by the majority of Americans. He won at most 50% of the vote. Turnout was 63% of registered voters. And registered voters is approximately 75% of eligible US citizens. All told that means at most 25% of Americans voted for him. That's still shocking of course. But now you can see why the GOP is all about making voting as difficult as possible so that a mere 25% of the country can continue to force their will on the rest.

My brother likes to say Star Trek also has a lot to answer for. TNGs ubiquitous touch screens are now a widespread infection in nearly all devices today including refrigerators, washing machines, and unfortunately automobiles. No one thought to ask "but is this actually a good idea?". Also Star Trek's talking computer with a conversational interface is now becoming mainstream with llms.

The big three hardly make any cars anymore. It's all SUVs, crossovers, and trucks.