There's a lovely collective facepalm right now as Virgin Gin isn't allowed to be called Gin anymore because the regulations governing alcohol say to be called Gin it has to have certain ingredients in it.

That might or might not be fucking stupid depending on what Virgin Gin is and what those required ingredients are. As an example, I'd think that most people would find it quite reasonable to require that anything called "gin" would have to have juniper berries as an ingredient.

What if a somewhat lanky fugitive broke into my car and glued the accelerator to the floor as a side quest on his mission to get the band back together and save the old Catholic school?

Yes, that mean that nowadays, "advanced users" means "know how to read".

Alas, knowing how to read isn't enough now, if it ever was. All too many computer lusers (not misspelled) are aliterate and won't bother to read any warnings that accompany those links. To paraphrase an old saying, you can show a person all the warnings you want, but you can't make them read them.

And I don't want Google having complete control over search either. Which is why all my searching is done with non-Google search pages.

I agree with everything in your post except for that. My search engine is startpage.com, which acts as a proxy between me and Google so that it has no way of knowing who made which query.

Old school - a note under the door, at least when they make the bed and provide fresh towels.

Not everybody is going to notice a note slipped under the door or bother to look at it. Much better would be hanging the notes from the room's doorknob, similar to the Do Not Disturb signs. If you make them the right size, they cover up the place where you use your keycard to unlock the door so that you can't even get into your room without at least looking at the notice and there's no plausible way to claim that you thought it was spam.

I've written about this before, but it bears repeating. My father worked for several supermarket chains as a department manager. I don't mean that he ran the delicatessen for one market, he was the delicatessen supervisor for the entire chain. He told me once that if a market was doing very, very well, it would have a net profit margin of 2%. Now imagine what all of those CC fees are doing to that.

I like that old time rock and roll That kind of music really soothes my soul

And where were you The Day the Music Died?

Remember, I did specify lakes as a place where a ship would need a pilot.

The pilot will have to take into account calm areas and avoid those as well, but satellite weather forecasting makes that possible now.

In nautical terms, a pilot is a specialist in navigating through a harbor, lake, river or other difficult passage, and is not a regular member of any ship's crew. You have the right idea, but the proper job title is "navigator."

That's going far past anything I would know; I'm software, not hardware and it was a long time ago. All I remember is that there were a pair of uprights that helped hold the chip up and it went from the motherboard almost to the top of the case.

This reminds me of something that was done back in the (I think) 90s for one of the Pentium chips. Instead of it lying flat on the motherboard it had all of its connectors along one edge and stood upright on that edge in a special mount that kept it upright so that all of it was exposed to the air and didn't need a heat sink or special fan. Yes, it had its drawbacks, mostly that it couldn't be used in a laptop and needed a tall case, but it worked and worked well. I know, because I used one for several years back then and only replaced it to upgrade.

Amazon wants to sell products, third party companies rely on selling their products via amazon. Now you doesn't want you to buy products through them if it's via another app?

Tell me you've never been a landlord, without telling me you've never been a landlord.

Landlords LOVE chargers. They attract higher-income renters with better credit ratings, especially if they're at the high end of power output. I installed at least one and sometimes two Autel 50A chargers at all 28 of my rental properties three years ago and have been steadily able to cycle out to higher-paying, lower credit risk tenants.

So, you won't even consider an EV because you insist on being the one who blocks your mailbox?

That makes sense.

You have to be careful talking to anti-union MAGAts. To them, "communism" isn't an economic system. It just means "any system of government, economics, or religion we don't like." It doesn't matter to them what China actually is. It only matters that it's not "freedom" or whatever it is MAGAts think they're supporting (because it definitely isn't freedom). Probably Jesus. China doesn't like Jesus, so therefore they're COMMUNISTS!