They are the plaintiff in this case. They're still stuck in the steam age of media technology and royalty mechanisms. Rulings and concepts from the 50ies and 60ies. Super annoying. You don't want to get pissy with them because they have a de-facto government mandated monopoly on collecting royalties. Quasi a semi private semi official body for that exact purpose.

This really requires a lot of faith. I can't blame people for having some but we're talking about putting all the eggs into one pretty speculative basket. I'd sure like to opt out of being impacted by this, if possible. If that means I "miss out," I am ok with that.

I'm sorry, simply calling this crack-pipe dream of a "project" "poor design" is an epic understatement. A few examples:

- Building the line would eat up 60% of the worlds entire steel production for decades on end.

- The "chandelier stadium" is so l00ny and physically impossible that it might as well be dreamt up and squiggled on a piece of paper with crayons by a 5-year old. Advisors told the deciders this and they still chose to ignore them.

- The basin planned for the cruise ship docks at the west end would clog up due to lack of flow.

- Basic stuff like sewage treatment isn't even considered, as is way to common with these people I have to say. As with this stupid ultra-high sky-scraper, sewage management is/was intended to be done with trucks. Every day 200 trucks line up to empty the sewage tanks of that skycraper, then drive to Bahrain and simply dump the sewage into the ocean where it then get's carried right back to the coast of Dubai to stink up the beaches and that palm-tree island thing.

I could go on and on.

The list of inane and flat-out retarded decisions surrounding this and other projects is endless. These are infantile pipe-dreams by badly educated Arabian dimwitts with too much money on their hands and too many yay-sayers around them who are too greedy to ask them to stop being silly. Everybody with two or more braincells to rub together knew that this wouldn't go that far if at all anywhere. Perhaps the deciders should take things down a few notches because right now they actually _do_ have enough amounts of money to really make a change for large portions of the population in those regions and get themselves independent from oil. Perhaps let some smart people present some realistic ideas?

... with ginormous sun-rich empty spaces of mainland that we could solarize at record speed - as China is doing right now with results as shown - in order to get this fossil-fuel eco-turnaround happening ASAP. Wouldn't that be nice, no?

You should seek a therapist to help with your self-hatred.

Nothing like giving people the runaround until they're exhausted...

HR often has an Orwellian aspect to their communication. They say things in a way that sounds like they are there to help you, but they are really there to gatekeep. Not everyone can have the salary, promotion, office, etc that they want, and HR is there to control those things, and minimize the company's legal problems in doing so. The double-speak and gatekeeping make them incredibly frustrating to deal with.

On top of that they also know a lot of private info, from salary to disciplinary actions to disputes they got involved in, so they're often in a position of quite a lot of leverage.

The sad part is that people believe that they are not paying a 5% premium for that 3% reward.

That's sad indeed, but probably rare. The issue we're facing is that rational people are saying "I'd rather pay a 5% premium to get a 3% kickback, than pay a 5% premium and get 0 kickback." Rewards cards put you into a prisoners' dilemma with other purchasers. Stab 'em in back, and you only get ripped off for 2%. Don't stab (i.e. don't use a rewards card) and you get ripped off for 5%.

Only if you get everyone to cooperate (get nobody to use rewards cards), then the 5% premium goes away. But if anyone defects, the 5% inflated price has to remain because the vendors sure don't want to lose money.

So the only way this is a win for me is if prices globally reduce 2% after this change.

The cards caused the price to be inflated by a lower bound of at least 2%, didn't it? (Though I guess it could theoretically be exactly 2.0%, so you'd only break even.)

Then I'm a fool. It's my foolish belief that whenever you remove an expense and thereby increase a margin, you create a competitive pressure to undercut that margin.

I've been this brand of fool for about 250 years, and I'm not about to wise up now!

That sounds like a good thing for consumers. I currently use a rewards card but I damn well know that everything (whether I use that card or not) is more expensive as a result of rewards cards existing.

Rewards cards are a type of prisoner's game ripoff. If you defect (use a rewards card) you profit at the expense of everyone who doesn't also defect and use a card like that, but if everybody got the kickback then obviously the total amount of kickbacks will always be less than or equal to the total amount that merchants collect through increased prices. TANSTAAFL.

If this is the death blow to rewards cards, then everyone wins. Let's hope!

... are way more stupid and/or pointless and more expensive I'd say exploring space should be one of our global scientific priorities. Perhaps even more so than yet another collider for even smaller sub-atoms or yet another Tokamak that goes nowhere. I'd perhaps even make that a new sort of quasi-religion, since the benefits from work on this is likely only to pay out when todays generations are no more.

As for saving this planet and keeping it livable for humans: We can do both and then thousands of other things on top of that at the same time. And we should absolutely do all that while we still have an advanced scientific high culture.

... just as I have never written for Google Search. I've always written for humans. If an AI and/or a crawler wants to read that, I'm totally fine with that. If it doesn't, then that's OK too. By and large I couldn't care less.

... to become a Bladerunner? I sooo what that cool coat, gun and one of those flying police cars. Awesome!

And can I have an Ana de Armas clone in flesh an blood? OMG that would be so awesome. ... She'd have to be engineered to find me irresistible of course, but that should be a problem, or?

Ooooh, I'm so excited!

You do have a point but you're story is too long to keep the attention of many.