My dad knew someone who was on a few medications and regularly watched the Fox tabloid. The guy seemed always upset/concerned/whatever. My dad told him to stop watching the tabloid.

A few months later the two were talking and the guy had stopped taking most of his meds (except the one or two he needed) and he felt much more relax. Less stressed.

When your goal is to "engage" people, whatever it takes is the rule. Stir the pot. Get people riled up.

Why allow both fuel switches to be shut off at this point?

Fire? From my perspecitve (non-technical, non-aeornautical) you should not want something like this to be locked down. You should always allow for something unexpected to occur which would necessitate moving these switches in all circumstances. Locking them down would seem to deprive the pilot/co-pilot the ability to react to a situation.

The legislation in the E.U. takes exactly my stance, even if you don't like the analogy.

I mean, the way things are currently going, it appears they will in fact be stopped in Ukraine.

Oh, you meant *voluntarily* stop? Nevermind then.

Carbon dioxide is a red herring here, completely insignificant compared to the other environmental costs of burning coal, let alone all the other costs of manufacturing solar panels in a country with no effective environmental regulations at all. Just China's terrible mining practices, for example, do more environmental harm in a single year, than all the carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels in the entire history of China, possibly in the entire history of the world. And then you have what they're doing to their water and air.

Are solar panels made in China still a net win for the environment? I don't know, honestly. But I do know, if you're only looking at the CO2, you aren't even a little bit serious about enviornmental impact, you're just mindlessly virtue signaling your partisan politics.

Eh. In practice, what you really need to know here is that this disease isn't realistically ever going to be an epidemic in the modern developed world, *even* if it develops a strain that is 100% resistant to all antibiotics (which thus far hasn't quite happened). The conditions for massive spreading just aren't there. It was a large problem in the medieval world, but conditions were very different then. The plague doesn't normally spread from person-to-person directly, in the manner of something like an influenza or a coronavirus. I'm not saying that can't ever happen at all, but it's far too unusual to ever result in any kind of epidemic. To have a bubonic plague epidemic, you have to have a completely out-of-control population of intermediate carriers (principally, rodents) living in close proximity to the human population, and a lot of biting insects (principally, fleas) that routinely prey on both. We're talking full-on Monty-Python-and-the-Holy-Grail levels of societal poverty here, people laying down in straw beds because that's what's available, dealing with flea bites by scratching, grain stored in burlap sacks, rats everywhere, mice everywhere, the whole nine yards. If you clean up your society and control the vermin, ipso facto, the plague is mostly contained and hardly spreads at all.

Sure, it's not completely extinct. But it doesn't need to be, because it doesn't spread that readily. You're five thousand times more likely to be killed by a drunk driver, than to be infected by the plague bacterium. (This is assuming you live in America; yes, I looked up the actual numbers.) And most people who do get infected, don't die, because it's treatable these days, because, you know, modern medicine and stuff.

Cholera, similarly, is not an epidemic threat if you have anything resembling modern sewage treatment. So you can cross that one off your panic-immediately-if-there-is-one-case list as well.

The one that would be all kinds of scary if it ever got loose in the human population again, is smallpox. That thing spreads almost as readily as influenza, and most countries haven't vaccinated for it in decades. In America, routine vaccination was stopped more than fifty years ago, so most of the population, has not been vaccinated. We do *have* quite effective vaccines for it, but in the event of an epidemic, I doubt whether we could ramp up production fast enough, to keep up with the terrifying rate at which smallpox spreads. The one notable piece of good news is, it doesn't mutate much, so once any given patient is vaccinated against smallpox, they won't need the vaccine again. Booster shots not required, thank God. If that weren't the case, we'd probably still be losing a double-digit percentage of the human population to it every generation or so.

Eh. I do really question the wisdom of including Cubans in this. Venezuelans, despite the undeniably genuine nature of their need to get out of Venezuela, are a sudden surge, a large numeric increase within the last few years, and that has significantly contributed to the disruption and the problematic nature of the current situation in America. Haitians, as a group (albeit, perhaps not every person individually), have made their own problems at home. Nicaraguans, I don't really know their situation, so I can't really comment on their inclusion. But Cubans have been trickling into America to more or less the same extent for more than half a century; they're victims of international communism that was *not* home grown in Cuba and is ultimately not really their fault at all, individually or collectively; and they are (as a group) pretty consistently good workers, reasonably innovative (not in a high-tech sense necessarily, but I mean in economic terms: they find ways to contribute positively to society); they're overall a net gain for the US economy, have been for decades; and most of them are generally law-abiding. They also have a pretty good naturalization rate, and a reasonable integration rate (meaning, they don't just keep to themselves as a closed-off isolated community; they interact with the rest of society, pretty extensively, albeit mostly within certain geographical areas). Maybe I'm missing something, but I really don't see how involving them in this whole mess is a good idea.

You're suggesting it's mostly good for making deepfake prawn? That would be a good reason to shut it all down from my perspective.

A data center is technically infrastructure. When the AI hype blows over, I guess there'll be lots of cheap computing to be had for a few years. Plus the electricity grid infrastructure they have to add to support it will still be available for other uses, like rebuilding manufacturing? Let's hope.

In that price range, there's also a significant amount of vetting, to keep out hoi polloi (and, in locations where there are a lot of celebrities, paparazzi). You're paying partly for exclusivity.

> Is there actually any benefit to the experience

Presumably these are the sorts of exclusive restaurants that cater to the wealthy and celebrities, where you need a reservation in order to get in at all. (Otherwise, they'd have no way to predict who is going to arrive, in order to research them in advance.) The benefit, presumably, would be keeping out hoi polloi and, probably more important, paparazzi.

It seems a bit creepy, but the further you go back in history, the more everyone in town knows all your business. Walking into a restaurant and knowing the names of everyone in there, and the waitress knowing how you like your food cooked used to be the norm. This is just a matter of perspective.

One of the reasons The Bear is such a great show is because it pretty accurately represents a lot of the struggles restaurants, that are trying to be excellent, go through to give their diners a great experience. I won't post spoilers, but there are a few notable examples from this season that I can think of.

It should also be noted that the cast of the show were all trained in culinary arts to some degree for the show, and a few of the cast members are actual professional chefs and/or restaurateurs.

When I read "Unreasonable Hospitality" by Will Guidara, I could see a lot of the principles and ideas implemented in the show, and at some of the restaurants I have visited, including Eleven Madison Park (both pre and post vegan), which Will was instrumental in turning into a world class restaurant.

And really, that's all these restaurants are doing - trying to elevate the experience they can offer above and beyond the food, because, to be candid, Michelin has given out too many stars in the Bay Area, and there are too many restaurants competing at that level. In my opinion, a city should have no more than one Michelin-starred restaurant per million residents. Last year, Michelin handed out new stars to TEN, count 'em, TEN restaurants in California, and now there are 85 starred restaurants in the state, concentrated in the LA and Bay areas.

Just within the San Francisco city limits, there are 28 Michelin starred restaurants, and 50 in the Bay Area - a total of 5 for every million residents of the SF-SJ-Oakland CSA. It's a little ridiculous.

The whole point of the Michelin Star is that it's supposed to be hard to get, and set you apart from the rest of the crowd. It loses its meaning when they will throw one into your car if you drive around San Fran with your window down for too long.

Sorry, but a restaurant still has no business checking my social media.

They want to see if you're a dick or annoying or a whiner or anything else which might interfere with their restaurant ambiance.

Would you want someone who posts how often they get drunk at restaurants at a place which charges $500/meal?

But as the article also relates, they want to tailor your experience with them. If they see you've announced you're on a diet, they won't suggest the high fat stuff but instead something they think might be more appropriate based on your postings. Or maybe you mentioned how you would like to try XYZ, but never had the chance. Guess who will give you that chance.

For places like this, it's all about personal service and making sure your stay is comfortable.