"so I'm guessing they're crime statistics are roughly in line with ours. ..but I mean for like petty theft like this."

There's an issue across the UK where thugs and drug users will target shops selling 'high' value groceries e.g. large chocolate bars or strong alcoholic drinks.

The criminals will threaten to use violence against any member of staff who intervenes in the theft.

They'll then walk the goods round to a dodgy shop willing to buy them, and so have that as a source of income for buying drugs.

It's an absolute shitshow, and the UK police aren't able to cope with it. Part of the problem is that each crime is small, so that even if you catch someone in the act of stealing one thing from a shop, the culprit would be unlikely to receive a prison sentence from it. The police need to be able to acquire evidence of a pattern of theft, possibly across multiple shops, by a single person.

I'm not sure I would go as far as saying I support the plan, but it also doesn't seem out of scale with the problem being faced by shopkeepers.

Deserves all the credit for the theory, but the discovery was the work of hundreds.

Well, Boeing is going to find out what the market thinks.

If a significant number of people will pay extra to avoid flying on Boeing, then that's going to make airline companies want to avoid buying Boeing.

And if airline companies also see the value of an aging Boeing fleet depreciate noticeable faster than an Airbus fleet, then it's going to make selling Boeing planes at a profit to be more difficult.

I'd always assumed that it was to eventually lead on to battery driven military vehicles.

I mean, those exist now, but only as little buggies and dirt bikes. Not great big heavy things.

Operator of the launch vehicle pays - they're the one directly requiring the ATC support - and it's up to them how they pass any costs downstream to their customers. The operator with the most competetive overll option - which, at least nine times out of ten, will be the bottom line - wins.

That's how the free market the US adores is supposed to work, yes? This seems like a pretty good way of levelling the playing field, as long as everyone is on the same charge sheet - no exceptions.

There was a sequel a few years ago and it stunk.... you not knowing just underscores the point.

Keep in mind it doesn't need to be a viable shipping route for the entire year, just long enough to get the cable onto the sea bed at a depth that won't freeze solid and potentially damage the cable. if you're making multiple landfalls then you wouldn't even have to lay the entire cable in one go if time is a concern; you could use the landing stations to splice on the next length prior to laying it once the ice cap has melted again the following spring/summer. It's still very expensive, yes, but for lucrative latency critical stuff like high frequency trading, since when has a high up-front cost been a concern?

That said, I totally agree with the sentiment that this kind of opportunity is one that, all things considered, might be better if it were not even potentially on the table.

"Now" would be the best era to simulate if that is somehow integral to the reason the simulation is being run in the first place. To use one contemporary example of a problem, perhaps the developers are facing a climate disaster and are running billions of AI simulations to figure out a strategy to both get the population onboard with the eventual plan and figure viable out technical solutions. Or maybe they're trying to solve multiple problems in the same world and we're all just AI bots in a glorified ChatGPT. A less specific example might be that they are just trying to solve the Fermi Paradox through simulating how countless civilization models develop and deal with - or fail to deal with - various existential threats.

Alternatively, what's to say this is the only era being simulated? Maybe "reality" is just one option in an MMORPG version of "Westworld", where players get to pick different eras with their own challenges and quests to undertake, and nearly everyone is just an NPC bots spun up in to populate "Early 21st Century" world? That would certainly explain why some people seem to be as dumb as rocks and/or stuck on repeat... :-)

Keep in mind that if you are in such a simulation, then you'd have no way of knowing when in your history (or "backstory") those behind the model hit "Run", or how many iterations of the model you've already been through before they hit "Reset".

And the link to Tucson.com, mentioning the idea of the potential law, is dated Jan 15th 2024...

Still, dates can be faked, although I suspect this is just someone using a most likely dead-in-the-water idea to add a bit more credence to the gag. Look at the bill though; Title 41, Chapter 4.1, Section 41-860.0. That's either a huge clue, a huge coincidence, or someone in the Arizona State Legislate is wearing a huge grin today.

So is this something we should start doing in the US, arresting people for libel?

Sure, there is a civil liability in the US but for this woman it's become a criminal matter.

The US military burns as much fuel each year as Portugal, but nobody is clamoring to get rid of this waste and expense.

Not necessarily. He's clearly dodging around some kind of issue with posting the NYC bond, other the quite reasonable not wanting to tie up cash or liquidate assets he probably won't be able to recover if he should prevail on appeal, because it doesn't all need to come from one place, or bond provider. He can use a combination of cash, stocks, and other assets, spread across multiple bond providers to get to the total. That almost certainly results in a higher total amount lost in fees, but it's better than nothing. The DWAC stock could be used as collateral, to be returned as stock if he prevails, and only used to make up a shortfall of anything else he can use - cash, stocks, assets, whatever, with other bond providers to get to the total.

Besides, DWAC is mostly financed by Trump backers and a lot of the stock will probably be sold to other true believers. Anyone else buying in at IPO is almost certainly hoping the price will immediately spike so they can quickly bail and make a truck load of cash while leaving someone else holding the bag, just like any other IPO. Given that, Trump could only hold one share, and the chances are still pretty reasonable that if he said "Jump!" most of the board and the stockholders are going to ask "How high?"

Of course it's a grift; many of the backers of DWAC are also quite vocal Trump supporters, and the prospective market for this IPO - and potential bagholders if/when it all goes south - is almost certainly the MAGA crowd, and especially Truth Social users. The over valuation is quite likely driven in part by that backing of Trump and in part that the hope that general population of the MAGA movement will somehow be tapped for a steady stream of actual cash, rather than the over-inflated paper value of the stock, and that's where the profit comes from even if the stock listing drops into the pinksheets before they can dump it. I guess you could also see this as a way to indirectly support his current political aspirations and even help with the mounting legal bills too.

Interesting point on the later bit. Apparently, DWAC shareholders cannot divest shares until at least six months after the IPO, unless there's an exemption. Trump will own more than half the stock and needs a lot of cash to appeal the NYC court ruling much sooner than that. There's a theory I saw that Trump can't use his properties as a bond for the appeal because the issuing insurer(s) would want an independant valuation, which would then be shared with the court - essentially not only confirming his guilt if he has indeed over-inflated their value, but by exactly how much. Cashing out a lot of his Truth Social stock ASAP would get him out of that problem, so watch this space on that exemption. If granted, that'll tell you all you need to know about how above board all this is, assuming the ticker isn't already enough for you.

String theory is not falsifiable, which makes it a lousy theory.