They could sell the thing, since it's their design (I'd want one for an RV), but they're contractually committed to delivering the first 100,000 to Amazon with options for more. That contract was what got them their financing to build the factory in the first place, so I imagine they're pretty intent on carrying it out.

IIRC the actual ask from Amazon is that the power be from renewable sources, not necessarily solar.

Interestingly Rivian probably wouldn't exist without Amazon. They were having trouble getting financing to build their factories, Tesla was having issues with quality at the time and being utterly unimaginative and risk-adverse the banks wanted nothing to do with a new startup needing hundreds of millions of dollars to build a factory. Then Amazon came along and contracted to buy 100,000 delivery vehicles from them, and the banks relented.

In Maple Valley most of it from Grand Coulee Dam and from the reduction of power usage by more efficient appliances and heating/cooling of buildings, although a goodly amount is from their own generation. IIRC Amazon is the largest non-utility generator of renewable energy there is, with wind farms scattered about and solar installations on the roof of many (perhaps most now) of their million+ square foot fulfillment centers.

The folks doing the deliveries are contractors, it seems to be a pretty good deal for them. Amazon will subsidize their vehicle purchase, and give them access to AWS-based tools for things like HR, accounting, route management, and the like. Whether the contractors take them up on the subsidies and such is entirely up to them, as long as stuff gets delivered correctly. It sounds like the contractor in your area prefers to buy used vehicles and beat the crap out of them, good in the short run but probably more expensive in the long term. (I suspect you're in the southeastern US.)

We get a package every few day for one thing or another, in our area I think I've had one USPS delivery and one UPS delivery in the last three months. Everything else has been Amazon-labeled vehicles, at least one of them a Rivian.

It's been most of three decades since pretty much any company's stock price has had anything to do with reality. It's all speculation, Wall Street has become a casino for the richest gambling addicts on the planet.

If we send starship to retrieve samples, we really need to send it with a small constellation of starlink sats modified to do comm, GPS, processing, etc to mars. Likewise, use the same for the moon, perhaps Venus.

For the last 40 years, china has been at work destroying manufacturing foreign nations (which is a big part of why they are the world's worst polluter of all times).
They are somewhat copying Japan's and S. Korea's approach to their build-ups. Basically, high tariffs, heavy subsidies, then once up to par or better then others, heavy exports after dropping subsidies. The difference is that when China gets to the last part, they continue to subsidize, and the government makes heavy use of controlling the companies exports, manufacturing capabilities, etc. which are then dumped so as to destroy foreign, esp. western, industries. Steel is just one of many.

What is needed is for nations to say enough is enough and to raise strong tariffs or even block ALL imported items from China that are being dumped. For example, nations really should block ALL metals that China is trying to import directly or indirectly. Likewise, I was surprised that Biden was stupid enough to relax the PV imports from Chinese companies that simply moved to Viet Nam and other Asian nations on moderate terms with China. All of that needs to be 100% blocked.
Likewise, the batteries need a growing tariff, and to block them from manufacturing in the west, if not other nations esp with their dirty/corrupt supplies ( most of the child labor issues and low pay comes from Chinese-owned mines; this is why China and Russia are pushing coups in Africa ).

... a new particle. To carry the property of mass across space. And bend space-time to produce the emergent field which we call gravity. One with a very long, but not infinite lifetime. So that its decay across space produces the non uniformity that we observe.

Sorry, but the Higgs boson cannot be responsible for mass directly. It has too short a lifetime to even be directly observable in the LHC. Never mind moving across galaxies or the universe like photons do.

Every change looks like corruption in the eyes of people who don't like it.

And corruption looks like evolution to some people.

Personally, I'm in favor of words meaning as much of the same thing over time as possible. It enhances communication and understanding. If you need a new meaning, you either need a new word or you need to explain yourself at a bit more length. Lest you "decimate" (cough) the listener's/reader's understanding... you get me?

But we shouldn't do anything different about this one then we did with the last.

Yeah. But a unicycle?

... due to someone dumping PFAs in that ocean to begin with, would it?

What part of "No! No! Don't do that!" did they not understand?

You assume that corporations are assigned shares on the same crap servers that consumers are given.

False.