USA's (and many other developed countries) population would be steady or decreasing, were it not for immigration.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/u-s-population-growth-down-immigration-birth-rates-drop-new-n1108816 (old news, but the trend has been holding)

Even 90% of the rain would have had the same effect. Florida's problem is more about the vast numbers of people moving in and living close to the water. All these new communities shed their water, instead of letting it seep into the ground. They might have some retention ponds, but those fill up and flow out when you get any significant amount of rain. They are typically sized to handle a few days worth of the everyday thunderstorm, not the sky tsunami that happened.

Where does it flow to? To those older communities that did not plan on having to deal with all this excess water. Hence the "We weren't in a flood zone" mantra you hear from most of the people who were flooded out. Were it not for the new communities, the old communities would be in much better shape then they are now.

This is a New Yorker article. They're not exactly writing to the tech crowd.

Well, obviously it's not meant to be taken literally. It refers to any manufacturer of dairy products.

“Man – despite his artistic pretensions, his sophistication, and his many accomplishments – owes his existence to a six-inch layer of topsoil and the fact that it rains.”

-- Paul Harvey

IIRC, Solid rocket boosters use ammonium perchlorate mixed with aluminum and various binders. One of the products of combustion is hydrochloric acid. Probably a bunch of other nasty stuff too. It is dirty, but not climate changing dirty.

they feel the space is secured and move on to add more half implemented features to it.

You just described the Microsoft Enterprise business model.

This is true for all -isms

Alumni can be very useful when you get your degree and go out looking for a job. It can open doors not otherwise open.

Of course that does not apply to everyone at the school - frats/sorrorities, clubs, professors also have varying degrees of clout that can place you somewhere that is closed off to the rest of the world.

Note that this is true of all schools, not just fancypants ivy leagues.

Their customers are the banks and credit card companies. You are their product.

To do that, they would have to read the entire article.

Most hydrogen already comes from 'big oil'. The cheapest way to get it is to strip the carbon out of hydrocarbons.

Take the carbon (whatever form, hemp, wood, etc) and bundle it up and bury it in old unused mines. return carbon to the lithosphere.

But what hardware are they using? Can Win98 even work a modern computer?

I guess it is all in a VM like VirtualBox.

IT departments around the world do this -- and disable third party browsers. All in the name of security/