Nitpick: Cinco de Mayo is not a Mexican holiday. It commemorates a rather obscure event in Mexico's history, and most Mexicans do not celebrate it, and have probably never even heard of it. It is celebrated in the USA much more so than in Mexico, and is really more of an American "Chicano Pride" holiday than a Mexican one.

Since Cesar Chavez was a native-born American citizen, and most Mexicans have never heard of him, I am not sure what your point is.

Yes. What is wrong is that you deleted important context and qualifiers.

Critique is always warranted, because improvement is always possible. But it is important to keep some perspective. It is silly to compare any modern western democracy to the Nazi's, to call every transgression an "historic low." As an America, I have to honestly admit that Things are Pretty Okay.

Advertising in the US is about 2% of GDP. In most other OECD countries it is even lower. In developing countries it is generally less than 1%. Would care to explain where you got the "25%" figure?

The money spent on advertising would only turn into "wealth" if you consider the things it supports (newspapers, sports, radio/TV broadcasts, reporters, free email, search engines, etc.) to be worthless.

Please learn to read. The GPP said exactly that.

Do you understand how computers work? Google needs to read your email in order to generate the webpage that displays it. If you don't want Google to read your email, then don't use their service . Google is providing a free service, and they are quite open about why they offer it and what the conditions are. So it is indeed childish to whine about it, especially since there are plenty of alternatives where you can pay the cost directly in cash.

No one here hates them for "doing it," but some hate them for "patenting it." I don't even hate them for that. I don't hate Amazon at all. Amazon is just doing what any big company in a similar situation would do: try to patent everything and see what goes through. My "hate" is reserved for the USPTO. They supposed to be acting in the interest of the citizens. By allowing garbage patents like this, they are stifling competition and making our economy less efficient.

In a 2007 ruling the Supreme Court said these sorts of "combination patents" are not valid. So I can't see how the USPTO can justify continuing to issue them.

Newspapers implemented it a few centuries ago. If you subscribe to a newspaper, it is delivered to your door, and you get a discount off the newsstand price. You can also vary the schedule. For instance you can get it delivered everyday, or just on Sunday.

Google Translate is better than nothing, and much better than it was a few years ago, but is still no where near the level of a human translator. Go to a website written in Russian or Chinese, and translate it into English. You will likely be able to get the gist of it, but the grammar will be atrocious, and there will be some glaring (and often hilarious) errors.

I don't want, them, but I am willing to accept them because I am an adult, and I know that there is no Santa Claus. Corporations don't provide services out of the goodness of their heart. The ads pay for the "free" email, and also help pay for Google's research into autonomous vehicles, improved search technology, etc. So I accept them, occasionally click on them, and sometimes even buy something.

Expecting something for nothing is being childish. Grow up.

Why do you think the shipping company cares? The security cameras on our loading dock recorded a UPS driver tossing boxes out of the back of his truck, and dropping about eight feet onto concrete. The contents were severely damaged. When we showed the video to a UPS manager, the driver was just shifted to a different route. Apparently they can't just fire unionized employees, especially Teamsters.

Indeed. Background checks take five minutes, and an interview can take an hour or more. So you do that background check before you waste time scheduling an interview. I would never interview someone without googling them first. I also like to check Linkedin, and see if they already know someone in our company, or someone I may know in another company.

I have been involved in hiring hundreds of people, at several different companies, and I have found that idiosyncratic hiring practices rarely help. It is much better to follow the KISS principle:

1. Screen the resumes and pick the top 10%
2. Email them and set up a phone call.
3. Chat for a few minutes, and if you like them, set up a face-to-face interview.
4. If you like them at the interview, and they can demonstrate competence, then offer them a job at the end of the interview.

I have worked for companies that did much more elaborate interviewing, including multiple interviews, lunch meetings, etc. We seldom changed our opinions after the first interview, it was time consuming, and the candidate pool was shrinking as the best people were accepting jobs elsewhere.

You can break into the banks too. Just find the sites without the brute force blocks, find an id/pw that works, and then try the same id/pw at the bank. Most people (including my wife) will use an id/pw at some game site run by a teenager, and then use the exact same id/pw at financial institutions. Security is only as good as the weakest link.