"I'm just an innocent blonde white girl tricked by that brown guy with a funny foreign name" defense at that. Or, as the SJW might call it, "white girl tears."

I think English and Literature education should be a fundamental part of any curriculum including technical fields. It's a core skill and helps provide a vehicle to expand one's thinking. However, that's different from a full blown English major. For the English major, I think the real crime is that universities are knowingly producing far more English majors than there are realistic jobs for, particularly at the graduate level. Especially for PhD's, there are far too many English majors out there for the extremely limited academic slots available - many end up in adjunct purgatory, taking jobs for which they are far overqualified for (PhD'ed and teaching high school), or end up taking a job in a completely unrelated field. If every single English major who went in knew that the odds were slim but wanted to pursue an education for personal reasons or planned to pivot coming out, that's fine, but I feel like a lot of them don't fully appreciate that academic or literary jobs have the same slim odds as trying to become a movie star or fashion designer. Yet universities keep pumping them out like puppy mills because they need the cheap indentured servants to teach their English courses as well as the sweet tuition money they fleece from them.

Nepotism is very much alive and well in the private sector up and down the management pyramid. It may not be as blatant as the example you gave, but you'll see it if you know what to look for. In small businesses, oh look, the owner's son is in a high management slot. Larger companies, oh, funny how that junior individual got a high level internship has the same last name as a key senior customer. There is plenty of this to a lesser degree - oh, my friend's son is having trouble landing his first job out of college - let me call my buddy in the office who is looking for someone so he can get fast tracked through the HR screening process. It's quite common.

It's not irony - most oil producing nations realized years ago that it probably isn't wise to have an economy based around a single, price volatile resource, and they've all been trying to diversify their economies accordingly. Norway is probably far ahead given that it better managed its oil earnings, but even the big oil players like Saudi Arabia and the UAE have been for years working to try and diversify their economies away from oil.

Not to wax too philosophical, but I always thought we as a species have lost our sense of place and scale, our general sense of wonder as we lost sight of the stars. Cities are filled with people so consumed looking in, even when they look up they are literally blinded to the bigger picture. I grew up in a medium sized city, and even for me, it was a near religious experience the first time I saw an unobstructed night sky, the span of the Milky Way above you in all its glory.

Would add that when that larger energy source is depleted, Earth and humanity will have more pressing questions beyond whether or not I can charge my phone.

I feel like this is one of those "blame EV" for trends that were already well in motion. Even before EV's ever became a real thing, there was a constant pining / bemoaning / waxing nostalgic about manual transmissions being a dying breed as automatic transmissions continued their march especially after paddle shifts become more common. Automobile manufacturers had already relegated manual transmissions into a tiny niche, with offerings limited to the extreme low end trims (you can get manual if you're willing to give up automatic windows and air conditioning!) or extreme high end performance (you may be able to get manual if you sell your kidneys!). Those "real" drivers who wanted the visceral connection to their cars were left behind by uncaring auto manufacturers, etc.

I mean I miss it, I'm one of those drivers who started on a manual transmission only to never be able to buy a manual transmission car again and can only scratch the itch in Europe. Yet this is hardly EV's fault (maybe unless this is in the European context where EV's are replacing ICE cars which most happen to be manual).

Agreed. I think a blanket statement that electrified passenger air travel overreaches. However, I do agree that it will be niche use cases - you have some of those smaller seasonal routes, niche cases, and maybe general aviation situations where it makes sense. However, the battery technology as it stands today isn't power dense to allow for the larger aircraft and longer routes.

How can you staff lacking competency learn and train onsite when your competent ones are not there to help teach them?

Not if there is a large legal liability tied to it - i.e. they will be open to lawsuits if they some how get it wrong. Businesses want stability - they want clear rules of what they have to do especially when it comes to things that could open them up to large number of lawsuits like this.

The $22B is misleading - the contract type, known as an Indefinite Delivery / Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ), is a contract that secures a prenegotiated price within a certain time frame. While I don't know the specifics of this particular contract, other trade articles indicate there might not even be a minimum purchase commitment from the Army. So theoretically, the Army could simply walk away without spending any money, let alone the $22B that's committed. In the industry, they joking call these "hunting licenses" because you don't actually score a sale with it, just a prenegotiated price that you then have to convince the customer to buy.

It should also be noted from the article that the $22B number was negotiated to cover not just the needs for the US military but for any possible number of export partners as well as any aftermarket support. These contracts are designed so that if a foreign ally is interested, they could order through the US military's existing pre-negotiated price through a Foreign Military Sale (FMS) contract. It by no means guarantees any sale. From the article:

So while IVAS may be a boondoggle, no one has actually spent anywhere near that amount yet.

Absolutely, which is why this is a tactic of last resort.

I think one of the key differences is that AirTags have made this extremely easy for people who are less tech savvy. Yes, the technology has existed for a while, but it's not necessarily cheap, technically complex, and not readily available. AirTags, in standard Apple fashion, are incredibly easy to purchase, setup, and deploy. Thus, more people are able to use them. That said, as others noted, AirTags are also super easy to trace, so I think as people realize its an easy way to also get caught, we'll see these instances drop.

Actually in this case, they are employees - the union is for the graduate students who are teaching and research assistants which have become effectively an exploited labor force within universities. Universities have been for years gradually shifting more and more burdens on them: more and larger classes, longer hours, etc. without any significant change in pay. Not surprising that when the political window opened for them to make their move, unions quickly stepped in to mobilize students.

ULA has been working on the transition for a while with the shift to the Vulcan rocket and the Blue Origin BE4 engine. I suppose recent events have only accelerated the schedule.