When a company continues over human generations, it has the capability to effectively become immortal. Allowing it to its core activity at its own pleasure allows it to shift to the most profitable activity. This is a problem when they grow unduly large. Granted, now they often have that capability anyway (or so far in the 21 century), but that is why monopoly laws and legal controls exist.

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Species composed of individuals are successful because each individual is limited in life or scope, and the gene pool of the species benefits from that. Consider if people were immortal - would they give up their possessions and roles? Adam and Eve could own everything on earth for ever, and if they wished, everything could be for their benefit, alone.

I agree with this, but for another reason. Because there are problems with non-serif fonts. For instance for myself, with an unusual first name that starts with I, which regularly gets confused with l (and if you have to think about this, it's because I've typed in two different Latin letters in different cases). So much so, that now when someone tells me that they have sent me an email, and I cannot see it, I know that they typed my name out, because they are probably not capable of copying via the clipboard.

I know it is not in the US as for this story; but there is Stelios Haji-Ioannou, founder of Easyjet and several other 'Easy---' companies, in the UK and Europe. He seems to think that he therefore owns the right to every use of the word 'Easy' in trade names. See https://www.keystonelaw.com/ke... , and also some other more recent lawsuits that he has launched since that article.

But I look forward to the first message blaming the standard bogeyman, i.e. Sadiq Khan, iinstead.

And it's also worth knowing that when the City police wear full ceremonial uniform, they don't wear those high helmets with silver badges like other British police forces, they have gold badges instead to show what they really are about. Donald Trump would love them.

Scotland has water supplied by Scottish Water, which is government owned (by the Scottish Govt), and has no other shareholders. There's a big hint for the UK government there (in this context, to the English government). But no one in the UK government wants to upset private companies who might give them a job when they get kicked out by the voters.

For instance, George Wallace? - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

My old home desktop is from 2013, and it runs KDE pretty much the same as my 'new' (2022) machine.

Prove that it did not.

Agreed, absolutely (... no mod points ...).

Yes, I probably consume more than the average person on the planet. Do I also pay proportionately more? I don't know.

It was first reported long before then, from 2009 according to the wikipedia article. I remember reading about it in https://www.theregister.com/ at about that time, and saw articles in Private Eye not long after.

Indeed!

And what's going to go even further, is if you have 'presence' as well as personality, of the right kind to make your boss look good.

but ... Tulip mania ?

That we have evolved to cope with some pollutants is not a reason to test them further, given that we have little or no resistance to some others. The naturally occurring hydrogen cyanide comes to mind ...

That's because you've not looked far enough, or deep enough. There's monkeys there, somewhere... and humans, and three armed moties too.