The fools who manage the forests in California have moved on from previous disasters of management:
- First, clear cut to harvest profits
- Second, allow the forest to grow back with an unhealthy dense overgrowth
- Third, thin the overgrowth by "prescribed burning" which damages the forest, the environment, the water and, of course, human health.

In my area we fortunately haven't had any natural forest fires for a few years but we have dense smoke every year from the idiots burning the forest.

The obvious solution is manual thinning then chipping to mulch which improves forest health, avoids burning, retains soil moisture and lowers forest temperature and cannot support a wildfire.

You don't own anything.
Everything belongs to the man. Your manual labor, your thoughts, your actions.
Welcome to the tech oligarchy.

Interesting that they were using human moderation but now feel that their AI is good enough (cheap enough) to do the job.
I take that this is just more enshitification.

... after abandoning thousands of miles of useless track.

There is a growing body of evidence which shows that microplastics are literally everywhere in our environment and are infiltrating all living things.
Lots of evidence to humans... Alzheimer's, cancer, metabolic disorders.
Unfortunately, the plastics industry is fighting back to protect their profits. There was recently an attempt to control plastic pollution with an international treaty but this was effectively sabotaged by the industry.
Isn't capitalism great?

I don't think shipping is a "core competency".
Most retailers outsource shipping to UPS, USPS, FedEx, etc.
Amazon ships via these carriers and is developing it's own logistics in high density areas.
Still not a core competency... try something like marketing, pricing, product selection, etc.

That's why most solar installations in California now have batteries so they can store solar PV energy and avoid buying or selling from the grid.

The US electric grid is based on large generating plants connected by long distance transmission lines. This was the only feasible way to set up the grid when all you had were large generators.
However, with the rise of solar (home and commercial) and battery storage, it is possible to organize the grid as a network of small distributed generators. This reduces the need for long distance transmission and makes the grid more resilient since there are many more sources of energy and the failure of one is insignificant.
California is a good example where a network of home batteries has prevented four major outages this year and was called into use about 15 times to supplement large generators.
A problem is that power companies don't make profits from small scale generation and storage. It actually costs them. Power companies would rather invest in large generating plants and long distance transmission where they get a guaranteed return on investment and well as controlling the market so they can charge high prices.

China is also dumping excess production on the rest of the world. Lots of people have access to good cars at good prices.
I'd love to see these come to the US but our protectionist policies only allow us to buy expensive sub-standard EVs from US manufacturers.

These cars are available in Mexico (and maybe soon Canada). I'd love to buy one and import it to the US as a used car at a much lower tariff.

Good point. It drives me crazy too.
Adding extra zeros is just hype.

Looks like the biggest drop is from reporting student loan delinquencies. Biden's effort to reduce student loan debt has ended.
Instead of free/low cost education like much of the rest of the "civilized" world, the US puts everyone in perpetual penury with massive student loan debt so they have to keep slaving for much of their lives.

I can understand all of these concerns.
However, there is zero chance of any of these being addressed.
Our tech oligarchs run things and will steamroll any effort to restrict their control.
We are just the consumers.

The DOJ just removed a report from their web site which showed that the overwhelming number of political violence attacks comes from right-wing people.
Welcome to the 1984.

Standalone induction burners tend to have fan noise.
My (GE Cafe) induction range has only a very quiet fan that only comes on occasionally and no squeal.

There are induction burners that fit a wok or you can buy a wok with a flat induction plate on the bottom (I have one).