It's honestly pretty sloppy. The maze has a bunch of smeared lines on it. I think the only "doubt" is coming from journalists using cliche phrasing.

The Trump order applies ONLY to wind power. Oil platforms are not banned for any reason. If that seems illogical well... Trump.

If they overpower the humanity trying to stop them from doing those things, yes.

If that's what an independent agency is, then independent agencies are blatantly unconstitutional. "The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America" is literally the first sentence in Article II. If it is serving an executive function, then the executive branch "calls the shots."

Are we, as a sapient species facing an uncertain prospect of continuence in a world full of rapidly-advancing bullshit going to learn from this catastrophic and absurdly predictable failure of information security, personal and professional ethics, civilian government, market economics, basic common sense, and consumer psychology?

Eight-Ball-Based-On-Cursory-Reading-Of-Literally-Any-Slice-of-Human-History says "no".

What do you say, and why is it also "no"?

...I remember when companies wanted to accelerate depreciation, so they could take the write-off sooner.

I also remember the days when the tax laws made me a depreciable asset in my role doing tech research. I never quite worked up enough nerve to call the accountants and ask what happened after they had depreciated away my full value :^)

Mainly, yes.

Because the processed food companies deliberately design their products to be as addictive as possible. As a society we (correctly) recognize that drug dealers bear some responsibility when users overdose on drugs, and cigarette companies have lost lawsuits because they knowingly sold an addictive and dangerous product while pretending it was perfectly healthy. Processed food companies are doing the same, even deliberately targeting children. Their products may not be *as* harmful as drugs or cigarettes, but they are still harmful and deliberately addictive, and they ought to bear some of the social responsibility for the damage their product has done (since they reaped **all** the profits). "Privatize the profits, socialize the losses" has been going on for a looooong time in this country, and it's pushed this country to (and perhaps past) it's breaking point. Freedom of choice is all well and good, but it requires people to be properly informed, and to actually have a choice (which many people, especially those living in food deserts, who tend to be poor and not well educated to begin with, do not).

I post every now and then, but there isn't much to talk about with the old folks 'round here these days. Eventually every comments section looks like a Thanksgiving dinner! Most of my rambles are now on Reddit now.

Keep sharp!

Ah, for the days before we discovered that Adams always intended for Pointy Haired Boss to be the hero of the cartoon.

If you are interested learning about actual science you can read the actual paper. It is not paywalled. Look up "speleothem isotopes" to learn about specific climatologic techniques for this study.

We do have records. We just can't read them. The Harappan language has never been deciphered. There are about 5000 inscriptions known.

That droughts led to the end of Indus Valley Civilization has been surmised for decades, this study provided a much more detailed account of the process.

For people to settle in "untouched tracts of land" you need to have water to irrigate it. Large empty areas on Earth require water for them to be "tamed".

Yup. It's pretty hard to do the right thing when the oil cartel that has invaded Alberta keeps threatening to shit itself and is actively trying to engineer a separatist movement entirely for its own benefit. Here's hoping Carney eventually finds a way to disembowel them.

The last game Sweeney did the artwork for was ZZT. As much as I love playing around with AI art generation for fun, he's really not an expert on this.

You could ride a long for while claiming to recognize people but have poor name recall by saying "Hey! It's you!" to everybody, but then they could slip in someone you could not have ever met.