Thanks for sharing the article. Japanese Twitter users (quoted in the article) support Ubisoft's decision of including the Yasuke character. Guess there's no controversy here after all! Everyone agrees!

...a quick scan of relevant posts [on Japanese Twitter] shows that discourse seems to be a lot more focused on the game’s narrative and entertainment value than issues of race and representation. Users comment that choosing Yasuke was a good way to naturally introduce a protagonist belonging to the Order of Assassins to the Japanese setting, as making the assassin Japanese would have felt unnatural story-wise... Japanese users also highlighted Yasuke’s fascinating background... "The story is impressive enough to shut out the complaints about political correctness, and I hope the developers proceed with Yasuke as the protagonist...” The overall tone of discourse surrounding Assasins’s Creed Shadows’s Yasuke appears to be more far more lighthearted on the Japanese side of X."

What "bad thing" did Ubisoft do? Wikipedia has a whole page about the black samurai Yasuke.

I think you're just too chicken to say "I don't like it when my videogames have black characters." (And so being an associate history professor consulting on Ubisoft's game becomes "lying down with dogs"/getting fleas.) You're wrong on the history of this one -- but that's always just been an excuse to express discomfort at the appearance of non-white characters... You might think everyone agrees with you... but they don't. And honestly, it seems like you're coming from a place of fear and weakness.

Ever heard of "The California Globe" before this? They "utilize loaded words" to "favor conservative causes" (according to this media bias-checking site).

If you get out of your right-wing echo chamber, here's what you see from a normal site like Axios.com:

California's fast-food minimum wage law did not lead to job losses and has increased wages for workers by about 8% to 9% since going into effect last April, according to an updated analysis.

The analysis released this week from the UC Berkeley Center on Wage and Employment Dynamics builds off the findings of an initial study from September, showing that the minimum wage increase has not reduced employment or led to large price increases for consumers...

The law has not led to franchises closing as more fast food restaurants continue to open and are growing faster in California than in the rest of the U.S.

All of that info extracted from the linked article.

Congratulations on actually reading the linked article. It'd be a better world if more Slashdot readers did that.

Although that information is also available in the second sentence of Slashdot's summary... ("The chatbot is available only to users in the United States on iPhones for a limited time...")

Wow, seriously?! Your source for this is "Sputnik News"? That's literally a Russian state-owned propaganda outlet. Here's a better headline:

"Russia defends Elon Musk."

I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader as to why Russia supports what's being done by Elon Musk...

By the way, the group in question is... ActBlue, which raised $13.7 billion for Democratic candidates. (Maybe that's why Russia hates them?)

Josh Marshall made a good point. Musk never actually says employees will be fired for failing to answer in the email. (He just claims he said that while bragging on Twitter.)

But I've heard that the whole point is to demoralize the federal workforce -- to make it easier to move them out the door. (Since Musk can't actually do this otherwise as fast as he wants...) It's like when Musk's first act at Twitter was to demand employees be prepared to work extra-long hours. He'd just wanted to lower headcount -- and that's what he's doing here. (I sincerely doubt anyone will even read the emails that get written in response. But several federal agencies are already openly refusing to even send those replies...)

And the specifics of it are the answer to your question. It's intentionally and aggressively denigrating an employee's worth -- demanding they re-establish they're a net-gain for the company (and. in your scenario, do it every seven days). You basically said you valued them and their work on the day you hired them, and on every day you kept paying them. So I'd only agree to your suggestion if every week the manager making this request began by saying...

"I am the world's stupidest manager. I have employees who are doing work, and being paid for it, while I'm ignorant of the great value of that work (and of my own employees' skillsets). And I'll probably remain ignorant and continue to harass my loyal workers, every seven days, even after they've explained their value to me. Because I'm not listening; I have a knee-jerk desire to fire people because I'm cheap and have no idea how things get done.

"Now let's start reading some of these bullet points...."

For what it's worth, here's the link to Palast's site...

Ironically, it's not meetings that's causing the short of meeting rooms (according to the article):

Staffers grew used to taking private phone calls throughout the day at their homes, the source said. Now, back in the office, they're ducking into empty meeting rooms to take these calls, which is causing a shortage — and leading some managers to have private chats with employees out in the open, the worker said.

That second link goes to an article by Jianlu Bi -- who's a "senior content producer" for China's state-run China Global Television Network. With that in mind, read this paragraph from Jianlu's article:

While the United States is often portrayed as a land of limitless opportunity, many American netizens have shared their struggles with high living costs, particularly in urban areas. One common theme is the exorbitant cost of healthcare. “I just got a simple bill for a routine checkup and it was over $500,” shared one American user. “I can’t imagine what a serious illness would cost! I feel like I’m constantly on the brink of financial ruin due to medical expenses.” In contrast, Chinese netizens often express surprise at the affordability of many goods and services in their home country. For instance, the cost of housing, particularly in smaller cities, is often significantly lower in China compared to the United States...

Are you pushing foreign propaganda?

It's not clear this was a technical issue. It's been suggested that the cause was... birds. That's 'according to CNN.

The Boeing 737-800 is one of the most widely used aircraft in the world and each one is used for about four or five flights per day, Geoffrey Thomas, editor of Airline News, told CNN’s Paula Newton. “It is the most reliable aircraft in the world, and it’s been in service for 20 years,” he said. “Everybody knows how it works. And it works really, really well. And the maintenance done in (South) Korea is as good as it gets around the world.”

I'd ask that question a little differently...

Is Russia at war with the West now?