This.
How is he not immediately disbarred?

Because they didn't want to "avoid MS" they wanted to flex.

How much have U.S. farmers grown this year which will sit and rot because not a single bean has been purchased by China due to tariffs?

While growing food isn't the main issue, distribution is, how many tons of food goes to waste each year because of price supports or deliberate over production due to government programs?

Spoiler: Black Mirror episode in which soldiers have neural implants providing augmented reality. Or, rather, altered reality.

What a stupid, irrelevant post.

And I'd say you're deeply committed to your theology but whatever.

ANY long-lived species on this planet has - self evidently - survived multiple near extinction events.
What part of "repeatedly survived" is unclear for you?

10 people fall off a cliff, 9 die. 1 survives.
That one and 9 others fall off another cliff, 8 die. The original survivor and one other.
Those 2 and 8 others fall off another cliff, 4 die. The 6 survivors include the previous 2.
Those 6 and 4 more fall off a cliff, 9 die. The original survivor from the first cliff is still alive.

You "clearly this means he's going to die if he falls down a hill!"

"| Corals date from before the Cambrian explosion, about half a billion years ago.
No they don't. This is a flaw"

AFAIK Jung's study last year pushed coral/algae symbiosis back to the Devonian, no?
https://www.nature.com/article...
It's short of 500mya, but not meaningfully so to my point.

"98% of corals failed to survive the KT* extinction,"
At least from what I can see (summarized at) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... ( but also from other sources ) it wasn't 98% of corals, it was 60% - the 98% is JUST warm water corals, which is basically already what I'm saying:
"Approximately 60% of late-Cretaceous scleractinian coral genera failed to cross the Kâ"Pg boundary into the Paleocene. Further analysis of the coral extinctions shows that approximately 98% of colonial species, ones that inhabit warm, shallow tropical waters, became extinct. The solitary corals, which generally do not form reefs and inhabit colder and deeper (below the photic zone) areas of the ocean were less impacted by the Kâ"Pg boundary. Colonial coral species rely upon symbiosis with photosynthetic algae, which collapsed due to the events surrounding the Kâ"Pg boundary,[71][72] but the use of data from coral fossils to support Kâ"Pg extinction and subsequent Paleocene recovery, must be weighed against the changes that occurred in coral ecosystems through the Kâ"Pg boundary.[35]"

One might argue that a 40% survival rate vs 24% (for all species collectively) in such a catastropphic event/span would strongly suggest that corals are particularly durable.

They WANT to know. I don't believe they NEED to know to do their job.

To be clear, I think a good employer WOULD make a good case to their staff that it's necessary, if it is.

But work isn't a democracy: they're saying "do x, I give you money" - that's it, that's the deal.

ESPECIALLY if that was the original deal when you were hired (ie anyone pre 2019, really). If you change the terms (well I want to work all the time from home now) they're free to ALSO change the terms (ok we're paying you 75%) and then you decide if you continue to be an employee.

I'd say *demanding* to stay home and work in your jammies sounds a lot like a 3 year old not wanting to go to school, too. So yeah, that's how it's treated.

Or, it could be that pretty nearly all government agencies were "fluffed" with nearly-worthless DEI hires, departments, and administrations over the past 4 years and nothing of value will be lost.
Let's check JPL levels historically, shall we?
| Year | Approximate Staff Level | Notes/Source Summary |
| 2010 | ~5,000 | Based on 2008 NASA budget planning for FY2009, committing to maintain 5,000 employees amid post-recession adjustments. |
| 2011 | ~5,000 | Stable from prior year; no major changes reported in mission-driven workforce. |
| 2012 | ~5,000 | Consistent with early 2010s growth in planetary missions (e.g., Curiosity rover). |
| 2013 | ~5,000 | Aligned with Near-Earth Object Program expansion; steady state. |
| 2014 | ~5,000 - 5,500 | Gradual increase tied to Earth science and outer planet missions. |
| 2015 | ~5,500 | Reflects ongoing investments in data science and workforce diversity initiatives. |
| 2016 | ~5,500 | Stable; focus on Spitzer Space Telescope management and Mars rovers. |
| 2017 | ~5,500 | HBCU/URM internship expansion signals sustained staffing. |
| 2018 | ~6,000 | Peak near-term level; $2.5B budget supports growth in robotic exploration. |
| 2019 | ~6,000 | Continued stability with Juno and Cassini mission support. |
| 2020 | ~6,000 | Pre-pandemic baseline; telework shifts but no net reduction. |
| 2021 | ~5,500 | FY2021 budget of $2.4B; includes on-site subcontractors, but core staff steady. |
| 2022 | ~6,000 | Slight rebound post-COVID; Zippia demographics report ~6,000 total. |
| 2023 | ~6,000 | End-of-year figure before 2024 cuts; shutdown impacts minimal. |
| 2024 | ~5,500 (end-of-year) | Major reductions: ~100 contractors (Jan), 530 employees + 40 contractors (Feb, ~8% cut), 325 employees (Nov, ~5% cut). Starts at ~6,000, ends at ~5,500. |
| 2025 | ~4,950 (as of Oct) | Additional 550 employees laid off (Oct, ~11% cut) as part of restructuring; figure post-layoff from ~5,500 baseline. |

So another less politically loaded but entirely accurate title might be "JPL staff returning to historically normal levels" mightn't it?

IMO

Didn't "brick" used to mean "kill without any chance of recovery"? The key difference of "bricking" was the irrecersability , no?

Did someone accidentally load the Hebrew spelling dictionary?

Yet somewhere in history, someone did just that.
90% of new businesses today fail.
So someone stepped up, risked his own future and probably family, to build that business. So they get to set the rules.

Nobody in the businesses we're talking about is enslaved. They're trading their time and effort for $ according to a set of rules that business (presumably) offered them IN LIEU of putting their own ass on the line against that 9/10 failure rate. I get it. But the idea that someone bitches "this is toxic, I should QUIT" and then not do so means I simply won't be taking them seriously.

Honestly, I see it like the work from home argument. I expect most employed people today were hired precovid, where working from home was barely a discussion. They were hired on the premise that they work at an office, every workday, usually 8-5 or whatever.
When a pandemic comes along and the business spends resources to make it possible for people to work remotely successfully (we all knew it was POSSIBLE, to be clear), and then people whinge about coming back afterword that's just sour grapes. A lot like this. If you don't like that pointy-haired boss telling you to come back...QUIT.

It does matter.

If the government forgives $1mil in student loans, that's ANOTHER $1m they're going to have tax the taxpayers (eg the productive members of society) in the future.

I get it, we'd ALL love a free ride.

OK, thanks for the reply. I agree, most people don't.

Now - do they understand that SOMEONE, SOMEWHERE, SOMEWHEN took exactly that risk to found the business that they're working for? That built a going concern to the point that they could reliably trust business was stable enough at a volume large enough that the marginal returns are such allowing them to promise people stable, ongoing employment and a paycheck every week for dozens, hundreds, maybe thousands of employees?

And then contemplate that the global new business failure rate sits roughly around 90%.
Meaning out of the people that DID form such a business, 9 of them lost that gamble, only 1/10 limped along well enough to survive and (ostensibly) grow into those awful oligopolies that benefit from economies of scale. Are those founders (and, let's be clear, their descendants) entitled to some sort of reward for putting THEIR futures and scratched-together $ on the line?

Now with that context, "this workplace is toxic, I should just QUIT" sounds pretty childish, given that most individuals can't afford the alternative.

We can agree all day that IN ANY CASE it's unwise for a business to tolerate toxic or negative environments. It drives away good workers and probably raises their salary costs as informed employees demand more to stay.

But this discussion is ultimately just whinging. A microscopic percent of people "love" working. We trade our time and effort for a paycheck. We are not enslaved; we are in fact free agents. Either put up or shut up. If it's so toxic, leave & start your employee's utopia. I'm sure you'll have workers breaking down your door to work for you at your much-higher-than-market wages, with 'work when you want, vacation when you want' hours, work freely from home policies, and (somehow) the most expensive glorious health coverage available.*
If it's not enough to leave, stay and STFU. Complaining AND staying is just cowardice and carping.

*FWIW I had that for my company and all my employees (BCBS Aware Gold premium or plus or something - literally the best we could get). Obamacare FUCKED us by threatening a massive tax on 'cadillac' health plans that simply would have broken us and closed the business.