That's true. I've taken far less sick days while working at home because I don't have people coughing and sneezing around me all day.

You have to remember that MBAs don't care about getting work done, they only care about increasing the stock price so they make more money when their options vest. It doesn't matter if the company crashes and burns after that because they'll be counting their options somewhere else by then.

Yeah, I'm supposed to start working in the office more next week where I'll be making Teams calls to the people I work with who are all at least 200 miles away. Except we now have too many people to fit in the office so they're still trying to figure out where they'll put us.

I presume they're doing it to see if they can get people to quit since it makes no sense otherwise.

When I was a kid we were going to be in a new Ice Age by now and oil was going to run out by the year 2000.

The older you get, the more you realize there's a lot of money to be made in fear-mongering.

The real climate change we're seeing is largely due to solar changes affecting the jetstreams but we'll do absolutely nothing to adapt to that because there's a lot more money to be made and power to be gained from blaming carbon dioxide.

All the "excess death" studies I've read in the past made big claims about massive numbers of deaths in the summary but when you actually read the paper it turns out the "excess deaths" are of people who were already sick and close to death who might die a couple of weeks earlier due to air pollution but there was no way to prove it so really they were just making up a number. So I ignore anyone talking about "excess deaths" these days, it's a glaring red flag for fear-mongering.

When they release Omicron.

And what of Disney sponging off of hundreds of years of public domain fairy tales? Can't they make up their own original tales?

You can use the UV light. You need different material with a different bandgap. Basically a whole other panel, stacked on the first. But before you go after that 5% UV you're going to want to go after the blue, and probably the red and some of the near IR.

They're called multijunction solar cells and they're used in places where you need maximum efficiency, like in space. For regular use, single junction cells are much more popular because a single bandgap panel absorbing at the maximum solar emission is going to be more efficient price-wise than a multijunction cell where the extra bandgaps are in lower emission ranges.

The TPM does enable some security, such as an encrypted disk, and to enable password-free logins. In other words, it increases local, physical security. Of course Linux can do the same thing if the TPM is present. For most home computers, neither is that critical, and honestly the TPM does little to actually secure Windows from malware or remote exploits. In short the TPM is a valuable and useful feature, but is completely optional and of most value to certain users such as travelers or corporate users. The last thing most of the users who call me up with home computer problems need is an encrypted disk. In fact most don't even really need a login password for their computer if I'm honest. But they do need a secure browser (the TPM can optionally help secure the browser's password store) with ad blocking to keep them free from malware. I can make Windows 11 work for most of these, but not without effort.

It's not just amazon.

I ordered a thermostat for my mustang last week. It was described as "sold and shipped by Walmart."

A couple of days later, I found an Autozone box on my porch. And not just the box, but the shipping return address was to auto zone!

??

the real tragedy of Viet Nam was that the US achieved *exactly* what it set out to do--which was a really stupid thing to do and waste lives upon.

The mission was *not* to defeat the north Vietnamese, but to keep them on their side of an imaginary line. US troops that went over the line got called back.

When the US finally decided it wanted to stop playing, the north wouldn't let them simply leave. To get them to talk, the US bombed them into submission, for crying out loud.

By any *military* standard, Viet nam was an overwhelming success for the US. US troops controlled whatever ground they chose, and won all of the battles.

But "resist aggression and stay on your side of the line" is a *stupid*, even criminal, thing to ask of a military. As is the lives it through away for idiocy.

Oh dear, I'm sorry I didn't read this before replying above.

Zuck was one of several government projects along the same lines back then, and he got lucky, that's all.

So is he a CIA operator indoctrinated from birth a la The Bourne Identity, a genetically programmed clone, or a straight up android?

"Free market" is a stupid propaganda cliche that is devoid of meaning.

Uh huh. Is this one of those "propaganda I don't believe" Instagram slideshows?

Free markets exist and are pretty widespread. They require government intervention to maintain. Adam Smith himself called that one of the primary functions of government in the economy. American corporatism isn't the only system in the world, and authoritarian "democratic oversight" as suggested by the OP is definitely not a good alternative.

It's much cheaper this way. If they lose there would be no damages awarded to Disney. And they come into this with the upper hand---the law is technically on their side.

What damages?

I have to admit I'm a bit confused as to why they are even asking anything from Disney since the likeness they wish to use is in the public domain. But I suppose doing this preemptively is slightly cheaper than Disney launching a frivolous lawsuit against them.