True that's one possibility, and may very well be what the political class is doing. The other is capitalism, which is more likely what the actual businessmen are doing. They are making a profit on solar / wind, as a nice hedge investment for the next time the price of oil drops below production costs, as it always does eventually for one reason or another. Diversified investments aren't just for stocks after all, and even 'oil compaines' have learned that having all your eggs in the fossil fuel market is a good way to go bankrupt in a down turn, so they become 'energy companies' instead and invest in all forms of energy generation that make money instead of just limiting themselves to 'fossil fuel' types. Good PR for doing it, is just a bonus perk for them.

Assuming that's true, then explain why Texas produces 151,526 GWh of Solar/Wind compared to California's 83,972 GWh. So one of the redest states, that's just completely full of MAGA and fossil fuel companies, and has 20% less population produces almost twice as much solar/wind. Doesn't really fit that narritive does it? What does you ask? Well they aren't fossil fuel companies anymore, and haven't been for ages. They are energy companies. And if any form of energy generation can make them money, they build it. Solar / wind with govt subsidies are pretty much a license to print money that doesn't fluctuate on them like the price of oil does, so of course they invest in it, it's a fantastic hedge against flutuations in the price of oil. Plus either way still need oil, can't make solar nor wind without it. Polymers in the panels need it, transport, construction of the site to place it, make the required steel and concrete, and wind turbines (especially off shore ones) require up to 800 gallons of lubricating oil each - and that does have to get replaced periodically. Hell even tiny Oklahoma, which is even more MAGA than Texas and full of fossil fuel companies too, produces over 38,000 GWh of wind/solar (just shy of half what CA produces) with a population 1/10th the size of CA. And same is true of storage, with Texas running close to double the installed storage of CA. Plus TX/OK are building faster, as the regulatory environment is much, much easier to get through. So the facts don't seem to line up with your theory.

Same, there are companies and websites I've just flat stopped using because of the CAPTCHA's that I have too much trouble getting past. Would also be nice to not need 5 different MFA authenticator apps and a YubiKey. Not opposed to MFA, just the need to have so many different ones. Both problems have the same solution, we need a standardized digital ID. Fortunately they are getting there with mobile drivers license, Clear ID, and State issued digital ID's, we just need to take the step to move them from not only access to the airport, but to online commerce, at which point a lot of these issues go away.

You would be correct, paid no extra attention to yet another 'mostly peaceful protest', after having gone through months and months of them by that point. Honestly didn't even make the radar as I was just burned out on reading about riots in the news for 7+ months plus COVID at that point. After all it was way less violent than the ones in DC not 6 months prior to that, as those lasted for weeks, Jan 6th didn't even make it 6 hours, it was over before I even heard about it. We had been told for 7+ months at that point that is was the People's right to protest, ignore COVID restrictions to protest, and that 'looting, property destruction, and arson are fine, they have insurace to cover it' as hundreds of buldings where destroyed, business looted, and downtown Seatle had a police station and area around it occupied for 23 days where even 1st responders where blocked from access. Why would I get more worked up about people forcing their way into Congress and delaying their work for 8 hours, than I would about them burning down police stations, people's homes, businesses, and looting in all the other dozens of riots lasting for months that preceeded it? That's the Left's own fault. You can't go on for months about the right to protest, and making excuses for ignoring COVID restrictions, deaths, arson, looting, and property destruction, but then scream when someone else does the exact same thing expecting anyone not in your echo chamber to take you seriously.

It's not so much the ones that make to 65 that make it grow, it's the number that don't die of old age until they are much older than folks in the past died of old age. Over the last 50 years the median life expectancy has increased by 6 to 8 years. Meaning instead of living to 62 to 71 folks now live to 73 to 79. The demographics of group have grown, because they are living longer after 65. It's that increase in lifespan causing the group of folks over 65 to grow. And in the last 50 years that increase in life expectancy has more to do with adult medical care and delining old-age mortality meaning people are actually living longer after 50, whrere prior to that most the gains came from lowering infant and child mortality - which did wonders for average life expectancy even if no one was actually living any longer after 50.

Or the map is exactly what it's designed to be, optimized for marine navigation. Especially when navigating with just a compass, sextant, and clock - which is all they had when it was designed. It was never intended to be representative of the actual size of landmasses, that's not even remotely the reason that stype of map exists. If you want one that shows things as they are across the entrie planet, use a globe. But anytime you flatten a sphere into a 2 dimensional map there are going to be trade offs, depending on what you need the map for navigation or a pretty picture. The UN voted they want to use the pretty picture for teaching about the world,, which nothing wrong with that, it's mostly useless for navigation, but if all you need is a picture for teaching about the world, then it's a representative pretty picture much like a globe is and likely is a better choice for text books and teaching geography. But if you need to navigate then Mercator projection is a better choice. So no rascim, just right tool for the right job.

Maybe, but considering multiple US States have sued to regulate Polymarket as gambling, and a federal appeals court ruled that states hold the power to regulate these prediction contracts as gambling, then depending on how SCOTUS ultimately rules he might very well have a case that it was gambling. But as you stated, that just brings an entirely different set of laws and regulations into place, plus income from gambling is taxed as ordinary income subject to all standard income taxes (and pretty sure self-employement tax so an extra 15% on top of income taxes), which is a much higher tax burden than capital gains taxes are at 20%. So if it's gambling then the government is going to want their cut which will likely be over half of it. So even if he wins to stay out of jail, buy the time he is done between the lawyers and the taxes he will loose anyway.

Already starting to see it with the Cobol codebase. Hardly anyone goes into that area because it's seen as a dead end. Yet vast portions of the economy still run on Cobol, it's very expensive to replace it, all the grey beards that can maintain it are retiring, and there is a no replacement pool for those folks. I still know folks that miss the days when if you needed a custom accounting process or report change, you just took the lead programmer a batch of fresh baked cookies, cause that got you to the top of his work pile, it just got done and it always worked right cause he knew what he was doing. Somehow I don't think that will work with AI run by a kid that doesn't understand the business side nor the code, in fact I know it won't cause it already doesn't. Instead the business has flat had to change how they do business because the replacement software can't be modified to do the same thing the same way the old custom in house Cobol code did it. So now the business has to change to meet the limitations of the software, instead of just adjusting the code to do what the business wanted.

Could also be you have to get over the hurdle of when you mention AI people starting thinking HAL 9000, WOPR, SkyNet, ULTRON, etc. AI is almost always the 'bad guy' in entertainment. Even in Science Fiction it's a mixed bag with AI like Cylons tending to be the bad guys, And people have seen it there, long before it became an option for them to use AI. And even when it's not 'evil', there are examples like the holodeck episode in Star Trek where they said to make an adversary that could defeat 'Data' instead of 'Sherlock', so the the ship AI followed instructions. In the entertainment most people follow AI is almost universally a bad idea. So makes sense they wouldn't trust it.

110 TWh of wind and 65 TWh of solar power produced annually in TX (the highest renewable energy production of any US State). Believe they already understand. They are energy companies, they don't care how the energy is produced whether it be oil wells, solar panels, or wind turbines, as long as they can make a profit on it. Though they still need the oil wells, as solar panels require oil to make, so do wind turbines not to mention the massive amount of lubricating oil/grease they use.

12 million head of cattle, averaging 100 lbs of manure per day per cow, is around 219 million tons of manure a year. 1 ton burned is around 45 KWh of power. So that's 9.8 GWh of power per year. A single datacenter depending on the build needs anywhere from 87 GWh to 8.76 TWh annually. So not remotely close to enough bullshit to handle it. The 110 TWh of wind and 65 TWh of solar power produced annually in TX (the highest renewable energy production of any US State) does make for a great start though, and especially in West Texas where they are LOTS of places to build it with no one around to care other than those 12 million cow and associated cowboys.

Considering Congress has a history of doing nothing but a slap on the wrist going all the way back to the Crédit Mobilier scandal in 1872, I wouldn't expect them to be any better at dealing with it now, 154 years later. This is very much an all parties issue, rooted more in corruption of politicians than any specific party, as there are plenty of examples of corruptions, embezzlement, and insider trading on both sides of isle. Need look no further than the increase in net worth that is totally out of step with the income of a congressman to find plenty of examples.

Very much so, I've been full work from home for around 15 years now. They tried the whole 'return to the office after COVID with no work from home allowed' and it failed the first week because something broke right after they announced that change, and I didn't even look at it until 8 am the following Monday. When they asked why I didn't respond to the page - "You told me I'm no longer allowed to work from home. Answering pages and remoting in to fix things, is working, and I can't do that from home anymore. I also can't even get into my office after hours or on a weekend, so it's impossible now for me to work on anything other than during office hours. I can either work from home, or I can't, pick one." Didn't take long for them to decide having after hours maintenance work and support available after hours and on weekends was much more important than an office. Especially since I support systems in dozens of facilities in 24 different States, I'm always going to be working remotely either way, with none of my co-workers nor management even located in the same State I'm in, so I'm not even going to see anyone I know in an office, it will still all be remote work.

Which oddly enough it almost exactly the same percent that voted the same way in 1996. And while gas has come up, it's still 25% cheaper than it was 3 years ago, high prices which have a lot more to do with the inability of Congress to balance a checkbook than who is in the White House - because as Congress loves to remind everyone - they control the purse. But same old crap, just a different day, and different people complaining about it / doing it. We really need a viable third party (or more), cause as that 36% shows there are a lot of folks that find they don't like either party, know they both suck, and that it really doesn't matter that much which one they vote for because they are both going to screw you over at the end of the day, as they are all owned by the same corporate masters. We screwed up and let the federal government have way more power than it was ever intended to have.

Yep, and that's exactly what happened the last time we stopped DST. The most notable instance was in 1974 during the energy crisis, when Congress enacted year-round DST. However, the change was highly unpopular due to dark, dangerous early morning commutes, prompting Congress to repeal it less than a year later in the fall of 1974. Some of us are old enough to remember that, and how much it sucked in the winter. So it very much has been tried before.