Despite very credible allegations, Biden was never convicted of raping raping Tara Reade. And his daughter's recollections of him inappropriately showering with her outlasted any statute of limitations. But I see where you're going, there. The rest is a good fit, right down to the weaponized government, for sure. The plot twist is that the real kingpins are behind the scenes, using him as a puppet. It's good villain story line material fresh from real life.

It's interesting that Slashdot posts this mention of Microsoft firing this small fraction of staff, but there was never coverage of Twitter firing more than 50% of its staff.

The motivation to mine and process rare earth materials has existed for many years. If it were just that easy, then China wouldn't have such a strategic dominance in this resource. For instance, most geologists think the minerals deal floated for Ukraine is ridiculous on multiple levels, but to distill it down, if those minerals were feasibly available to mine and process, private enterprise would have already set up shop there. In reality, Ukrainian rare earth mines are in abject disrepair and not even running and that is a reflection of the commercial viability of Ukrainian rare earth metals resources.

The capital investment required to launch a new lithium mining / processing operation is gargantuan. Nobody is going to take that step when China could sweep away its relevance by simply dropping this export ban.

The "current crisis" is manufactured and amplified externally. Nobody is doxxing Tesla owners with maps using Molotov cocktails as map cursors or burning lots full of vehicles in for service in some way that is a function of whether Musk is personally present on the factory floor vs doing something else he thinks is vital to our economic survival. All of it is ginned up hate based on the politics surrounding the pruning of vast left slush funds and debt-funded waste that has to go away. That's an entire industry with vested interests, and acting against it certainly brings out the coordinated hate, attacks on stock value, media smearing, and of course thousands of people who now say he's a nazi though they can't actually articulate why they think that.

No, him being "on the factory floor" or off it doesn't precipitate some "current crisis," except in the sense that entrenched interests currently having their oxen gored by drying up things like the NGO money laundering industry are doing their best to try to wreck the company to make a point.

advanced geothermal techniques could unlock 90 gigawatts of clean power in the U.S. alone, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.

This statement was made just seconds before Elon Musk marched right up onto the stage, slapped the DOE across the face, and shouted, "You get 'clean energy' out of your mouth!" The problem was resolved with the Musk administration re-branding the agency "Department of Petroleum."

Why print in color? Get a black and white laser printer. Most economical cost per page printing there is. No problem with ink drying up in the print head if not used for a while, etc. If I need to print a photo, I upload it to Walgreens and they have it ready to pick up in 30 minutes at the cost of nickels per picture.

So the people who made it should have been earning minimum wage, is that your point? Spread that dollar amount across five and half yeads and even modest team of people and their overhead, and they're making middle five figures after taxes. Is that a lot, to you?

You write from an informed perspective on this topic (ST:NG), yet I think the godlike fault you cite is inaccurate in the context of Next Generation. The series OFTEN dealt with the problem of a comparatively advanced civilization encountering a primitive civilization. This was so much woven into the fabric of ST:NG they built the "Prime Directive" as a best practices for these scenarios. The introduction of the Borg illustrates the importance of the Prime Directive as it turns the table on the Federation being primitive and the Borg representing an advanced civilization with zero respect supporting the natural development of an alien culture and society.

While ST:NG is classic SF wrestling with frontier mythos, I think it's less "Wagon Train to the Stars" (that's Battlestar Galactica) and more Christopher Columbus to the Stars. The enterprise is an exploration ship, not a colonization vessel.

It took five and a half years to make it. So, in perhaps over-simplified terms, that's ~$670k year working on it. Let's say you had six people working on the project, and had NO overhead at all beyond their personal income while making it. That's roughly $100k per person before they paid taxes, which is either pretty good or not very good at all, depending on where you live and how. But one supposes they also had some overhead. This wasn't done on their kids' laptops at night. There was music to compose, audio to record and design, and a lot more.

So, yeah. "Just" 3.7M is a fair characterization.

To do that, you'd need to insulate the AI in an information ecosystem that reinforces the conspiracy and shuns contradicting information.

Exactly. Musk has prioritized Twitter content in training GrokAI in order to perpetuate the misinformation flourishing on that platform.

Anyone want a 4 digit UID? Make me an offer. :)

I'm not here to internet-argue with you. I share your disdain for "in-your-face" product placements in movies. I'm with you.

Stepping back and evaluating the work of a director from all sides, I think almost all directors have sold out as artists in choosing a medium where they must pander to their audience to entice them to purchase tickets to see the work. The director is catering the artistic work to the supposed taste of the intended audience. When movies "flop" at the box office, frequently it's because the director executed their vision poorly, had a bad vision, or the producers forced a crappy vision through cells on their spreadsheets for what makes a successful film. Sometimes, though, a movie flops because the director abandoned consideration of the audience and pushed forward with the movie THEY wanted to make. Recent examples are Joker 2 and Megalopolis.

Regarding Apple, the company claims it does not pay for product placement in TV shows or movies. If a character is using a MacBook and the logo is visible, it's because the director wanted to associate the character with the brand for some reason other than financial. HP or DELL would have paid for the placement, so the director was leaving money on the table by choosing that Apple logo.

The referenced "no villains policy" is a preference by Apple, but there is no case history of enforcing it. Per this article:

In John Wick, the man who kills John's dog and steals his car is seen using an iPhone, and Josh Hartnett's serial killer character in Trap also appears to be using an Apple device. Some fans pointed out that an iPhone also appears in a villain's briefcase in Marvel's 2015 movie Ant-Man.

I'm not a fan of product placement. In most cases it's a repugnant cash-grab by the studio.

Consider this perspective, if you may...

A director is an artist who works within a set of constraints. The budgets can be gargantuan and seemingly freeing a director of constraints, yet, they are always still there. Producers can require certain actors be featured to secure the film's funding. Locations can be dictated based on tax incentives. Even the framing of each shot (aspect ratio) can be controlled by the distributors offerings of projection equipment.

A good or great director is empowered by their ability to define an artistic vision and then navigate the constraints to present their vision with the least amount of compromises as possible.

Another way of looking at the Chinese farm tractor is that the director may have had a concept that exceeded the budget offered by the producers. A scene perhaps that would have been exceedingly costly and the producers were unconvinced it would add enough umph to the resulting product to justify the expense. So, a producer might have suggested to the director, "If you can somehow fit this farm tractor on screen somewhere in this story for 35 seconds, the manufacturer will kick in the money you need to execute on this scene." Is that selling out? Or is the director ensuring their artistic vision is completed without sacrifice?

Sure, greed played a significant role on both sides of this metaphor:

1. Explorers from Europe came to America looking for resource wealth.
2. The SS United States purpose for being built was to charge fees for passenger transport across the Atlantic Ocean.
3. Colonists grew weary of sending vast wealth back to England, so they staged a revolution and declared independence.
4. Within less than a decade of its maiden voyage, the SS United States became unprofitable to operate as a passenger ship and has essentially been docked ever since.
5. Oligarchs have determined the US government has become an impediment to their increasing wealth generation, so they have begun to dismantle the government.
6. After 40+ years of business schemes have been presented and failed to secure a future for the SS United States, the ship is more expensive to keep above water than below water.

The SS United States is a STEAM-powered ship. The real obstacle to re-purpose the ship for any non-stationary use was that nautical propulsion had evolved beyond steam power with diesel and nuclear options. Democracy is powered by an informed electorate, which for various reasons has devolved in recent decades. I'm not sure that an oligarchy, monarchy, or benevolent dictatorship is the evolution that will put the United States at the bottom of the ocean, though. This is where the metaphor becomes less clear.

Perhaps not long for this world, but the Environmental Protection Agency administers the Vessel-to-Reef program. This documentation outlines the remediation best practices to prepare a ship prior to scuttling it to become a marine habitat. Removal of fuel, oil, asbestos, and other toxins is called out. The whole ship has already been gutted of asbestos by Ukrainians many years back.

This is the second ship Okaloosa County, Florida, has sunk as an artificial reef, so the SS United States is not their first rodeo. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission requires adherence to the earlier referenced EPA best practices when deploying an artificial reef.