You do not appear to understand what a republic or a democracy is, so I'll ignore the last sentence.

"Independent" does not mean unaccountable to the people. The President is independent of Congress, and vice versa, but both are accountable to the people. Well, the current president doesn't seem to think so, but legally he is.

The civil service is not a part of the executive but is a co-equal branch.

You are correct. In principle, presidents have no authority whatsoever to dictate how an agency runs. The executive branch should have zero authority over the civil service, which is intended to constitute a fourth co-equal branch of government.

In the US, in principle, the status of the civil service as co-equal to, and independent of, the executive should be added to the Constitution and enshrined in law for good measure. Not that that would help much with the current SCOTUS, but a Constitutional change might possibly persuade the current government that absolute authoritatian control is not as popular as Trump thinks.

That is the idea that, in Britain, entities like the NHS and the BBC have operated under. Charters specify the responsibilties and duties, and guarantee the funding needed to provide these, but the organisation is (supposed) to carry these out wholly independently of the government of the day.

It actually worked quite well for some time, but has been under increasing pressure and subject to increasing government sabotage over the past 20-25 years.

It's also the idea behind science/engineering research funding bodies the world over. These should direct funding for grant proposals not on political whim or popularity but on the basis of what is actually needed. Again, though, it does get sabotaged a fair bit.

Exactly how you'd mitigate this is unclear, many governments have - after all - the leading talent in manipulation, corruption, and kickbacks. But presumably, strategies can be devised to weaken political influence.

Yeah, Zillow and others basically act like paywalls to make it harder to find out information about available real estate and force you to do everything through agents who try to steer you to properties that give them a bigger commission.

The absolute worst is searching for land, because most of those sites don't want to give you the parcel numbers, which make the information almost completely useless. With a parcel number and five minutes of GIS searching, I can tell you if it is worth my time, all without ever having to visit the property. Instead, they'd like you to have an agent try to convince you that the sheer cliff is buildable as long as you use an advanced septic system. ROFL.

I've never understood why MLS wasn't more open. It has always been going against consumers' best interest to keep it as closed as it is, IMO.

... spread over probably 24" x 48", or 8 square feet, for a total of 625 pounds per square foot.

Ignoring that the numbers above are probably less than half the static load limit, the static load limit is as low as it is because A. the raised floor has weight, and B. the raised floor likely has a much lower weight limit than the concrete slab under it.

Solution: Remove the raised floor.

Which means you can now run overhead cable trays above the height of your tallest employees. No need for the raised floors. Also, by ripping out the raised floors, you can have that extra height, so no need to rebuild the building.

Because people can't tip the racks up to get them through the doors, or lie them flat corner-to-corner in a freight elevator? This seems like a problem with movers not being creative enough when moving things, rather than a building problem.

This whole article reads like people looking for an excuse to spend more money and build monuments to themselves, rather than an actual problem. What am I missing?

The increase in fire rates is completely irrelevant for training, too. You can learn to shoot a rifle with any rifle. You'll need a little bit of training on how the mags load in different rifles and stuff, but not much. In terms of learning how to aim and stuff, kids can train on a single-shot rifle.

It's not obvious to me. I learned how to shoot rifles and handguns as a kid, and I've never had any kind of gun in my house other than a BB gun.

Governments at the time had a powder house that provided extra munitions and guns. Some militiamen at the time did have personal weapons in their homes. The minutemen were more trained than other militiamen, and presumably also screened for not being nuts. So yes, hand-picked elite soldiers all had weapons, but that's not an indication that everyone needs to — doubly so when you consider that the National Guard is the only remaining lawfully recognized militia in the U.S., and all others are markedly different from the militias at the time, which were organized by local governments, not by random people who like to shoot guns.

The whole point is that we have that, and it's called the National Guard.

Let's not forget that modern mass shootings still could not have happened without cartridged firearms. Let's not forget that there's a clear, direct correlation between the increase in assault rifle sales after that ban was overturned and the number of mass shooting deaths in the U.S. Let's not forget that mass shootings have been around since at least 1949, and probably longer — it's not a new phenomenon at all — and that the only thing that is clearly correlated with the number of mass shootings is the number of guns sold.

I'm not saying that we should get rid of guns, but blanketly saying that all gun laws are unconstitutional just isn't grounded in what the second amendment says, and burying our heads in the sand and ignoring the damage caused to our society by nutjobs getting guns isn't going to keep it from happening over and over.

Some common sense laws could cut the mass shooting to really close to zero, all without meaningfully preventing normal, sane people from owning firearms if they want to do so. Examples:

• Re-enacting a federal waiting period (with an exception made for people who have an active restraining order against someone else and can legitimately show a reason to need one immediately for self defense) can dramatically reduce gun suicides and heat-of-the-moment homicides. And while this probably won't reduce mass shootings much, it will reduce gun deaths.
• Safe storage laws can dramatically reduce access to guns by gangs and known criminals who would not pass a background check. They can also reduce access to guns by children, who should never be allowed to have access to a firearm without an adult present, because very few have the mental maturity to handle that responsibility.
• Mandatory government-funded pre-purchase and annual psych evaluations for anyone owning a firearm could massively reduce the rate of mass shootings by identifying people who might be unstable and ensuring that they get the therapy they need to not go postal, particularly if you combine it with free mental health counseling for anyone who wants it and make it easy for mental health professionals to report to police if they feel that a person may be a danger to themselves or others, and if the police then have a policy of confiscating any weapons that the person owns and not giving them back until they have gone through an adequate period of counseling and the health professional has lifted the firearm hold.
• Requiring all firearm sales to be tracked by serial number in a federal registry, and providing civil liability for the last registered owner when a firearm is used in a crime unless they can show that the firearm was stolen out of a certified gun safe can then make all of the previous regulations have the teeth needed to actually do their jobs.
• Requiring significant additional screening to own high-power rifles, semi-automatic and automatic rifles, large magazines, etc. would also likely fix the recent surge in mass shooting deaths. (It's not just that mass shootings are becoming more common; they're also becoming more deadly.)

And so on. None of those policies violate my understanding of what the second amendment says, because they don't prevent a typical person from owning the sorts of firearms that are commonly used by individuals who are not active military. They don't prevent people who are active military, reserve, or guard (militia) from owning the firearms needed to protect the country, and they don't meaningfully impede our national defense, nor our police.

That may explain it. I have a Qrevo S, which is from 2024, while yours is from 2022. The only thing that it ever gets stuck at is one spot where, from under the couch, it can see out the ground-level window, and get stuck between the couch and window ledge (not actually stuck, just confused), because the LiDAR sees out the window. And I fixed that just by setting a small exclusion zone there. It never "gets lost" - maybe your house has some vast open spaces that it can't handle? But the LiDAR seems to see pretty far. The only other issues I've had are things like where I'll have a loose cord on the floor or some large piece of debris or whatnot, and even then, it's usually good at not getting stock on them. I'm also impressed with how well it deals with doors vs. a Roomba - my Roomba used to always get itself locked in rooms by accidentally closing doors after it entered, while the Roborock really tries to avoid ever touching them.

The Qrevo S has actually rotating mops, and they do a superb job with the floor. Spotless. My robot has the hardest mopping job in the world, too - it has to clean under my parrot's cage, and he poops off the edge onto a plastic mat under it ;)

I've never had to contact support - hopefully I don't need to :)

I saw Google and Plus together and got momentarily excited. :-D

I think you're wrong. I think the U.S. government has too much incentive to bail them out again no matter how badly they tank.

But you're not wrong about Ford being the least likely to survive the next ten years without massive government bailouts. IMO, Ford has never made good cars by any reasonable standard, giving rise to jokes all the way back in the late 1980s of Ford standing for "Found On the Road Dead" or "Fell Off the Road Dead", and I've seen no evidence that they have gotten much better since.

By someone legitimate, or by someone looking to get page hits?

Oh, Consumer Reports... the same company that has pretty much been dumping on Tesla for many years, and whose criticisms have been widely ridiculed by actual Tesla owners.

There was a separate law passed in 1792 that defined what weapons should be available for people in a militia, but I can't find any evidence that the second amendment ever did that. It was based around similar laws in other states and in England, none of which specified such things, so it would be very surprising if they had considered doing so.

Even if we assume that the intent was to protect the right to bear all future military-grade weapons, it was still intended for forming militias for the defense of the country, not for storing high-power weapons at every individual's house for their personal use where kids can pick them up and shoot each other.

Weapons of that time would not have been easy for a kid to discharge multiple times. They would not have been easy for someone to discharge a hundred times in anger and mass-murder people. And so on. And that's the point I was trying to make. These weapons are materially different from anything they could have conceived of at the time.

although map editing sucks and it often gets lost and can't properly reset its position. It needs to be rescued pretty often which is a major fail.

That's very distinctly not my experience. What version do you have?

A real vacuum cleaner just about maxes out a standard residential 120v 15a circuit, as anyone who remembers the incandescent bulb era can attest to. A circuit with a few lamps shared with a vacuum cleaner could easily end with you flipping a breaker or replacing a blown fuse.

When you look at the absolutely tiny lithium ion pack these robo-vacs come with, ...

Sitting on my kitchen table right now is a drone pack. It's 57,5Wh, smaller the batteries of most modern Roombas. It's 50C - thus it can output up to 2,9kW. And there's even higher packs available than that. Lithium ion cells can handle some truly high power outputs. It's *energy*, not *power*, that is their limitation. Run a pack at 50C and it'll be empty in a bit over a minute. That said, on hard floor surfaces there is absolutely no reason why you should be drawing more than 300-400W or so, and you can get by with well less than that. High powers are for like shag carpeting and the like. Also, the head matters more than the power (though of course contribute) - for a hard floor, for example, a fluffy roller head is ideal.

Pet hair has never been an issue for me with robots. My long hair always is. It's way longer than any pet's.