"My first thought is that they're just MAGA Republicans who are happy to undermine health and safety for a pat on the head - and maybe financial rewards - from Washington and/or big tech. I'd be happy to hear other explanations though."

Virginia is Blue now, or at least the state government is. It's more a case of don't want to offend the source of all that tax revenue.

VoIP doesn't work when the power is out. At least mine doesn't. The router in house is out, the fiber to Ethernet box on the power pole is out, and the fiber switch on the corner is powered by the same power lines so it's out too.

It's batteries only.

I can't even really blame them. The wired system is subject to a lot of maintenance. Not even counting rampaging backhoes, people setting fence posts, washouts, rodents, and trucks running over the junction boxes are continuing problems. We won't even discuss what happens when a snowplow gets a bit off the road.

As for cost, when I dropped Frontier a decade ago they wanted $35 a month which did not include long distance. Today Consumer Cellular charges $28/ month. It's not a contest. A Traq phone was even cheaper, but the 4G Verizon tower was installed on the wrong side of the hill from my point of view.

For people way out there base-station cellular is a thing though it still won't help with the mountain problem.

"If a Word document was saved in one version of Office, will it still be readable in 20 years?"

Earlier this year retrieved my original Masters thesis from the version of Word that I used in 1989. It was a bit of a challenge. The formatting was largely lost but the text was retrievable by way of Office 98 on a Mac OS 9 session on a 2002 Quicksilver, then that went to Office 2011 on an Intel Mini, then that was imported to LibreOffice.

The graphics were in Pict format and Graphics Converter converted them to png. It was an exercise.

If you remove the symbol then it's just unsortable organic waste for the incinerator and you lose any ability to start recycling it in the future.

Can be recycled doesn't mean will be recycled. Just like cardboard. Some gets recycled. Some goes up the flue as fire starter in the winter at my house or in Spokane's incinertor. Some ends up in the landfill if it gets covered in paint or oil from a spill. Some the cat turns into confetti.

Economically the best thing to do is just burn it. Yes you need an afterburner and a scrubber. From oil it came, to combustion is its fate.

The increasing urbanization comes into it too. A stick shift in city traffic gets really annoying. A stick shift on the Winnemucca to Reno run is no problem at all, nor is it on the Albert Lea to Rapid City run.

And they finally fixed the 'can't figure out what gear to be in going up this hill' problem. That happened sometime between 2008 and 2020. Now if only GM can figure out how to build one that lasts for more than 80,000 miles.

Automatics still suck in the snow, but that's only a few times a year.

A clear sky being blue, the current sky is gray. ;-)

The 3AM thunderstorm did not knock out the local power, by the way.

No it's not a shortage of generating capacity. It's wild weather knocking down power poles. Hurricanes, tornadoes, derechos, ice storms in winter, thunderstorms, etc.

Then there is the squirrelian horde.

https://nebraskapublicmedia.or...

A squirrel managed to take down the power to the county seat a couple years ago. Then add in the transformers that are just plain old and the truck drivers who cut the corner a little too close and takes out the pole and power outages happen.

I noticed that the update rate in Mint seems quite elevated lately.

There is a lot of scrambling going on. AI does see, to have a value for slinging endproduct against the wall and targeting where ever something stuck.

Can it be programmed with a very large ax?

Just name it Wormtongue.

"All places have some shitty societies somewhere, but in some places these people run the show, and these are not the places a well educated and civilized person wants to be in the long run. God help you, if your significant other looks or sounds foreign, or just doesn't want to blend into the "inject 'em with the Wuhan flu" maga crowd."

That's the most racist/classist thing I've read in a while.

When your lifestyle depends on an exploitable underclass that's what happens. The other thing that happens is a sudden interest in gun control, disarmed serfs are much safer to deal with. Then add the cameras to keep an eye on the rabble, an AI to watch all the cameras at once and you have a Democratic Socialists perfect world.

Apprenticeship programs.

The guys (and a few gals) in the orchard across the street never went to college. They have jobs. Not an AI to be seen.

"Not unless you encourage young people to choose career paths that are in need."

What jobs are those? The oil patch had a huge shortage once upon a time, but is politically unpopular at the moment. Many are trying to put it out of business even as they hop into airplanes for their summer vacation.

In 1990 I started what everyone assumed was a career with a bright future in mining. 1992 brought Clinton Gore and Babbitt who did all they could to end mining in the U.S. because high quality vacations for the urban elite were more important.

I got on with a company that produced polysilicon for solar panels, but it couldn't compete with China.

And these health care jobs, that's good for the next 20 years, but what then? The peak of the baby boom was about 1958, they are 68 now. The overwhelming majority of them will be dead in 20 years. The dead don't need health care.

And of course learn to code just died a spectacular death.

So in Your 40 year working career where no job is good for more than 10, what should you train for?