The whole point of dark energy is to explain why the cosmos is expanding more than it theoretically should be. If it isn't, then you don't need dark energy, or if it isn't expanding as much as formerly believed then you don't need as much of it.

We don't need mirrors, we just need a stroke of a pen to kill DST. It's nothing but some bureaucratic madness. Just eliminate it by law, simple fuckin as.

Actually that's my initial reaction, too, but I do think there might be some kind of solution. On third thought I'm sure this is not it, but...

If (and that's actually a huge IF) we were able to model the atmosphere well enough, then I think we might be able to intervene in a sane way. My own favorite fantasy solution would be large arrays of orbital mirrors rotated as needed to control the solar energy reaching the earth. Take a bit off the sides here, add some extra crops there...

Time for a joke? We could use the mirrors to FINALLY get rid of DST. And if we had that atmospheric model we could do it without the adverse side effects...

Dibs on "Donaldian Decadence".

If the YOB implodes soon enough, then we can hope that 2025 goes down in history as "The Year of Donaldian Decadence".

#DonaldianDecadence

Or what's your better historical label for what happened?

In this case, I mean literally... literally. You can find citations trivially. Everyone should know this by now. If you want to talk about Nazis, you should know something about Nazis.

"Remember, Na-Zi means National SOCIALIST, and that's that fascism is."

Remember, the Nazis literally called themselves socialists to fool stupid people, and you also don't know what either socialism or fascism is if you think one is a type of the other.

He wasn't a Nazi but George Washington did a genocide and was named "Town Killer" for it. And before someone points out that was his father, no, his father (who was also named George) ALSO did a genocide and was called the same thing for the same reason.

Not anything. Especially when dealing with nuclear. There are some parts that once degraded cannot be safely replaced. For example, the containment unit. And others where making a new one makes more economic sense than replacing even when technically possible. What state this plant is in I have no idea, and am not qualified to have an opinion on. I just hope experts are making the decision based on economics and power requirements and not politics.

No, it isn't. You're absolutely deluding yourself. And even if it was, nobody uses it to actually write anything. Learning to write (vs read) would be, is, and has been for 50 years an utter waste of time.

NT existed when IBM brought out at least two major versions of OS/2 without such features while NT had them, so... No.

Provocative FP, but I think you're mostly wrong and lacking in the kind of insight that will lead towards any solution. Most obviously, the Democrats are not going to solve anything. I think we are actually in a situation where too much change has become a key problem, so controlling and even limiting the changes are crucial. I sort of hate to say it, but I think the Amish may have it right when they consider newfangled ideas carefully before adopting them. (The Amish religious stuff mostly seems bogus, however...)

As regards the monopoly problem, I think the best solution approach might be a progressive tax on profits where higher degrees of monopolization result in higher taxes on the associated profits. The "natural" path to higher retained earnings would then be for the monopolist to divide itself into honest competitors. Three metrics (plus your ideas) could be used to detect the monopoly: (1) Limited customer choice and too few meaningful options, (2) Inability of wannabe competitors to enter the monopoly niche, and (3) Lack of alternative employment options for people working in the niche. But "We can't get there from here." Certainly there are no politicians who are trying to lead in such a direction.

Returning to this story I think the actual key is in the deltas. Yes, Amazon does need engineers, but profit maximization calls for keeping ONLY the engineers who can produce the highest rates of profit increase. All less productive engineers are just slowing things down. The delusion that Amazon is now suffering from is an idea that AI (and related IT) can be used to replicate the work of the delta-maximizers all over the place.

The reality is different and I expect to be amused by the implosion--even though I will also probably suffer from some of the collateral damage.

No, but it would let people who care know, and it would let people who potentially care google and find out.

I would tend to assume that if you pay you get more, so it's just a trial version, and this is just an indirect slashvertisement.

I don't think creating a centralized world ID database is going to be a win at this point.

OS/2 had no security features needed for multiuser support. It might as well have been classic MacOS. Citrix had a multiuser version of OS/2 with security tacked on, but it wasn't a realistic solution and was never popular. Building an OS without security was the moronic decision that killed it. Plus IBM never did anything meaningful to promote it so nobody cared. That it was used anywhere (especially in ATMs) was a horrible decision itself because of the lack of security features and has created untold woes. Maybe nobody ever got fired because they bought IBM, but they should have.