Author's rights lose meaning and rationale when the "author" is not an individual or a small group but a corporation.

So what. When you're screwed you might as well try unorthodox things on the off-chance something might work, because hello, we don't actually understand human biochemistry perfectly. And what exactly did he have to lose, a few more or fewer weeks with life with apparently lethal metastatic cancer?

If you offer bets on things that aren't definitely and objectively classifiable, you aren't foolish, you're a scammer. There's a difference.

There's an added point here, similar to what Rory Sutherland went on about with the, according to him, unfortunate preference for rational (or rather conventionally logical) approaches in business. As of now, zero people have gotten fired for suggesting "Our sales are down, we ought to advertise more!" , even when it didn't work. Now, try to think what would happen to your job if, instead, you went "Our sales are down, we ought to advertise less!"

but I'm not touching the ad-serving vehicle that is Chrome and its derivatives with a ten foot pole. And, let's face it, this is the only reason for anti-firefox propaganda these days - they really need to whittle it down before forcing manifest v3 through, or users will mass-switch.

Since a polite way of putting it isn't cutting it, let's try again. What the "x maintainer" in questiponn posted on the linux kernel mailing list doesn't matter because nobody reasonable gives two shits, more so in a completely different project. So, you coming with it like it's a revelation is at best ridiculous.

I've never liked the distribution - I've used SuSE, Slackware, Mint and finally Debian... but there's a difference between "I'm not a fan" and "this unapologetically sucks". The internet is full of people having issues with Wayland.

...so? In what way did that impact his X.org work? Like, when I go to a restaurant I care that the cook knows how to cook, not who he voted for.

Yeah, but living expenses are fixed costs, so even percentages are tricky. A flat 50% tax on someone hypothetically earning 15000 a month is survivable, on someone who is earning 1500 it isn't.

I don't fly, and the last concert I've been to was before Corona hit, so, no. As for the internet, most of the stores that I've bought stuff from require no login and my browser is relatively well warded so I'm more certain than not that no discriminatory pricing is being offered.

You're mostly right, with one exception - there's no way there could be anything fair about the practice, since it exploits both an information asymmetry (store collecting data about you) and a negotiation asymmetry (store changes offer but you can adhere or get out, there's no counter-proposal from you) to royally screw you over. All this is is rentseeking on crack.

There's multiple differences here - one is that progressive taxation is based on the idea that if you're rich, you're using the commons and the services society provides to a greater extent, thus you should contribute more. On the other hand, there's nothing such that Wal-mart or Kroger is providing for you, they're simply taking a bet that you'll not walk away in disgust at seeing the price they toss at you.
Furthermore, you're overly optimistic in that financial dispositions are the only factor entering this - you could pull off tricks like noticing a customer really seems to like one brand of say, mayo and start cranking up the price, or even more atrociously, identify things which look like a necessity and amp up their price... or ,for instance, amp up the prices for people with full baskets because they're less likely to leave if they've already picked up a ton of wares.
The whole practice smells sky-high of bullshit, and I'm certainly not going to visit any store that has electronic price tags.

Well... if you want to wait for the ideal champion with a flaming sword and white shining armour, be my guest. For the rest of us, Alexandra Elbakyan is enough.