My local Sears (in the Capitola Mall) had all kinds of departments. They did tires and batteries, had sizable camping and exercise equipment sections, a fairly decent electronics section with I think three different computers, appliances, housewares, jewelry and watches, and probably some other things I'm forgetting besides clothing obviously. And they had a fairly active catalog and layaway department, as Sears still had a fairly large catalog at the time. They were fairly easy to deal with, their prices were decent, they had good sales. They also had parts departments and you could get replacement parts for most of their tools many years later, and of course the hand tools had lifetime warranties (except for torque wrenches, even if the failure is not related to the torque part... sigh.)

The one complaint I did have about vintage Sears is that those parts were usually stupidly expensive, like they'd sell you a $5 primer bulb for a string trimmer for $20 plus shipping.

The fact that Azure is popular isn't a coincidence. It's in part because it's the easiest thing to get to from Windows, and Windows is still dominant in business and government. As you say, integration.

So if you're using less Windows at home, Azure is less appealing. There's still a case for it, you might still choose to use it etc, it's just less likely. That's why whether the customers are running Windows or not matters. And Windows is becoming steadily more offensive — can you ever trust it with your data on any basis? And oh yeah, Microsoft has had several embarrassing failures of security in Azure-related services.

I don't agree. As long as they still had real estate and shipping, they were in a position to make a comeback if they only demonstrated some competence. But instead of that, the real estate was sold off and the web site was never made not trash. As I recall they mostly hung on to the shipping and did some deals there, and they also had a line of business doing largely incompetent repair work, but selling the property was a huge failure.

Yeah, I was only first slightly politically aware of Reagan, although I guess you could count Clinton as the post-post script of the Southern Strategy.

... and sewing?

I've picked up reading again. RPG books for my sessions (I GM Coriolis and Forbidden Lands)
  I've also now added thimble, needles and thread to my EDC and fix buttons, snags in my cargo pants or holes in my backpack, jacket lining or whatever when I'm on the go, sitting in PT or waiting for someone or something. You can think and listen to a podcast or audiobook while doing it and you're doing something useful, helping the environment, saving money and training your confidence and motor skills. Good stuff.

No. I only remember when R meant klansman capitalist and D meant not-klansman capitalist.

1) Prosperity theology is the dominant religious belief system in America. If you are successful, it's because God loves you!
2) Lots of people are stupid enough to think he had a lot of money before he got access to the presidency and therefore bribes from all sides, instead of a lot of property which was worth less than the amount of debt he had. Therefore they can believe that he was wealthy, which means God loves him. (See point 1.)
3) They love that he says the kinds of things they say and wants to hurt the people they want to hurt.

It's short sighted of a special kind, even.

2-3 decades ago, it was car manufacturing. Every car maker by then knew that the Chinese would steal the tech. There's a famous example of a Mercedes Benz factory making busses which for the first year or two sold like hot cakes. Then demand suddenly vanished. Research found that the chinese joint venture partner (you had to joint venture in those days, not sure about now) had copied the entire factory, brick by brick, one city away. An exact copy making the exact same busses, just without Mercedes Benz in the loop. And, of course, slightly cheaper.

Everyone knew that.

And yet everyone went to China. They figured that it was still profitable to accept that risk.

Of course, the fact that CEOs these days change every few years and get a severance package large enough that they can immediately retire doesn't exactly make them long-term thinkers.

Heck, stop getting any food that is available locally. It's insane that I can buy some food that was grown in South America, shipped to Asia for processing and packaging and then shipped to Europe for less than the same food grown in Europe.

There's quite a bit of utter insanity there.

Yes, but this cuts both ways. These days, a LOT of essential day-by-day supplies are manufactured in China. If China and the G7 stopped all trade tomorrow, the damage to the G7 would be bigger and more immediate than that on China.

True. Germany is learning that lesson now that cheap energy from Russia is no longer available and its export business can't compete anymore.

Sears used to own a bunch of real estate and a trucking fleet. This let them ship things anywhere in the country in a reasonably timely fashion and keep costs low on both ends. They did absolutely, pathetically flub web sales, but it really wasn't too late to fix that. They at least had done the work of getting the product information digitized, even if the web site was otherwise a loss. (It really was terrible, and so were the prices, wtf.)

Compared to cryptocurrency, LLMs are dramatically useful. They don't do just of the things their proponents claim they do, and probably never will, but at least they do some things. Cryptocurrency is only a way for a different group of assholes to get rich enabling crime. It does nothing you couldn't do with just another normal fiat currency.

Even if it's all true, it's all irrelevant. Not only are these problems not those problems but we don't have decades. It's small comfort though that the ultra wealthy won't get what they want because even if they killed off literally all of the rest of us, AGW would not stop.

Sears did not "fail", they were willfully destroyed by a vulture capitalist.

Explain why relying on storage is a bad thing when renewables plus storage are cheaper than nuclear. Explain it like you're twelve, because mentally, you are - nuclear is shiny so you want it.