35% is a good start, but nowhere near where it should be at. Middle management is the gutter where corporate detritus collects. Upper management that claims to need middle management are good candidates for replacement or redundancy themselves.

Maybe look under the large heading "Unsubstantiated claims" which lays out several examples known at the time the article was published. Now you might take issue with the depth in which they cover the unsubstantiated claims as such, but the article you cited here very intentionally and transparently acknowledged the fact that there were problems with the dossier.

Now shall we contrast that with a certain mainstream American press outlet's coverage of the Biden laptop?

I think you might have misunderstood what actually happened in the two examples you cited. In both cases they say the mainstream press took a more cautious approach when the reliability of the sources was questionable.

I've found that about fifteen to twenty years is good enough to give noticeable improvements. I bought a 4K LED-based TV a few years ago to replace the Plasma TV that I had for over a decade and there was a considerable difference. Adjust for inflation I paid less for a larger display with higher resolution and better picture quality. Anything I could buy now would only be marginally better in one of those dimensions and would cost more for it. In another decade or so I'll likely be able to get the same kind of upgrade where it's a larger display with a higher resolution and better image quality (though my eyes may not be able to discern the differences as they age) for less money again. I'm anticipating that I will have what can be considered a home theater setup by that point. Maybe I'll need to upgrade my house to be able to fit the display in it.

Let's have a look, shall we?

Shortly after the Post story broke, social media companies blocked links to it, while other news outlets declined to publish the story due to concerns about provenance and suspicions of Russian disinformation.[8] On October 19, 2020, an open letter signed by 51 former US intelligence officials warned that the laptop "has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation."[9] By May 2023, no evidence had publicly surfaced to support suspicions that the laptop was part of a Russian disinformation scheme.

All that proves is that hindsight is 20/20. At the time the story was suspected by experts to be bogus, and in your view an impartial news media would have run with it anyway? The "fair and balanced" media certainly did. You might also recall that nothing came out of the laptop "scandal" other than a gun charge for Hunter. The idea that the laptop implicated the "Biden Crime Family" remains domestic misinformation. Moving on.

"On January 10, 2017, CNN reported that classified documents presented to Obama and Trump the previous week included allegations that Russian operatives possess "compromising personal and financial information" about Trump. CNN said it would not publish specific details on the reports because it had not "independently corroborated the specific allegations".[126][134] Following the CNN report,[135] BuzzFeed published a 35-page draft dossier that it said was the basis for the briefing, including unverified claims that Russian operatives had collected "embarrassing material" involving Trump that could be used to blackmail him. BuzzFeed said the information included "specific, unverified, and potentially unverifiable allegations of contact between Trump aides and Russian operatives".

So Buzzfeed published the dossier, and you're mad at CNN? Unrelated, while the more salacious details were never proven, the broader claims that Russia interfered with the election and the extensive ties between Russian nationals and Trump campaign people were true.

TL;DR - To demonstrate how biased the mainstream "liberal" press is, you offered up two detailed examples of them treating unverified information responsibly.

This sounds like giving guns to monkeys at the local zoo. I'm sure nothing will go horribly wrong.

How is this different than any other society precisely? Those that are wealthy generally have some form of public assistance to keep people from dying outright. Even in the U.S. there's little risk of anyone starving or going homeless unless they're a drug addict and even then there are programs to help those people.

It's often reported that upwards of 60% of the population is living paycheck to paycheck. Other reports put the percentage of the population below the poverty line at around 12% and generally trending down since we first started measuring it. By definition this must include some people earning above median household income. That suggests that there is a serious problem with people trying to live beyond their means and includes many who could be saving more money, but choose not to for whatever reason.

There is no magic society where this problem does not exist regardless of economic system. Are the poor in Venezuela better off because the country is less capitalist? Was Soviet Russia less happy to let its poor die or scratch out some meager existence? The only thing different under capitalism is that some enterprising people have managed to turn the poor decision making of some people into a business. Humans by and large value the future much less than the present. There's no fixing that. You could outlaw those payday loan companies and it would not make any of the people who do business with them less poor.

Do you have an examples of what these long-term practical solutions might be or is it just wishful thinking? Some people can certainly be taught the financial planning skills that they might lack which are putting them in this position, but if there were effective methods of addressing poor impulse control, addiction, and many other underlying causes that put people in this position someone would have found them by now.

You could always start a business to lend money to these people on less predatory terms. I'm certain that these people would be glad to take advantage of the much more generous terms. Not only would you put these legal Lon sharks out of business, but you'd be helping these people at the same time. In a free market you don't require anyone else's permission to engage in commerce. If you lack the initial capital yourself you could always find other like-minded individuals (judging by some other posts there are few in this very thread) and form a corporation with your combined assets.

Coyness aside, we both know that neither you or any of the others here will do that for what I think are reasons obvious to everyone even some are remiss to admit to them. The experiment is doomed to remain squarely in the realm of thought. But as they say, it's the thought that counts, even though it does nothing.

Parody is a right that we need to consider as well. What if I want to generate images of all of those characters sodomizing Sam Altman with giant purple strap-on dildos so that I have images for my newsletter? Copyright holders have no claims against satire or parody of their work. Why should it matter whether I create those images by hand or use a computer tool to assist in their construction?

If all of this leads to actual copyright reform then I won't be one to complain.

Laws are for honest people. We have thousands of laws that people break on a daily basis. Some are minor or largely inconsequential, but many are there to stop people from dying or causing serious harm to themselves. Making something that people want to do illegal only creates black markets and criminal enterprises.

This will be no different than environmental laws. The dirty industries will simply move to a location where the laws don't exist or are less strict. Never mind that the government will conduct the research anyway as it's in their interest to develop terrible weapons to keep enemy countries at bay.

That's a good one. Unfortunately for everyone this bubble bursting means that everyone will look for the next one to replace it with. No one wants to make real things that benefit people when they can get rich quick instead or sit back while someone else makes the real things for them, whether they're beneficial or not.

The best we can hope for is that the air is let out slowly instead of the whole thing rupturing at once. What happens in hard times at the beginning is that everyone panics and is out for themselves. No one is going to be looking to work together at that moment, though plenty of people will gladly lie about wanting to for their own benefit.

The Amish will probably be fine. They've ignored the whole and are already living like you want people to. The older I get the more I start to think that maybe they've got it figured out. At least better than most everyone else.

Talking to people in public isnâ(TM)t harassment.

Talking to people on taxpayer funded grounds also isnâ(TM)t trespass.

Tax funded?

Not private property anymore.

Anything can be addictive. That doesn't mean that we should go around banning things just because some person or group of people can't control themselves. Making it illegal almost never works to prevent the behavior as black markets will pop up in the place of legal alternatives.

Perhaps in the future people will be sentenced to extensive therapy sessions to help treat their underlying compulsions instead of putting them in prison or society will embrace some new form of social Darwinism and leave these people to die in the streets. Regardless, trying to ban behavior that humans want to engage in just creates criminal enterprise and the costs of combating it.

But why stop at gambling. Television is addictive. Video games are addictive. The internet is addictive. Sex is addictive. Coffee is addictive. What is it the allows you to justify making gambling illegal while permitting those other things. I want a nice clean line in the sand so that there objectively measures or criteria that can be applied.

Yes it would, but if they used Zoom or *shudder* Teams, they wouldn't be able to get a taxpayer funded vacation out of it. They could have a big Zoom meeting but the turnout would be abysmal and no one of any importance would be in attendance.