Let me tell you something....even when I offered a steeply discounted price of $20 for the service call (down from my usual $85 to walk in the door)....people got pissed. All I did was press a button...so therefore I shouldn't charge them.

Reminds me of a story my old boss used to tell about justifying engineering fees. A worker was called in to fix a problem with the HVAC. After looking for a while, he took a screwdriver and adjusted a screw. This fixed the problem and he charged $100 (this was in the 80s). The owner balked at the price and asked for am itemized bill. The bill read: Adjusting a screw - $1; Knowing what to do - $99.

The thing that gets me is almost all of the streaming apps I've used have something like "Since you watched that show, you might like this one", then half the shows they recommend I've already watched using that app. I know the app is aware of what I've already watched, since they sometimes suggest I "watch it again".

We hit some record colds in the 70s and 80s. The Milankovitch cycles were just beginning to be understood and popularized. There was speculation about the timing of starting a new glacial period in the next few thousand years, and questions about how fast that could occur. Of course the popular press sensationalized that with headline questions about "Have We Started a New Ice Age?".
Yet I remember hearing about global warming due to CO2 in the classrooms as early as the 60s (though it wasn't necessarily seen as a sure thing then) and the early 70s. And in the 70s and 80s the scientific consensus was that CO2 would cause global warming if we didn't do anything about it (and we have done very little since).

What does "artificial" mean?

"Artificial" means made by the skill of humans.

I think most human reasoning starts with a conclusion and uses reason to explain and/or test it.

Well, several of my bosses have wanted me to do a "study" that would come to the conclusion they wanted. I usually just did an actual study the best I knew how. Sometimes my boss's conclusion would be proved right, sometimes not - sometimes that led to awkwardness in the write-up.

This is sort of the basis of the scientific model.

I wouldn't exactly say that a scientific theory is starting with a conclusion, as observation and reason are needed to come up with the theory. Reason is used to come up with testable hypotheses from the theory, but hypotheses coming from a theory are tested, not explained, using reason and experiment.

There are only so many chords (four, if I remember correctly)

The saying is that there are only three chords (the notes of chords I, IV, & V make up the scale, all other chords can be seen as just variations on those three.)

I live in a fairly small complex, with no enclosed parking . . . Pretty typical complex. It would cost at least a million dollars to install chargers for every parking space (and it has to be every parking space, because every tenant needs to charge every night).

I worked on a large open parking structure with 2% of the spaces having level 2 chargers and the electrical infrastructure to add chargers to another 18% of the spaces - including the up-sizing of the service to the building, the switchgear, transformers, conduit, and wiring. It came out to about $6,000 per parking space with a current or future charger. Note that this price included all the electrical upgrades to "tear up the streets for miles" as well as miles of wires within the parking structure. You didn't describe the particular layout of the complex, but if it is a low rise with dedicated parking near each unit, you might get away with tapping into each unit's electrical and not need a dedicated new service.
$6,000 per unit does give the same high cost impression as saying "at least a million dollars."

About 16% of California's agricultural water use is for growing alfalfa, which is used to feed cattle, and cattle also require more water, so I would say that almonds are no worse than beef in terms of water consumption.

How often do you see anything below -25C?

-25C is -13F. That's about the median of the annual extreme here in northern Illinois, US. So, half the years it gets colder than that at least once. And it has been as cold as -27F (-32.8C).

You are changing the definition of "an art".
Saloomy and Viol8 did not say "programming is art", they said "programming is an art".
"X is an art" does not mean "X is a fine art like painting or sculpture". It means "X is a skill that requires talent and experience".

Programming is not an art, it's engineering.

Engineering is an art.

Is public transit in the US really that bad?

Not generally, in my experience. Depends on where you're going and what time of day/night you're traveling. Rush hours going to and from downtown seemed pretty tolerable, if you tolerate crowds that force you into other people's personal spaces.

Why spend 90 minutes trying to get somewhere by bus when I can get there in 20 minutes with my own vehicle?

My experience commuting made me ask

I believe many, if not most, bus services started out as private companies. In the large city that I grew up in the "L" trains started out as several private companies, gradually consolidated, suffering financial problems, and eventually a governmental organization was created to take them over.

Did you look at my links and yours?
According to Statista, median wages have had periods of stagnation, but have definitely gone up compared to inflation since 1979, as well as in the last 10 years. So it is not true that "median wages have not kept with with inflation in decades".
Your link does not contradict that. It shows statistics that wage inequality has risen, that since 1980 "middle wage earners" (50th percentile) have seen wages go up a little, "low wage earners" (10th percentile) have seen wages go down a little, and "high wage earners" (95th percentile) have seen wages go up a lot. If they had picked 1990 as the starting point, it would show that even "low wage earners" wages have beaten inflation since then (the early 1980s had really high inflation combined with really high unemployment, not exactly a formula for inflation-adjusted wage growth)