I know a guy, friend of my father. He alone, an immigrant from Soviet Russia, is the best story on why this never works. He had a very high level job in the USSR- Chief Aerospace engineer, with a chauffeur and a dacha. He managed to use his money in Russia to essentially bribe a legal immigration out of the USSR to the US.

Started over as an elevator operator in NYC. Eventually became a chief engineer again. The stories he told about the USSR leaves no doubt as to how much of a failure Marxism is.

I can think of one delicious item, and that item is a fried apple pie, available only in the US in Hawaii and ONE single McDonalds in Downey California. But not $5.

Time to start randomly ordering massive fake amounts of hamburgers, driving up the price, then bankrupting individual franchises for being so stupid.

This isn't a bad idea. Just print up some "Clippy" stickers, the size of key. Stick it over the Copilot graphic, and if anyone sees it you'll know if they're in on the joke.

Windows! He patented Windows!

I'm having a hard time understanding how "Haptics" can be worth 5.7 billion without imagining Dr. Evil biting his pinky.

It's not an unreasonable conclusion, as we have progressively gotten better at handling toxic things.

While I might not particularly like Thiel, killing Gawker and it's variants was general plus for humanity.

And yet, it exists.

Wait, you believe Iran not striking directly at the US is a TACTICAL maneuver on their part? The old "They're playing 3D chess while we're playing checkers" gambit?
No. If they could have they would have.

Here's a paper bag, Breathe into it for a while You'll feel better.

People are leaving. I've lost two highly talented workers at my workplace - people who we were already looking to move upward - because they both simply said a variant of " I'll never own a home for me and my family here in CA, but I've already bought one in (Texas for one, Illinois for another). Maybe you don't like either of these states. But they're going to be raising kids with a backyard, whereas here is they were LUCKY they might get into a condo.
These guys were the hard working producers everyone wants. The guys who didn't leave: they somehow manage to never be around.

The problem is, another company, perhaps named "Floke", rolls in with the same surveillance, and everyone smugly assumes because they blocked flock it's A-OK.

People ranted about the Epstein files during the Biden administration, now politically opposite people are ranting about the Epstein files during the trump administration.
The Epstein files are a combination of Hitler, Bigfoot, the Moon Landing conspiracy theory and Pedophilia all wrapped up into one giant excuse for everything someone currently thinks is wrong. It's like cooties for adults.
"Hey, you, you've got [epstein files]! Ewwwww"

I would argue this stems for an innate distrust of overriding authority in the US versus absolutely required trust in authority in China. Doesn't matter if it's a president, a boss, or an AI avatar: American's are always hesitant to automatically trust the intentions of them. I believe this is a good instinct. You need to question these things, and not simply allow those in charge to dictate. Dictating ideas ( dictator has to come from somewhere, right?) works amazingly well and is incredibly efficient. Until it suddenly isn't and it crashes spectacularly. Then you have everyone is standing around asking "what happened???"
We've seen this occur countless times across history.

Books had middlemen, in the sense that publishers printed and acted as gatekeepers for what reached the public. With both the good ( I don't have to read through piles of nonsense to find a decent story!) and bad ( Pushing an agenda, only care about heavy sales) that implies.