Or, (in-)famously, "What's a computer?" :)

Well, strictly speaking, isn't four figures already thousands of dollars?

...you know the rest.

Travel outside the US. It's become the de-facto standard communication tool.

This year's renewal of home insurance cam with all kinds of new stipulations.

One was satellite photos from Google Earth with areas of my roof circled where they suspected some damage. I was able to have a conversation with my agent and the underwriter and tell them when we last replaced the roof, and assured them that we had been on the roof recently (Christmas lights) and got them to back off. It sounded like they were using some machine analysis looking for odd stain patterns.

My take is that the industry as a whole is trying to improve the quality of their assessments and risk exposure.

Yep. It's turtles all the way up.

But as a practical matter, how exactly do you cut corners on a sphere?

So pretty much nothing to see here?

Others would say it's stupid not to take advantage of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity when it lands on your lap. To your observation, when has the future ever been clear?

This is a great insight. As easy and fun as it is to pile-on, calling someone stupid, or even calling for *killing* people as some here have suggested, there is a systematic failure that needs to be addressed. Not so much your bridge example, but road designers have standardized on the continuous Jersey barrier sidewalls for roads so that when drivers are going off the road they get a more benign collision that keeps them on their own side of the road. Contrast with exposed pillars with gaps in between (a-la Princess Diana crash) where an excursion ends in a head-on fatal crash. They recognized that they can't make drivers any better, but they can make the environment safer so that momentary lapses are much less consequential.

Dang, ya beat me to it! :)

https://www.theverge.com/2020/...

Wish I had mod points for you today. Well played.

Ha! You beat me to it. I was going to do this and try to work 'EIEIO' into it.

Please address the shopkeeper who finds has a drug-addled person sleeping in their doorway. The shopkeeper whose customers are scared to come downtown anymore. When you say "It is their [i.e. drug user's] choice", well yeah, but choices have consequences. What about the consequences on everyone else? Does everyone in society have to back off in order to accommodate some random person's bad / dangerous / scary / threatening / disturbed behaviors? It appears you are saying yes. It's a hard no for me.

Everyone seems to be talking about their rights, but rights come with responsibilities.

There's that old saying which comes to mind... "your right to swing your arms ends where somebody else's face begins."