I really think Roblox is missing the point.

Sure, age-verification might impede underage use of their product, but there are a lot of adults that understand the age-verification movement to be an invasion of their privacy. Whether or not this is true, "perception is reality".

"chase kids on ebikes across parks and playgrounds."

The problem is they aren't in parks and playgrounds riding their "e-bikes" (they're more electric motorcycle than bicycle). They're on the road with cars and major traffic. I see it, particularly, in more affluent neighborhoods (Redondo Beach, Manhattan Beach, Santa Monica).

And we're not talking about a few... They're everywhere -- particularly after school hours and weekends.

The real problem is that given his rank, he would be in a position to hear things sooner than others further down the food chain. Anyone paying attention to who is doing any betting could have (or should have) asked what they might now that would cause them to place the bet they did. In this case, it boils down to an OPSEC violation, and that's illegal under any circumstance, punishable by UCMJ if not actual civilian law. The fact that the FBI are involved tells me that this guy will probably be facing UCMJ violations too (if he's lucky, court martial if he's not), and may not be a Sergeant Major any longer when the dust settles.

Curious, then, that if such a law was already passed that recently that the likes of Pelosi (and surely other members of both parties) still managed to get around it.
Congress (as a whole) acts as if their shit doesn't stink. It's high time they get reminded that it most certainly does.

I hope you find something good soon.

I can think of four reasons ticket sales have dropped.

1. Much of what Hollywood has been putting out is crap.
2. Politicians increase taxes constantly, resulting in less disposable income for potential movie-goers.
3. Ticket costs increasing - Not much can be done there, theaters do it to compensate for the loss in sales.
4. Streaming is a thing. Why go to a theater to sit in a sticky, uncomfortable seat when one can wait a little while for the movie to hit $STREAMING_SERVICE and watch it from the comfort of one's own home?

"The one size fits all model of education is broken. "

It was broken the moment this method was being pushed. What worked was "One size fits MOST". You direct your resources on educating those who can benefit from the "Most" of the "one size". The ones that this doesn't work with is now a much smaller subset and can be managed with smaller class sizes (in the case of hands on need), special campuses (for behavior issues that would otherwise affect the "fits all" of the hated "one size fits all") and a much smaller pool of administrators necessary to make it all work.

Oh... less administrators. Never mind. Unions will hate it. Just shut up and give them more money.

Test321 said: "It's their right to call "hate speech" or "fake news" whatever they don't like."

Totally agree with this statement of yours.

From the article:

"...organized efforts to coerce American platforms to punish American viewpoints they oppose".

Calling something "hate speech" is quite different from actually calling on platforms to punish stuff for "whatever they don't like". So, your statement, while I agree with it as it stands doesn't really apply to this article.

Wouldn't doubt it at all.

"It's not like SpaceX did not have any missteps on their path to creating reusable boosters."

They weren't really missteps. It was part of their design philosophy. Build it enough to get past a "goal" (say, get past the launch tower) and test. If it doesn't meet the goal, ID the failure, redesign and test again. Once it reaches that "goal", create a new "goal" (sat, reach 20,000 ft). Repeat until it's reliable.

While this involves a lot of explosions, the actual time it takes to get a workable and reliable rocket was dramatically reduced.

Looks less like a failure on China's program and more like China learning from Musk.

Telescreen monitoring would have required a crazy amount of manpower.

Probably the closest real-world analog was the East German Stasi, which may have accounted for nearly 1 in 6:

The ratio for the Stasi was one secret policeman per 166 East Germans. When the regular informers are added, these ratios become much higher: In the Stasi's case, there would have been at least one spy watching every 66 citizens! When one adds in the estimated numbers of part-time snoops, the result is nothing short of monstrous: one informer per 6.5 citizens. It would not have been unreasonable to assume that at least one Stasi informer was present in any party of ten or twelve dinner guests. Like a giant octopus, the Stasi's tentacles probed every aspect of life.

— John O. Koehler, German-born American journalist, quoted from Wikipedia

In the USA is it common to have self service tills at supermarkets that accept coins?

If it accepts cash, it should accept both coins and bills. Any change I manage to accumulate usually gets fed into the coin slot at a self-checkout before I swipe a card to provide the rest of the payment. It's better than handing it off to a Coinstar machine, as those skim off a percentage of what you feed them.

"I like things simple. I really don't deal with milage, or all the other things I consider minutiae. I deal with simple numbers. What this means is not filling out milage reports and the other stuff that clutters up to work. Perhaps I'm eccentric. But I like simple because my actual work is quite complex."

As is my work -- however, my mileage report isn't "minutiae". It' averages $300-$500 every two weeks (I do a lot of driving --- particularly for projects). And the process isn't complicated. Basically a date, destination and total miles per line. In a text file. No clutter -- just a review of my travel calendar for 5 mins every two weeks and another 2-5 mins to transfer that to my expense report. Automagically appears in my pay check 8 days later.