And have the presence of mind, and the giving-a-fuck (you have something to lose!), to actually bother using them.

AFAIK I've never slipped one past the goalie, but the times I risked it, is when I was poorer and life was generally worse and I was overall (not just sexually) less risk-averse. The more comfortable my life, the more I've maintained safe practices.

True, but it does not stop CEO worshipping Americans from thinking that corporations can act with complete impunity agains nation states despite the fact that every time the EU makes noises about taxing US tech companies their CEOs show up in the oval office to beg Trump for help.

Until they want to do business in your country and you can tax the profits they make there.

I figured the "tastes like chicken" comments were inevitable and then you throw in Peter Jackson, and obviously everyone is thinking about Bad Taste. But then I couldn't think of any really good ones, so I'll just punish the world with the Jackson jokes that I did come up with.

The moas died because they were feeble. As the Feebles, get it?

Um, what did the moa say to the kung-fu catholic priest? "Oh yeah? Well I kick ass for The Lord of the Rings!"

How many moas does it take to prepare ear-pus-custard? Moa than you would believe!

Done with the gain-of-function research, Chang is assigned to clean out the cages. But why throw out the live animals when he can get a few yuan for them down at the market?

Hijinx ensue!

This could be a good comedy movie. Chang should have some amusing [mis]adventures along the way!

I would at least pirate this movie, and then eventually watch it too.

You should post that on Truth Social for the Lulz. I hear Donnie likes big simple charts. :)

It does, but there's a slight issue with that. In terms of the world's largest economies by GDP the BRICS countries rate as:

#2: China
#4: India
#10: Brazil
#11: Russia (sanctions not withstanding)
#17: Indonesia
#28: United Arab Emirates
#38 South Africa
#42: Egypt
#44: Iran (again, despite the sanctions)
#66: Ethiopia

Now it's not like these countries are doing absolutely nothing to mitigate things, but it would be really interesting to see some numbers on exactly how much of a proportionate contribution they are making to "fund mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions in poorer nations" when even lowly Ethiopia still has over 130 poorer nations to choose from.

Unofficially, it's already done. It used to be that if you were going to somewhere with a weak and mostly cash-based economy you took the bulk of your cash in USD and the rest in the local currency. For quite some time now retailers in such economies have been just as likely to take Euros or Sterling as they were USD when they are after some hard currency, and on my last couple of trips I've actually been asked for Euros or Sterling in preference to USD. My local contact for my upcoming trip to the Far East has advised me to forget the USD and just bring Sterling or Euros because I'll get a much better exchange rate.

When the hawkers on the street and small store owners don't want USD any more, it's just a matter of time before that sentiment climbs up the ladder to larger retailers, and eventually to governments.

but the tradeoff they are making for us is that everything we import could cost as much as 3X more than it did before they destroyed the value of the dollar.

Before or after you add on the tariffs? Don't forget those are on the sticker price and paid in USD, so if something costs you 3x as many dollars then you'll also need to pay 3x as much in tariffs on top as well (assuming the tariff rate doesn't change again, of course). Even at Trump's base tariff rate of 10%, that would mean something that would previously have cost $100 to get shipped to your door from AliExpress or wherever now costing $300, plus a further $30 in import taxes.

I think there would be a red line when one US Dollar no longer gets you more than one Canadian Dollar, but who knows with all the crazy at the moment? Some people probably won't think it's a problem even when it no longer gets you one Mexican Peso...

So another thing that MAGA gets butt-hurt over has been disappeared. Is anybody surprised? What Was the excuse? Purging satanic anti Trump commie moose-lamb science?

More likely they're afraid of the wheel turning again. This is how the process starts; a new factory gets spun up to take advantage of cheaper labour in another country. That leads to a general increase in skills in that country and, before you know it, a dozen copycat faciliites have been spun up based on your techniques and you've been cut out of the market.

Right now, both China and Taiwan, as well as several other countries in SE Asia, are seeing India's massive source of potential cheap labour as an existential threat to a core part of their economies, and while they are, in many cases, at least someone allied politically with each other, they're all still very much trying to stamp on the fingers on the rungs of the ladder just below them.

A better analogy would be that we've been swimming around in the same pan of water since the 1970s yet, despite being told every year since then that the dial on the hob has been turned up another notch, have still not leapt out of the pan to turn the dial back down again.

Also, Trump / DOGE have apparently pulled funding NOAA that may lead to the shutdown of some of the world's most important CO2 data collection stations, so we'll all be able to firmly stick our heads in the sand together. If there's no data, it can't be a problem, right?

10 years using Duolingo, 4 years in Diamond League, and earlier this month I just had enough of the low-quality AI bullshit.

Out. Done. Gone. Waste of my time, every damn day.

The decline in quality and accuracy was just too much. As an English speaker learning a handful of other languages and concentrating on two, it was interesting to me that the first real noticeable patterns of errors and general slop were actually on the English side. Increasingly obtuse questions or statements, ok fine, I will spit those back in French or Spanish with good accuracy. I don't have any issue whatever with the occasionally-dark humor or the gender related topics that might push others' hot buttons, and I appreciate the occasional foray into curious stories and situations. But... over the past year there has been an increasing level of nonsensical AI-generated questions, erroneous answers accepted, multiple correct answers, etc etc... and it's obvious that no actual native speaker looked at a lot of the new content -- either from the native or foreign perspective. A couple years ago there was an increasing level of having to hit the button for "You should have accepted my answer." But for the past year, it's become a daily occurrence to have to hit the button for "You shouldn't have accepted my answer." The latter is a clear indication of AI slop and drift in the language models, and lack of QA. Real human QA is not optional, and Duo has apparently dispensed with it entirely. The result is gameified garbled nonsense. Playing the game was fun for a while (seriously, still in Diamond league for more than four years straight), but the goal is language learning not to compete with other stupid little games on my device. Feh. Done. Cancelled my subscription, et je vais dépenser cet hundred bucks de mon argent pour un spritz et une charcuterie chaque après-midi pour le reste de l'été.

In a word? ... 'No'.