You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they’ve tried everything else. -Winston Churchill

Auditing in general is profitable, but it’s mostly due to it being automated for people that aren’t making 7 figures. Auditing the not absurdly wealthy is also generally a positive revenue. Auditing the extremely wealthy tends to not be a great net benefit as the costs of lawyers and court time outweighs the settlement check at the end. There’s an argument to be made it’s worth the cost to ensure the ultra wealthy do actually pay though.

That’s great for the 80%. It doesn’t help the 10-15% where a road trip becomes significantly longer, or when you don’t have access to home charging on vacation or a weekend trip. I find a way to work around a once or twice a year event that’s not great for an EV, but I can’t justify a car that doesn’t work for me once or twice per month.

The price is definitely the bigger issue for EVs, but even then they definitely need to either roughly double range or halve charging time from 20% to 80%. Right now, they don’t quite cover enough of users needs, especially at the price. I need a vehicle that covers 90-95% of my use cases, and EVs are sitting closer to 80%.

This has nothing to do with keys. This would be like Sony listing a basic PlayStation on their website that was $100 cheaper than other stores and Walmart threatening to remove PlayStation from their stores. This is about Steam (like many retailers) ensuring that they aren’t being undercut by other retailers.

This isn’t about steam keys, it’s about a most favored nation clause. It’s a fairly common clause when selling across multiple platforms. It can be considered anticompetitive in some cases. It’s also pretty standard in retail agreements. It’s why name brand products are generally the same price everywhere.

The same thing would happen if Walmart found Sony was selling PlayStations cheaper on their website than in store.

The fact there’s a fairly large amount of people eating raw meat and milk and there isn’t widespread illnesses in those communities is an endorsement of how safe our food industry is.

Long Covid was also a goldmine for the medical quackery institutions.

I like my professor’s view in AI from over a decade ago. AI is the term non commercially viable research. Once something becomes viable it gets rebranded, like automatic text recognition, computer vision, machine learning, llms. It worked great until generative AI was good enough to impress average people, then it became a great way to attract venture capital. It’s still not quite viable so the rule holds, but we are in a very messy and public era where several products are likely to emerge and separate from the AI title.

If a jury can’t reach a unanimous verdict it’s called a hung jury. Essentially it’s a mistrial and the case can be retried.

I’ve been called several times. Failing to show up gets more extreme as the level of court increases. County and city courts tend to have smaller penalties and pay less than federal courts. The pay is basically a joke in all cases. Jury duty is generally a lot of waiting for things to happen, and it’s pretty boring.

The first time I was called in for a criminal rape case, I believe this was federal. The victim was under 18, but over the age of consent. The issue was around her being mentally handicapped. I was removed during voir dire by the prosecution, but it took until the second day. The first day was mostly sitting and waiting, I don’t remember if either side got to remove anyone the first day.

The second time was a county court. All cases settled that day before trials. So it just wasted a few hours.

The third time was another federal court. It was a civil case of a prisoner against a guard who destroyed his legal documents searching for “contraband.” I was part of the jury for this one, it was a 2 day long trial and we took an extra half day of deliberation. Ultimately we were a hung jury.

This is probably a good thing as these tend to be shit jobs with high turnover. Dealing with angry people for hours on end isn’t great for anyone long term.

China depends on Iranian oil, which is why Iran tried the partial blockade to let friendly ships through. That forced the US to try and enforce a full blockade to prevent China from being less affected than everyone else.

Yep, WWI was the result of a bunch of inbred rulers turning family disagreements into a war because they could.

There’s technically a spot where making more can cost you money, but that’s well out of reach of normal people. It involves triggering the alternative minimum tax.

Even with per capita numbers that are way above or way below the norm can skew results.

It’s great for pretty much any sweet or chocolate based cookie.

Coffee is a superior dunking medium than milk for Oreos.

Historically the priesthood/other holy orders was a place to toss the weird people or undesirable heirs. It was a convenient way for the gay uncle to have a respectable job and explain why they didn’t have a wife. It was also a way to keep pedo types isolated but productive, at least until resources led to many orders dissolving.

Ravel and unravel can both mean to take apart something that was knitted or woven.