I’m an engineer. I use all of it. I use it whether I’m writing technically correct and accurate forensic reviews or doing math in my head (or on paper) to analyze a condition in real time or checking a complex finite element model to ensure that there are no improper assumptions or invalid boundary conditions. AI/ML is really useful for some things, and deadly for others.

Rote memorization may seem unnecessary, but a mental catalog - whether it be quotes, body parts and systems, equations of natural phenomena, or even manufactured parts and specifications - is the hallmark of someone who can work independently in a real time industry. It may not matter for some jobs, but it’s make or break in others.

On the contrary, it will raise the floor of required credentials. When everyone has a HS education, an undergrad degree is needed to stand out. Now that a bachelors is the de facto education level, a masters degree is necessary. If it gets easier to get a MS degree, we’ll be requiring a PhD for entry level positions.

Yet. Infrastructure on this scale moves slowly and the transparentness of pricing changes on short time lines in physical stores is hard to track. It exists in emergency economies - we call it price gouging - but that’s usually quite obvious. The idea of dynamic pricing has existed forever - hotels, airline flights, movie tickets, taxi rides, even electric rates. As technology advances it offers the opportunity to use the technology to shorten the time window for pricing changes more and more. An extra two tenths of a percent profit seems like a trivial amount. Amazon and Walmart combined for more than a trillion dollars in sales last year. 0.2% is a very non-trivial $2 Billion. If it becomes available, it will be exploited.

o7

Fly safe, cmdr

I’m shocked that the free market healthcare isn’t serving the needs of the population at large. This requires a fundamental change to the way we do things. I think we can all agree it’s time to create a special non-profit category for any existing for-profit healthcare or pharma company doing business in the US. They’re clearly constrained by over taxation and things like this wouldn’t happen if they were unburdened.

^/s

“live and work and build and pay in that world in an ongoing basis”

There, that’s more what they’re envisioning.

I really do boycott Exxon - at least when it’s branded. In 35 years - since the Valdez spill - I’ve bought 1 gallon of gasoline from Exxon, and that was because I needed that much to get to another station without running out of fuel. It’s a trivial exclusion, though, as their drilling and refinery operations are so large that it’s likely I’m purchasing from them, or BP, (or Chevron). I don’t know of a major supplier who isn’t tainted by some part of the process. And I’m not rich enough to have the luxury of selection most of the time.

LOL - the paperwork is the easy part. Getting money and keeping the org alive and relevant is the real work. But I think you know that. ;-)

Exactly; I view them as the worst of the lot. But, like gasoline for my car and biometrics on my driver’s license and passport, I end up holding my nose because I know that - effectively - there is no clean, convenient way to circumvent them. And paypal - I use it for business transactions when I have to. Not because I like them, but because - for a business my size - there is no other way to take a payment remotely that doesn’t carry ridiculous fees and minimums.

Maybe PayPal in-house balances for payments where it’s accepted? That’s a pretty small network (by comparison) and, really, if PayPal is your least-evil option you may as well either suck off the other corporations or suffer the inconvenience of cash.

The most difficult part is creating the charter and selecting the appropriate category; after that it’s a small filing fee (most states) and - as long as you stay under $50k income - a trivial tax reporting burden. I’ll be filing two returns - one for MD and one for VA - for two non-profits I’m on the board of this weekend. I’ll be done before breakfast. They both have federal EINs and both are small enough we use Excel for ledger (since QuickBooks has gone to online-only annual extortion as their business model). Without paid employees or stockholders (just a board of directors), edit: and have no substantial physical property, and without donations coming from prohibited individuals or sanctioned stated, there is diminishingly little paperwork. If it’s just a virtual organization with leased remote assets like web services, the bar is pretty low. Maryland has no annual fee; Virginia has a small one ($75, I believe) to maintain the corporation.

The look on her face is clearly one of disappointment. It’s funny because it encapsulates the ~~children fyrefest ~~ Willy Wonka Experience but I never doubted she was just trapped in the machine.

I can tell if China is worried about current Russia or a future US under Trump.

An iPhone and Chipotle. That dude is set.

They’d better not be playing all my free games before I get to them.

Interesting. That’s well under the limit for reporting and filing a detailed return, presuming there aren’t any other flags or limitations. The biggest stumbling block would be filtering international donations from sanctioned entities and regions, I suppose. TBH, I think the other (active) non-profit board I sit on has never actually worried, but we don’t have any members (donations coming from) outside of NA , UK and EU.

What is your annual income at the moment and do you think you can transition to your own 501c3 in a reasonable time frame. I am the director of a 501c3 which I am, for lack of a better word, “holding” until I have free time to do something with it. If you would like to discuss offline, send me a dm or just email me at my user name at gmail. This would have to be temporary and there would be some expenses for legal I’m sure, but as long as I can stay under my irs reporting threshold it should be minimal.

I have never, in my life, seen an apartment or condo with that level of stc or iic rating, much less one installed correctly. The only place I’ve been in with that kind of treatment is a SCIF for TS/SCI functions and you could build a whole good damned single family house for that kind of money.

At this point I have so much content backed up that I haven’t watched I’m not sure I’ll get through it all before I die. I say let Netflix perish on the pike of their own enshitification (ads and price increases).

There’s quite a lot of interest - and action- inside the industry surrounding conversions. I’m on the structural side and have probably seen 3-4 articles in trade rags over the past quarter about strategies and opportunities in conversions. IT may not be feasible everywhere it for every budding, but the industry (including suppliers and designers) are interested enough that it’s part of the discussion on a regular basis.