You would prefer emotional and impassioned hyperbole? Arm waving and hand-wringing? Self-flagellation? Navel-gazing? Struggle sessions?

All of those are preferable to the United States losing hegemonic global status to China, yes. Sue me for preferring honesty over euphemism.

Classic Scorpion and the Frog tale, or the older Farmer and the Snake. https://read.gov/aesop/094.html

Good for California's budget as well.

Is this due to CA's high gas tax? That is a fixed value per gallon, so higher gas prices will not affect this right?

$0.60 + 2.25%.

The excise tax is a fixed .60+ per gallon, going up July 1. The sales tax is 2.25%, and local sales tax some additional percentage.

And all the oil companies - CRC and Chevron are huge.

Drink some clarit with the valit over a good filit.

"Clothes make the man", as the idiom says. Clothes don't impugn your character, but they define you in the eyes of others.

Having been a long-haired holey jeans-wearing guy in my past, I was naively surprised when I cut my hair and noticed that people treated me very differently in business settings. When I started wearing nicer clothes on top of that, it was night and day - the kind of reception you get in banks, anything like that. It sucks that humans are built to judge and filter on appearances, but it's just the reality. You can use it to your advantage.

Honestly, I trust these systems more than humans to do the same work. While we're all talking anecdotes, this one time at Walmart (how all good stories start) many years ago I was in the music section and these two in-store security guys approached me, saying they had told me to never come back in the store, etc., making a big scene. I so rarely go to Walmart and found the situation kind of humorous and wanted to see where it would go (knowing I had not done anything wrong now or in the past). They had seen me on video evidently and thought I was somebody else - serial shoplifter or public urinator or who knows what. Anyway, I tell them I've never been told to leave prior to this visit, didn't know what they were talking about. They were adamant that I was in the wrong, asked me to come back to the office while they looked into things. I was like, "sure!", more entertained than upset. So there I am sitting in the office while some guy combs through video footage. A guy of authority comes in, tired demeanor, asks these guys - well, did you match his ID? "No", says he. Checks ID, realizes I'm not their guy. Many stressful apologies on their behalf. But that's humans for you.

Have you ever tried milking a moose?

There was an article about a year ago concerning the students' using AI to complete work, and teachers using AI tools to detect if AI tools were being used to complete the work, so (even a year ago) you found this absurd scenario where it was just robots checking the work of other robots. Did a quick search for said article but couldn't find it. Anyway, humorous. Coupled with the WaPo article today about people "speed-running" their degrees, it's wacky, wacky world for "education". https://archive.is/bPi82

> utopian dreams got hijacked by self-dealers

Such is the fate of all utopian dreams.

I can foresee a modern code-signing regimen with paid gatekeepers coming to mitigate the risk of supply chain attacks. Imagine the purported strength of mythos automating scans of PRs or releases with some manner of indelible and traceable certification. There's some industrious company - a modern verisign of old - that will attempt to drop in a layer of $250-500 per year fees for that service, capture the app stores to require it. Call me a cynical bastard, but "I was there, Gandalf".