They don’t have a water district because it’s literally too expensive to build and not because some taxes Boogeyman.

This is nonsense. It's precisely because of a belief in a "taxes Boogeyman."

Necessities "too expensive to build" for individuals are what taxes are for: water, sewer, roads, fire departments, etc. Individuals buying into 5-house developments without water are finding out the consequences of their philosophy -- and don't like it. And rather than recognize the predictable outcome of their belief, they demand necessities from nearby people more responsible than themselves.

Let's extend this thought experiment a little. Consider just forum posts; the numbers will be somewhat similar for articles and other writings, as well as photos and videos.

A bot creates how many more posts than a human? Being (ridiculously) conservative, we'll say 10x more.

On day one: 10 humans are posting (for simplicity's sake) 10 times a day, totaling 100 posts. Bot is posting 100 a day. For a total of 200 human and bot posts; 50% of which are the bot.

In your (extended) example, at the end of a year: 10 humans are still posting 100 times a day. The 10 bots are posting a total of 1000 times a day. Bots are at 90%, humans 10%.

This statistic can lead you to think human participation in the Internet is difficult to find.

Returning to reality, consider how inhuman AI bots are, with each probably able to outpost humans by millions or billions of times under millions of aliases each. If you find search engines, articles, forums, reviews, and such are bonkers now, just wait a few years. Predicting general chaotic nonsense for the Internet is a rational conclusion, with very few islands of humanity. Unless bots are stopped.

Right now though, bots are increasing.

As to how rationales go, this is the clearest.

I hate it.

The arguments are pretty spot on (with plenty of exceptions, e.g. efforts to privatize healthcare in each country; but we're generalizing here), not so much the conclusion:

not sure why you’re talking about expanding the very thing we’re politically unable to sustain as if it’s a way to sidestep the problem.

Unsustainable: US healthcare for profit. Evidence: Most expensive healthcare in the world with average or worse results.

Sustainable: Universal healthcare for everyone. Evidence: Every other country in North America, Europe, Australia, parts of Africa and South America.

This looks to be more an endorsement of moderation principles and rules, not determining truth of comments.

For the difficulties in determining what's true, see the kerfuffle about Media Bias Fact Check.

The EU has such, General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), works reasonably well. Pretty good place to start.

In 2016, HDDs were more reliable (MTBF).

In 2022, for the first 5 years, SSDs are looking more reliable. With more of a constant failure rate (1%/yr), than the increasing failure rate of HDDs after 5 years.

(Caveat: not just bit rot, but general failure data.)

Small enough to fit on a CD, which isn't everyone's definition of "small." There are, of course, much smaller Linux distros, less than a tenth the size; particularly if CLI is adequate.

A registration system where only registered parts are allowed, so no clean room (software engineering) third-party manufacturing? Every single part has to be registered with the original device manufacturer? This seems like a detour around right to repair.

The US is already among the worst for infant mortality (bottom 4th among North American and Western European countries). The downward-trend causes and solutions are interrelated and complex, and include (and aren't limited to):

• For profit (privatized) healthcare (for those under 65, the child-raising generations); solution: universal basic (single-payer) healthcare.
• Laws limiting healthcare options for women; solution: reinstate Roe v. Wade
• Limiting financial support for families forced by law (and religion-based moral public pressure) into providing for a child they can't afford; solution: universal basic income and healthcare.
• Local environmental conditions (chemical exposure of workers and residents); solution: improve, enforce, and fund environmental protection.
• Pharmaceuticals based on loose evidence for lack of harm (e.g. short-term, limited, selective studies); solution: independent long-term studies based on evidence of safety.

None of the problems are a surprise, they are the predictable consequences of choices. None of the solutions are flawless, even while they head in a more public direction.

The way the market works: You charge a competitive price that allows you to cover your costs and make a profit. If your product provides enough value to the buyer, they’ll pay for it.

That's what's taught. There's quite a bit more in practice, including: what insurance companies learned from management consultants.

But they aren’t colluding to eek every ounce of money from people.

Maybe so, though there appears to be a common interest.

Be careful of printers with chipped toner though. Older models still rock.

It's not in the Bridge Command Line Options, but, depending on your install:

"/usr/lib/protonmail/bridge/proton-bridge-launcher" "--no-window"

One of the greatest advantages of the totalitarian elites of the twenties and thirties was to turn any statement of fact into a question of motive. -- Hannah Arendt

It's a decent testable hypothesis. If there were a center. Which seems obvious in the familiar mechanical way of say a firecracker. It certainly has a center with debris going every direction from that point.

However (to use a problematic oversimplification): what if the universe has a similarity to the surface of a balloon being blown up, where is the center?

Wherever you put your finger, the whole rest of the surface of the balloon is expanding away from that point. One center point is earth. Every other place in the universe also appears to be a center.

When looking at the evidence, data from telescopes and such, describing the expansion of the universe is closer to the balloon surface theory than the firecracker theory. Even though the firecracker theory is easier to comprehend.

While the article discusses antibiotic resistant gonorrhea in China, the US, and Canada, the problem is not about one country, or one country versus another; but rather...

... this is not just an alarming finding for China but also a "pressing public health concern" for the entire world.

I haven’t read the graphic novel of the Handmaid’s tale, but I don’t know if I would read the book to 14 year olds.

This reads like the ugly kind of censorship. Where: 1) without knowledge of the graphic book, calling for its universal removal from school libraries. 2) not knowing if 14 year-olds should read it, ban it (i.e. ban all books that can't be read by the youngest library patron; a notion few books could survive). And 3) belittling people (calling those who disagree with uninformed censorship "ass-mad up the wazoo").

Now there is a little nuance to the post, but it's outweighed by crude assessments.

In addition to the Texas stand on Medicaid expansion, from the article:

Texas is "ground zero" for the Medicaid unwinding, Alker said. The state leads the U.S. in disenrollments, with around 1.7 million this year, according to KFF.

There's certainly a history of Unix and Unix-like forks; which is rather simple compared to the Linux distro forks (go right to the big pic).

The judge leaned back in a squeaky chair, self-righteously satisfied that the letter of the law had been followed.

The spirit of the law lay trampled on the ground, unable to get up or even breathe. Until the public, individuals carrying the breath of actual humanity, walked into the judge's chambers, giving the spirit mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Offering a mirror to the judge, who didn't know how reflection works.