I think most of your points are correct, but you're wrong about this one

Corporations sell stock to rapidly raise capital to fund large expansion and growth. But as others have said, endless growth is impossible. Eventually corporations start flailing around looking for growth opportunities in less and less viable endeavors. Stock buybacks are simply the opposite of selling stock. They are a completely logical way for a corporation to return the capital that was raised by stock sales when the corporation has grown to the point that it can't efficiently grow any larger.

The alternative is endless mergers, acquisitions, conglomerates and eventual divestitures as an oversized corporation desperately tries to get bigger when it has already filled the niche that it was originally good at.

In general a corporation can't just endlessly produce more and innovate more. Most will reach a point where they're as good as they're going to get and then decline as they lose focus on what they're good at by trying to outgrow their niche. At that point it's best to reduce the amount of outstanding stock as a way of returning the capital that they no longer need. And then if the world changes and they need more capital for a genuine new opportunity, they can sell new shares to raise capital.

What an odd phrase. If I ask a plumber for a quote on replacing my water heater and then I decide to do it myself, has the plumber been "denied a job"?

I guess technically yes, but the plumber wasn't entitled to the job. I was thinking about hiring a plumber. They may be a very skilled plumber. But whether I hired a different plumber, or did the job myself, or even just decided not to do the job at all because I changed my mind about wanting hot water, I haven't wronged the plumber in any way by deciding not to hire.

If I think hiring somebody is the best use of my money, I'll hire them. If I'd rather not spend the money it is entirely within my rights to not hire them. If I decide to spend the money on something else instead of hiring them, that's none of their business. I don't owe them an explanation.

And there's nothing wrong with asking the questions: who is available to do work, how much will it cost to have them do the work, and do they seem like they'll do enough work to be worth the cost?

You don't incur an obligation to hire somebody until the contract is signed. And they don't get to say "but you have to hire me because I'm qualified"

I've been to Vancouver once, they definitely have an airport. Does Halifax not have one?

The last time I drove more than 120 miles in one day was 2006. That was also the first time I ever drove more than 120 miles in one day. I routinely drive 60-80 miles per day. But I live less than 30 miles from a major international airport. I guess some people live over 200 miles from an airport.

I only remember one such incident where I live and the most notable thing I remember about it was that gas stations were out of operation because of lack of electricity.

I tend to run my ICE vehicles down to a pretty low fuel level because I hate wasting time at gas stations, but if I had an EV I would plug it in every night. Some EVs make a pretty good backup battery for when the power is out.

Generators are cheap but noisy. Running a generator at full load to charge the EV and then turning it off and letting the EV power essentials like the refrigerator would be much preferable to running a generator at low to moderate load 24x7 for days.

Are you saying that wind plus solar plus nuclear will do less to combat global warming than wind plus solar?

Because I've got nothing against wind and solar, I'm in favor of more of both. But I think MacMann has a point, anyone who is opposed to nuclear is saying one of two things:
1) Global warming is not a problem because we've already got it solved without resorting to nuclear
Or
2) Nuclear power is more of a threat than global warming

And given the decades of history we have using nuclear power, including many nuclear plants still actively supplying the grid today, if global warming is less of a threat than nuclear, then we're in no danger.

Personally I think global warming is more of a threat than nuclear and is largely the fault of anti-nuclear "environmentalists" who directly caused the burning of decades worth of coal, oil and gas by slowing and obstructing the deployment of nuclear at a time when wind and solar were not viable. And I think continued obstruction of nuclear will extend the amount of time we keep burning fossil fuels regardless of how many wind and solar plants we build in the mean time.

So you're saying that global warming is a solved problem? If so, great, but I'm not convinced. I think even with wind, solar, AND nuclear, we're still going to be suffering the consequences of 50+ years of anti-nuclear propaganda.

I'd love to hear some environmentalists announce that wind and solar are now cheap enough that climate change is a solved problem because market forces will take over and price all the fossil fuels out of the market. I certainly see a lot of solar around where I live, but not much wind. Time will tell if wind and solar alone can bring the climate change issue to an end.

I think it would be prudent to allow for the possibility that wind and solar won't be enough and plan for a contingency of bringing in nuclear to fill the gap between current electricity consumption and current energy consumption. You might be assuming that we can replace all current electricity generation with wind and solar and overlooking that we need to drastically increase electricity generation in order to replace all the non-electric energy usage.

"Expected value" is a math term. They're talking probability and statistics language. The expected value of a one-in-twenty chance of winning $100 is $5. I.e. (1/20) * 100 = 5.

"same expected value" is a long way of saying $5.

No, the 25% is an assumption made by Trump's team and published in writing on that website of how much of the tariff the foreign supplier will pass through to the customer. I don't know which orifice they pulled that assumption out of, but if you read the information they published, it's a critical parameter in the equation they used to calculate the percentages that they're inaccurately calling "reciprocal tariffs".

The supplier could raise their prices by anywhere from 0% to 100% (or I suppose even more or less than that since technically they can set their prices to any number they choose) but the Trump team has based their tariff rates on their assumption that suppliers will, at least on average, choose to absorb 75% of the tariff and pass 25% on to the customer.

I'm not expressing any opinion on the accuracy of that assumption, I'm just pointing out that contrary to what the post I replied to said, Trump's team has published in writing their assumption that American consumers will pay 25% of the tariff rate. Of course it's entirely possible that what comes out of Trump's mouth bears no resemblance to what Trump's team publishes in writing.

According to https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fustr.gov%2Fissue-areas%2Fr...

The elasticity of import prices with respect to tariffs, phi, is 0.25.

I.e the US consumer will pay 25% of the tariff and the foreign supplier will pay 75%.

According to the banner on that website, this is straight from the executive office of the president, so this is what Trump's people put in writing.

From that same website:

Weighted by imports, the average across deficit countries is 45 percent, and the average across the entire globe is 41 percent.

And the Trump tariffs are based on trade deficit (not on foreign tariffs), so Trump's own office is predicting inflation at 25% of 41%-45%, so slightly above 10% inflation of prices paid by US consumers.

What Trump says verbally doesn't necessarily match what Trump's people put in writing. I'd go with what they put in writing.

But the system doesn't display whole numbers, that was my point. I have seen with my own eyes and adjusted the temperature with my own finger on thermostats in several hotel rooms where the system displayed and performed in half degrees Celsius.

I'm not disputing that there may also be thermostats that only have a resolution of whole degrees Celsius, but I know for a fact that ones exist that function in half degrees Celsius.

That makes it a user interface issue because thermostat designers make the decision of whether to design a thermostat that functions with half degree (or greater) precision. The Celsius scale does not not prevent a thermostat designer from designing a thermostat with equal or better precision than a Fahrenheit thermostat.

Neither the Celsius nor the Fahrenheit scale force the designer to limit themself to whole numbers, only aesthetic considerations might influence a designer to impose that limit. Even if the cost of the extra LCD real estate to display the decimal point an another digit were enourmous, the designer could still choose to implement half degrees "under the hood" to pinch pennies and just increment the displayed integer for every two button presses instead of every one press, and control the HVAC at a half degree increment.

No, it really isn't. It's the user interface of specific thermostats. I don't recall which countries I was in at the time, but I've definitely seen thermostats in hotel rooms where the up and down buttons change the set point by 0.5 degrees Celsius and the display showed the set point with either a .0 or .5 at the end.

It's a UI decision whether a display shows integers only, one decimal place restricted to only .0 or .5, or one decimal place that can take on all values from .0 to .9. I agree integers only is more aesthetically pleasing, but who really cares about the aesthetics of a thermostat's LCD.

Open floor plan etiquette is as follows:

• If upper management respects their employees they don't create open floor plan offices
• Conversely, if upper management creates open floor plan offices they don't respect their employees

Pretty simple to understand. The question is, what do employees do once they know whether upper management respects them or not. Some will meekly accept it, others will quit. But then there's a group that will continue to accept the paycheck but return just as little respect as they are given.

That argument makes no sense. Specifically, it makes no sense for you to engage in an argument. If an AI could allow you to do twice as much work, simply get the AI yourself and don't involve your manager. Then, let your manager know that you're willing to do more work for more money.

If your manager says they have no more work available for you to do, then just get your current work done in half the time/effort and appreciate how easy your AI has made your job. If your manager doesn't believe you can do more work because you're already doing as much as your manager believes is humanely possible and your manager doesn't know that you have an AI that can do half of it for you, offer to prove it by doing more work. If you're right, your manager will be amazed and likely consider you a top employee for new work.

If you're trying to convince your boss to pay for the AI, there's no reason why your boss should also pay you more just because the tool your boss paid for makes you more productive. You could recommend to your boss that if the company pays for an AI to help you, they could get more work out of you for the same amount money.

Companies can pay for better tools to get more work out of a given amount of employee pay, or they can pay more for employees, contractors or other companies that bring their own tools and can produce more/better results using their superior tools. There's no reason why a company should pay for the superior tools and pay the employees extra for using their superior tools.

I have to wonder if Amazon was forbidding employees from coming in to their offices. If employees wanted to be there and weren't allowed, then allowing them back would be a welcome relief.

But if they were allowed to work in the office and chose not to, then forcing them to work in the office is unlikely to beneficial. "Revitalizing" by forcing people to be somewhere they don't want to be doesn't sound very "vital" to me.

Claims that people are excited and innovative in an environment that they're forced to be against their will is definitely a lie. I can absolutely believe there are work environments where people want to be in person, so if people were prohibited from working in person and then allowed, that would be one thing. But if people were permitted to commute to an office and chose not to, forcing them to commute is not going to foster excitement and innovation.