No. The AI is a red herring. It has nothing to do with this. What these systems are doing is using actual rent amounts that tenants pay to determine what to charge. That rent information is not publicly available. That's the problem. If these systems stuck to the rents sought in publicly posted advertisements, it'd be no problem. Using that non-public information to set rents is already illegal; it's a form of price-fixing. What this law does is makes it clear that it's illegal to do even if the information transfer is conducted by a third-party.

It isn't really twice as fast in Europe, though. While, yes, standard US outlets are 120V versus Europe's 230V, amperage also matters because what controls cooking time is wattage and wattage = voltage times amperage. In the US, kettles are typically 1500W or, if you dig a bit, 1800W. You can also find much smaller ones for things like camping and travelling, usually around 600-800W. Looking at European models (which is difficult to do from the US), I see that 3000W is pretty common in the UK, where they use ring mains: 240V at 32A, of which a maximum 12.5A draw is allowed per outlet. Mainland Europe, however, doesn't use ring mains, and commonly has circuits of 230V at 6A or 10A, although 16A are supposedly also common. Higher amperages also exist but for specific purposes only (same as in the US). At 6A, you can only do 1380W kettle, less than in the US, assuming intermittent use. If the manufacturer assumes continuous use, then it's limited to 1035W. For 10A circuits, it's a bit better at 2300W/1725W. Looking at what's actually available, I see a lot of 1200W and 2000W models, which aren't far off from what the US has. Only the UK has the higher 3000W models, as well as China, but China doesn't really count because their safety standards aren't really up to snuff.

Anyway, all of this is academic, because my 1800W kettle boils 1.5 L of water in about 3 minutes. That's good enough for anyone, and much faster than my gas stove is. If that minute and and a half was that important to me, I'd run a 240V outlet and buy a UK 3000W kettle, but it's just not worth it. What I'm saying is that the 230V versus 120V debate is missing the point. In the US, all circuits are 15A minimum, which is more wattage than the smallest EU circuits, and, in the US 20A circuits are practically standard for most purposes (you usually just have to have multiple outlets on the same circuit to use them, or the special 20A outlets or the 15A/20A combo outlets that I see in most new work around here. Yup, 20A devices use a different plug from 15A devices, but it's possible to have an outlet that can handle both at the same time.) This means that it doesn't really matter which voltage you use; you can do the same things with it.

Also, I'd like to point out that most US homes have split single phase 240V 200A service, while most EU homes have single phase 240V 63A service. Some older homes have 100A or 150A, but 200A is standard in the US for new homes and retrofits. And, in some areas, three phase is becoming more common. In particular, delta high leg three phase, which gives you 120V, 208V, and 240V circuits and 240V delta three phase power, which is the best of all worlds, again at 200A. The usual three phase is 120vY208v, which is nice, but you don't get a true 240V. This is also why we went with 240V over 230V like the EU or 220V like China. Most things will run just fine of either 208V or 240V, which means that we can use most of our stuff with either type of power. Only motors really give much of a crap, and they often have tapped windings so you can use either with the same motor. Anyway, 200A service is way better than 63A service. I've read that for new work, 125A service is becoming quite common in the EU, but I haven't seen anything about anything as high as 200A service for homes in the EU or UK. So, we got you beat there. Having everyone at 200A service makes electric car charging a much easier thing to do. Having three phase everywhere would be even better, but 63A 230V three phase, wattage wise is the equivalent of roughly 110A 230V single phase, so even if the euros are doing three phase, the US still has them beat. Now, 125A 230V three phase would beat out our single phase 240V 200A service but just barely. Of course, when the US eventually switches everyone over to three phase, it'll be at 200A, so we'll still win, especially if delta high leg gets used, which is what you'd want to use for retrofits from split single phase. USA USA USA!

Yeah, IPAs. I've tried to like them, but they are just too damn bitter. Now, regular Pale Ale is good stuff. It's like IPA but with 1/3 the hops and is amazing. I think IPA drinkers just think that more bitter=more better, but that's nonsense. Same as people who drink super dark espresso, neat. Like what are you tasting there? It's like drinking liquid vulcanized rubber. Oddly, though, I do have two shots of super dark espresso every morning, but I brew them with twice the normal amount of water (so as lungos), and mix them with 10 ounces of half-and-half, two scoops of unflavored whey protein isolate, a scoop of Dutch-process cocoa powder, and some creatine, choline, and inositol. It's awesome. (I pre-mix the powders for convenience and also to sieve out any lumps.) The espresso being extra dark is necessary because of how hard I dilute it. Even though I add no sweeteners, the milk's natural sugars are enough sweetness for me. The extra fat from the half-and-half and the cocoa powder really mellows everything out and gives it a great mouthfeel. When I want regular coffee, however, I usually just drink some medium-roast drip coffee or some of that espresso mixed half-and-half with half-and-half.

That is definitely not how I remember those jokes going. The first one was about Jews, not elephants, and involved some absurdly large number fitting in the ashtray. The second was always, "Chicken Butt," for some reason, probably the rhyme.

To be fair, this "new" pronunciation is a lot closer to the Latin original, which didn't have a Y-sound at the front (so started with OO, not YOO) and had the emphasis on the first syllable. So, OO-ra-nus, with the a being a lot like the vowel in the English word "lot" and u being a lot like the u in the English word "push". The original Greek, from which the Latin came, had the same sounds except the final u was replaced with an o, which sounded like the o in "Oh, Yeah." Later versions of Greek shifted the emphasis to the final syllable, but never changed the vowel sounds significantly. Later versions of Latin changed the final u's sound to be like the oo in "Boo", same as the first syllable, except that the first syllable, in all cases in Latin, should be twice as long sounding as the other two syllables.

Yeah, ethnic intimidation is pretty shitty. The police probably shouldn't have arrested. It's a bit of a stretch to arrest him, but it's still shitbag behavior and shouldn't be tolerated, at least not by society in general. Of course, I'm Anti-Fa and think punching Nazis is a perfectly reasonable thing to do, regardless of their First Amendment rights to spew hate. Had I been there, he'd have gotten a bloody nose before the arrest, that's for sure.

No. She wasn't arrested for reading the Bible quietly in public. She wasn't even arrested for praying in public or even for protesting. She was arrested for intimidating women going into an abortion clinic in violation of a law banning people from doing that. Now you may think that her actions weren't intimidation, but law says otherwise. It specifically defines her actions as illegal intimidation. That she was praying whole doing it is irrelevant.

I'll take "Shit that didn't happen" for $2000, Alex.

"Arresting people for quietly reading the Bible in public."

Dude, PTSD is more common than you think. It can happen from a single traumatic event. And it doesn't have to involve constant horrifying panic attacks. I was diagnosed with PTSD after I had a nose surgery done. The post surgery involved having my nasal passages completely stuffed with gauze for a weekend. I felt like I was choking the entire time. For years afterwards, every time my nose would get really stuffy, I'd feel an anxiety attack coming on and start to really freak out and panic. It's terrifying. It's been 15 years and attacks can still happen, although it's much less likely now than before. I carry pseudoephedrine and Afrin on me at all times just in case. So, yeah, I can see how such a large proportion of society could have PTSD.

Why would anyone want this? I literally stopped using my desktop after like Win98. I just put everything in the Start Menu. Now, with Windows 10/11 searchable Start Menus, I don't even need to keep the Start Menu shortcuts structured; I can just start typing the name of the program and hit Enter when it comes up. Actually seeing the Desktop would be very, very weird for me, since I'm usually running every program Maximized at almost all times. The only time I use unmaximized windows is when I want to drag stuff from one window to another or when I want to do a task that involves looking at one program while using another. These scenarios, while quite common for me, never involve exposing the desktop. The several windows just get resized an end up taking up the whole screen together. I'm not even sure if there's any icons at all on the desktop anymore, since I only ever see it for a few seconds after a reboot, before my browser restarts. And, for commonly used programs, I just pin them to the taskbar, leaving even less reason to use the Desktop. The whole Desktop metaphor has definitely run its course.

The only person I know who I've seen actively use the desktop in recent years is my dad, who's in his seventies and has a program that can't be pinned to the taskbar for some reason (it's very old and it launches a different program after login, which leaves a second icon on the taskbar, while the launcher icon sits there unused. My dad hates this for some reason, so the launcher icon sits on the desktop.) Also, he doesn't like typing if he can avoid it, so the Start button's search feature goes unused, so he likes to have shortcuts on the desktop for stuff. It's weird, but if that's what he wants, I'm not going to fight him over it. I also can't get him to use an ad-blocker because some of the right-wing news sites he likes get pissy with ad-blockers and he doesn't want to pay for them or learn how to turn off the adblocker for specific sites. It doesn't help that those sites will happily tell you how to remove the adblocker entirely but not how to turn it off just for their site. Assholes. This means that I have to remove his malware on a regular basis.

Well, except for the journalists of NPR. Those guys are the most serious journalists you'll ever see. That's why Trump and his cronies tried to destroy them by defunding public broadcasting. And, no, I'm not being sarcastic. The only reason they all seem like a bunch of liberals is because reality itself has a liberal bias. They (NPR) and the BBC, AP, and Reuters are the most neutral news agencies to ever exist. That's why Republicans (let's be real, Trumpsters) hate them so much.

I don't think squaring the circle is a good example here, since the problem isn't so much a find the number problem, but a find the answer while restricting yourself to a few specific operations problem. So the non-algebraic solution doesn't count because it doesn't follow the rules. People knew what the answer was as a number that you can calculate for ages. They weren't sure if you could do it while following the arcane rules of ancient compass and straightedge constructions. It's turns out that the answer is no.

War isn't hell
War is war and Hell is hell, and of the two, war is a lot worse.
How do you figure that, Hawkeye?
Easy, Father. Tell me, who goes to Hell?
Sinners, I believe.
Exactly. There are no innocent bystanders in Hell.
But war is chock full of them. Little kids, criples, old ladies.
In fact, except for a few of the brass, almost everybody involved is an innocent bystander.