At least it's local and offline.

I hear a local burger and hot dog joint in Fortuna CA was saved by being sold and is now successful again. I spoke with the prior owner on several occasions because I was working on his trailers (that was my prior job) and he was planning to close it because he allegedly couldn't afford to pay the cooks.

And that's great, but it mostly affects some high school students in one town and just a few employees, so there's no reason for anyone else to care.

At the big corporate level, M&A really do always seem to be harmful, with both employees and customers suffering. And I don't think it's unreasonable to blame not only the influence of venture capital, but also the existence of rapid trading and stock buybacks. Stock purchases should be investments, not just a game played with numbers.

Oh, stop. Some life around deep ocean vents will be fine ;)

It really is crazy how people don't get that our species has (and others also have) enjoyed a temporary period of relative stasis, and we have disturbed that condition with our activities. I once would have thought the rapid loss of species would convince people, but obviously I now see that depends on people knowing things.

"It says EU laws -- which have sought to make it easier for smaller firms to compete with big tech -- have resulted in some Apple features and enhancements being delayed for European users"

Restrictions are not features for users, despite many hostages' Stockholm syndromes to the contrary.

"So unless your sport involve ZERO upper and lower body strength, it makes sense to separate sports by sex"

Per your own logic this is based on the importance of strength only. Therefore this assertion only makes sense if it's a sport where dexterity cannot make up for strength.

You don't know what Ad Hominem is.

It is NOT insulting people.

It is where you say an idea is wrong because someone said it. It may also be accompanied by an insult to attempt to support the argument.

When someone says only an idiot would believe something and then explains why, that is not Ad Hominem. It's just an argument with an insult next to it.

Feel free to object to the insult, but don't make shit up.

I've had lambic, no clue on whether it was authentic or not, I didn't enjoy it though. But I still don't think it's bad, it's just not for me.

The evidence was deleted :D

It is and always has been insane that all these governments run mostly on Windows.

A lot of them use to use a lot of IBM mainframe stuff behind the scenes, and there's still a fair bit of it around underpinning things, but pretty much all of the new projects are Windows-based.

They've wanted to conquer the whole Arab world since forever, and they are now attacking pieces of it outside of Gaza. They wrote themselves a book that said it was all theirs, and now they're trying to make it come true. The evangelicals are helping them try because they believe it will bring about the end times. As it happens, there's several of the foretold signs around right now, so they naturally think it's working and are doubling down. In the bargain, we have the tools and equipment to make it happen, and long since furnished the technology to Israel to try to make it happen sooner. But they kicked out Netanyahu and things were looking relatively sane for a while (though the Israeli settlers never stopped stealing more land or murdering more Palestinians) and we're all supposed to believe that none of it is their fault. This would be funny if it weren't actually terrifying that people can believe that.

Soon there won't be any Palestinians alive in Gaza.

It won't take him forever to finish his genocide.

Is it even "backing Palestine" to oppose genocide of Palestinians? I can't stand either religion whose followers lay claim to Gaza, but I don't think that disliking someone's religion is sufficient justification for genocide. Israel was founded on the British partition of Palestine by the USA through the UN and it immediately began literal and self-described colonization of as much land as it could get its hands on, whether or not it was included in the lands which were handed to it.

Hamas is terrible, but it was founded in the eighties and in response to Israeli terrorist organizations which were murdering Palestinians, and Netanyahu has repeatedly and publicly told us that he makes sure Hamas receives funding which is sent to it as part of his Gaza strategy — so not only does history not start October 7, but Netanyahu deliberately made sure that something like the October 7 attack would happen, and then proceeded to go from semi-genocidal behavior to fully genocidal behavior. Therefore it's clear that his goal was always genocide. What did the world expect Palestinians to do, roll over?

To me, both Hamas and Israel's terrorist organizations are the enemies of not just all people who even believe in morality, but also the future of humanity because this conflict increases the chance of nuclear war day by day. We are closer to it today than we have ever been because the US-Russia cold war was between two nations with some things to lose. But Hamas was also inevitable and the blame for their successes falls on Netanyahu's willful insurance of their funding. And We The People of these United States of America have in turn enabled both him and Israel to do what they are doing in the region.

On that basis, we've already picked sides, and we've chosen the side of genocide.

HahaHAHAHAHhAHAHAhAhAHAHAHAHA

Nuclear can only be sold with lies. And here you are trying to sell it even though you never get paid, what a simpering clown.

What kind of cost are you babbling about? You never were smart enough to communicate clearly, and you still aren't.

Real question: What would be the point of that? Even hoarded gold would have no value if nobody but a select group of people could do anything with it.

Ad Hominem is not a white rapper.