A local or state cop is investigating a case but he can't quite justify a warrant, but he's all but sure the guy is guilty. And oh by the way, the internet was involved somehow, making it technically a federal crime too, "because internet" (technically, "because interstate commerce," but I digress).

He calls up his friends at the federal prosecutor's office and says "Can you take this case? I've done most of the legwork but I'm stymied by this state law that says I can't buy data from a data broker and I can't quite justify getting a warrant, but you can easily buy the data from the data broker which should make this case a slam-dunk."

Assuming the local/state prosecutor has a good reputation/relationship with the federal DA and the federal DA is interested in taking this type of case in the first place, you now have a "workaround" to the state law.

Was your grandfather Rufus Mayflower?

School administrator: "Hey Siri, what's this ChatGPT thing and what do we need to do to prepare for it?"
Siri: "I dunno, ask Alexa."

If this is a "million dollars per patient" thing, that's going to be a problem. If it's a rarely-used treatment, that could very well be the case.

If the problem is common enough that the initial investment can be spread over millions of patients, it may still cause sticker shock but it won't be a bankruptcy-inducer for un(der)insured parents.

rich people are not smarter than poor people
Not inherently, no.

Sadly, poor people (in the USA at least) are more likely to live (or be pushed/forced to live) in areas with toxins like lead that lower IQ. There are also other things that affect IQ that affect the rich and the poor unequally.

If you took raw IQ scores of everyone in the USA and sorted by economic status, I would expect more affluent people to have a slightly higher IQ. Or rather, I would expect poor people, on average, to have an artificially depressed IQ. I would also expect this difference to disappear after you factored out differences in exposure to toxins, good diets, exposure to "enrichment activities" as a child, and other things that affect IQ.

--

BTW, yes, I know IQ isn't the be-all-end-all to measuring intelligence(s), but for the purposes of this discussion, it's a reasonable proxy. Whatever intelligence is, and however you measure it, it's all but certain that early-life environmental influences (lead, mental stimulation, etc.) can affect the intelligence of adults.

Private industry.

The iPhone-swallows-your-face virus has been infecting Americans since 2007.

Not quite... from what we've seen so far, the "negotiated" outcome is objectively worse for the US -- but Trump ends up personally wealthier. And it's the personal benefit to Trump that is really what he's after. Partly self-enrichment, mostly the feeling that he can make the world grovel.

3% is not going to be enough, expect 3 times as much cuts by the year end, then twice more as much in the following year. The money isn't flowing, once the money is not flowing the cuts start. Money flows when the economy expands due to actual increase of production or money flows when it is handed out for free by borrowing, printing. Once the flow slows down or stops, the music stops, everyone tries to grab the closest chair. Every company will be shrinking this year and in the subsequent years, until the attitudes change, government actually shrinks by a couple of orders of magnitude, rules that prevent productivity become unenforceable and/or are rescinded, gold replaces fake paper as money, then people will start rebuilding.

iPhone controlls YOU!

I think the pre-Reagan rates were sufficient. A balance is required; extremely high rates just motivate the wealthy to work harder to find workarounds.

you know, over a decade ago I wrote here that the government will be eliminated, that gold will become defacto currency, that debts will have to be paid and restructured, that laws will have to be rolled back, that government will be scaled down due to self destruction and lack of productivity. This id happening. I postulate that government has no authority and that individual has the right not to be stolen from by the government. The country you speak of used to exist before this giant government and it will exist after it.

Imagine for a moment that government is 100% efficient, so it is that efficient at taking money from Bob to subsidize Jane. The problem is not lack of efficiency, fraud or abuse, the problem is the very concept that Bov should be feeding Jane and that government will enforce that.

Bullshit. There are multiple Supreme Court rulings upholding the free speech rights of non-citizens. I recommend you start with Bridges v Wixon. And even the current very-conservative court is going to rule against the administration in the end, just watch.

Also, I notice that you ignored the points about suppression of freedom of the press or the ability of lawyers to advocate for clients who oppose the government. Care to point out where Obama did those things?

I get that you're (rightly) pissed at Trump and Elon, but that's just dead wrong. SpaceX isn't getting any handouts from the federal government. They're getting launch contracts, yes, but at a lower price point than any other launch provider, ever. Hate on Elon all you like, but the Falcon 9 is the cheapest and most reliable orbital rocket ever built, and has reduced US space launch costs enormously, especially if you count the political costs of being beholden to Russia for space access. Or would you rather go back to the space shuttle, with per-launch costs of upwards of $2B, rather than the ~$80M SpaceX charges?