DST works by tricking people to wake up and get to their daily activities an hour earlier than they normally would. And it is sold as "giving" people an hour extra in the evening. They could do that without changing their clocks by just waking up at 5 instead of 6 and working 7-4 instead of 8-5, but most people don't want to wake up earlier. So we use DST to trick them into doing it.

Doing DST as a whole society also helps for people who don't have flexible hours for their daytime activities.

But i realized a while ago that the twice a year time change is the PRIMARY reason why DST even works. Because without the constant change, people would just adapt to the new timezone. Daily activities (like school and work) would shift to starting an hour later. Lunch would start being eaten from 1-2 instead of 12-1, as the new time would be when the sun is at its highest. Dinner would be 6-7 instead of 5-6, because that is closer to when the sun is setting. It would take several years, but eventually, society would shift its schedule to closer match the sun. And the way that DST "tricks" people into getting up an hour earlier would stop.

btw, your preference (and mine) for year standard time is the way most of the world works. Gray countries in that map do not do DST. It's really only US, Canada, Europe and a few other places. And I'll never understand DST in Alaska, which is already entirely in the wrong time zone.

It isn't about Hollywood making movies that Chinese audiences would appreciate. It's about making movies that the authoritarian Chinese government would allow to be available to Chinese audiences. There's a difference.

I'm inclined to agree, but thinking about it there might be some things that an "agentic" AI could help with. Like "fill out my timecard for today" or "every time Outlook web logs me out, log back in with my credentials." You know, the things that would give the bureaucrats a heart attack if they knew I could do them instead of wasting my time.

Assuming I trusted the AI enough, of course.

You think it is bad timing because it will increase the number of people leaving Disney services. But I think it will muddy the waters so no one will be able to definitively say why people left. Did they leave over Kimmel? Did they leave because the price went up? Who can say? This way, no one can be blamed for falling subscriber numbers.

It may be bad for the company, but it is good for executives who don't want to be blamed.

Of course, the most likely explanation is that this had been planned and the timing was just a coincidence. But that explanation is boring.

... Florida does not have a problem with invasive Python scripts.

As a software developer in Florida, I can tell you that Python scripts are definitely invasive. Twenty years ago, there were practically none, and now they are all over the place! They gobble up precious white space and unused braces just fall from the brace trees to rot, uneaten. They've driven cute, innocent Perl and shell scripts almost to extinction! It's quite a problem almost no one is talking about...

Python is kind of the modern Visual Basic in that it makes it easier for non-experts to create applications to accomplish their specific tasks. While this is probably overall a good thing, it does mean that there is lots of poorly written Python code out there. Even Python code written by professional software developers can be bad. I dealt with some Python scripts once that took 30 seconds to print help usage because of how many imports they were doing.

As far as GUIs, PyQt is useful for creating Qt GUIs. Qt generally uses native platform widgets and themes so they blend well on various platforms. Unfortunately, it is one of those batteries that is not included. Though I just checked and the `PyQt5` module was installed on my local Linux machine, so YMMV.

Jupyter notebooks are a web based Python interface that can help visualize results from Python functions, but again that is a separate package, and may not be what you are looking for.

That article is dated September 30, 2016, which is probably the Friday referenced. I was curious, and found this follow-up, dated 11/04/2016, indicating that lawsuit was again dropped. it further stated that the first lawsuit was dismissed because the federal law cited did not apply (apparently it would have had to have been a race based rape, which seems like a really crazy law).

btw, this was based on a some simple Google searching. Here is a brief Wikipedia description of the case: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FDonald_Trump_sexual_misconduct_allegations%23Katie_Johnson%2FJane_Doe_(1994). Wikipedia seems to match both articles, and confirms that this is a 9 year old case.

When the Gov is paying all of the bills it can really drive down prices

That's why all those tanks and fighter jets and aircraft carriers are so CHEAP!

Or alternatively, consider the US university system prices when the government started providing more money (in the form of loans) to students who otherwise couldn't afford college. Yes, that's not the only factor, but an increase in the demand for something, especially by giving out money for that thing, will likely increase that things price, not lower it.

A person or group of people suing a private company falls under none of them.

It falls under the first of them, in the appellate form. SCOTUS would not re-try the case or anything, but could consider the application of law(s) used in the case and whether those laws are compatible with the constitution.

I think we're probably saying effectively the same thing, just in different ways.

SCOTUS only hears cases that related to either lawsuits involving the government or government officials, or matters of law/legality (including constitutional/civil rights).

The second part of that is correct, though the first is not. Any cases could come before the Supreme Court, though a great many will involve the government (executive branch) in some way. This is kind of a selection bias, though, because the government has the resources to appeal (or fight appeals) all the way to the Supreme Court, and because the government is a party in a great many court cases (all criminal cases, for example).

Important cases do tend to involve the government, though, since they establish what the government can or cannot do, which affects all of us.

[ IANAL, so any or all of this could be wrong, but I think it is correct ]

with many asking when "Papers, please?" will become the standard mantra when trying to go anywhere

I guess you haven't flown in the US in the last couple of decades, as showing your "papers" to a government agent is now standard practice (and has been for a while). ISTR that the TSA wanted to expand into train stations, too, but I don't know if that ever happened.

I'd at least like a more secure way to validate my identity, something that is not so simple for criminals to fake.

This is one of my personal pet peeves whenever I have to use Windows. Try having multiple overlapping Putty windows up and not getting confused. I'm not sure what causes it, but some windows don't even have the single black pixel border. Windows Explorer (the file browser) is the worst with this, if you have two of those overlapping. Worse, there's not even (AFAIK) a setting to restore window borders.

Both of those examples have Wikipedia pages:

Hawaiian Sovereignty Movement lists several active organizations pushing for Hawaiian independence
Texas Succession Movements lists many efforts over the years

There was a failed bill in 2023 in the Texas legislature to have a state wide referendum on secession: Texas Independence Referendum Act. It wasn't popular enough to even get a hearing, and it's not clear a state can legally secede from the US (there was a whole war over that sort of thing), but it's not like the proponents were put in a camp.

The US has plenty of people with crazy ideas. We don't jail them unless they appear violent or dangerous, such as advocating hurting or killing people. I think that's because we realize that we all have ideas that someone else would consider crazy.

Your referenced story is about Elon calling someone else a "pedo guy" in a tweet that was later deleted, getting sued for defamation in the US, and the jury finding Musk not liable, mostly due to lack of evidence (the plaintiff's legal team was "unable to prove their case and should have focused more on the evidence" according to the jury foreman). Maybe try reading your references before posting in the future?

I was curious, as I had never heard about these educational claims, so I did some brief research. See Wikipedia on Musk's Education. There does seem to be some conflicting claims of when degrees were awarded, but it appears the University of Pennsylvania did give him Bachelor's degrees in Physics and Economics. He was also admitted to a graduate program at Stanford, but did not enroll. That probably falls short of what most people think of as "dropping out" (i.e., going then leaving), but it's not too far off.