Layoffs are common very large companies because of how they operate.

Although they start as innovative companies once they hit a certain size threshold internal inertia prevents any significant innovation.

In order to maintain growth they must buy smaller innovative companies and capitalize on the innovation using their vaster resources.

After they have sucked every last bit of money the purchased innovation, they layoff employees they purchase with the innovative company and all those they added in its ramp up.

They then go on the hunt to purchase the next smaller innovative company.

Mega corporations are a parasite on the economy.

Followed by your grandfather’s favorite Nirvana!

Public indecency in front of a group of police officers was goto for many homeless people in my state. It’s a minor crime with up to 90 days in jail.

Flash th cops in late November, get out in early March.

Much safer than trying to live on the streets over the winter.

The last major antitrust action on this scale in the U.S. 8 years to process.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System

This type of lawsuit is why the billionaire bro’s are backing the senile rapist and felon. Making them play somewhat fair ruins their business plan.

Firing middle managers is a fun way to kill the company. Not that cleaning house is a bad idea. Unfortunately the people making decisions of who to keep and who to let go are usually idiots.

Middle Managers are promoted for two reasons: technical expertise and ass-kissing expertise. Now the technical experts tend to not mix well with incompetent parasitic c-suite types idiots. The ass-kissers are beloved by the c-suite as that is their only role in life.

So when firings come around guess who they get rid of? Then 1-3 years later everyone is shocked when everything starts to fall apart.

Yes.

For a long time identifying bacteria required growing them on different media. If then bacteria didn’t grow on the media, we didn’t know what it was. However for most pathogenic bacterium we did figure out how to culture them.

Then molecular biology advanced to a level where we can amplify and sequence a single bacterium’s DNA. This has led to a continuous stream of new species discoveries from different environments.

Finding a new pathogenic bacteria for humans is still a rare discovery.

They also need to remove the limited liability from companies for intentional illegal activities.

illegal business practices should be charged to the people involved instead of the company. The executives who made the decision to break the law lose personal assets.

Otherwise the shitheads just pass the company losses onto the employees: no raises, hiring freezes, layoffs, reduction in benefits, etc…

Academia is usually about minutiae, not concepts. Sometimes they get so hyperfocus in small areas that they are completely unable to give a general summary of what they are doing in the bigger picture. To do so would require them to understand things outside of their very narrow field of study.

Cancer is a DNA mutation. Those mutations can be hereditary, random chance, or environmentally caused.

I have been using custom start menus since the whole win8 full screen disaster. Every time I see the default win 10 or Win 11 menu I cringe. So much crap in the way.

Process optimization reaches a point of diminishing returns. Then if tweaked further it degrades the performance. Microsoft reached the close to the optimal OS design at Win7. It’s all been downhill since then.

The mobile OS systems are reaching the same point. Optimization has occured and most of the “new” additions degrade the user experience.

My personal theory:

First off, raw milk does taste noticably different than pasteurized and homogenized milk you find at the store.

Pasteurization: heating the milk triggers the unfolding of proteins (Denaturation). This is what kills the bacteria but can also change the flavor of the milk.

Homogenization. This process breaks up the fat into smaller segments so they stay in solution in the milk. The result is a less creamy flavor.

People instinctually associate flavor with nutritional value. They think that better flavored food = better for you. This sort-of works in tomatoes and a few other fruit/vegetables. However taste perception is a complex blend of genetics, environmental conditions, and psychology. So the results are inherently unpredictable and completely unreliable.

The unpasteurized crowd all fall for the 'it tastes better so it must be better". They then make all sorts of excuses to justify their instinct. " Big corporate milk is evil!!" Blah blah blah.

Large corporations rarely innovate and try new things. Most innovation comes from smaller players with limited market share taking risks.

Large companies buy out smaller ones who create cash cows from taking large risks. The large company then milks the cash cows until they are completely dead.

The consolidation of studios to a few megacorporations has led to this inevitable end. The solution is simple: break them up. If we have 30 or so similar sized studios competing, we will get better movies/TV again.

After much debate over copious drinks at the bar, we finally decided to settle the argument with darts.

0 are all crossed.

1’s are written as l

7’s are all crossed.

And 9’s… Well we got kicked out and it was never settled. How was I supposed to know the nickname Nicky sounds like the French word “Niquer” and somebody (Nicolas) got all bent out of shape over it. “Hey Nicky it’s your turn!” apparently was not well received by a drunk frenchman.

Some way to identify the person who wrote it is also helpful. Different cultures write numbers differently.

The French person reads the top one as 1 , 2, 3.

The American reads it as 7, 2, 3.

That’s just Min.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Min_(god)

No - you missed my direction.

The paragraph is an overly polite way of writing to avoid any semblance of disparaging the other person. As mine was clearly written as a personal anecdote there is no need to qualify your remarks as non-derogatory.

Generally I see people develop those types of phrasing habits when they have negative experiences with misunderstanding in the past. Very common with many PhD’s communicating with MBA’s, sales or production teams. A little overly verbose but carefullly respectful to avoid conflict. It’s a very good habit to have professionally but quite funny when out of context.

First paragraph had me laughing. Somebody has spent a lot of time in private industry and has gotten burned a few times.

As for #2 it depends on the age of the industry. Here is the life cycle of research driven industries as I see it.

Historically in research driven industries the foundations have been started in academia. Private companies start up relying on the universities research.

Money flows into the university systems from private companies and they start producing a lot PhD’s in the field.

Next the private companies decide they can make more money doing the research in-house. They offer large sums of money to the established professors and get fresh grads at bargain prices.

Pretty soon most of the best and brightest are drained to private industry. The funding from private industry slows to a trickle and all that is left in academia is those with more social connections than ability.

For the next 30 years, private industry has great talent. Then the first first wave of PhD’s retire. The new PhD’s grads are trained by the social connections crowd.

That’s when you start to see fun job descriptions posted like:

PhD + 2 years of experience, Masters + 5 years experience, Bachelor’s + 8 years experience.

I spent most of a decade in industry doing what is generally thought of as a PhD’s job. In order to fill in some gaps, I took a ton of graduate classes on the companies dime and looked at doing a fully funded PhD. I didn’t end up doing it.

Why?

1. The industry paid better than academia. So the brain drain was real. The informal training I had from PhD’s in the company was vastly superior to the graduate level training at the university. Anyone who was any good at the applied side was not in academia. The ones left in academia were a very odd group with zero applied knowledge.

2. Most PhD hires failed miserably in the field. 9 out of 10 of them could not make the transition to the practical application of knowledge.

3. I saw a trend where smaller companies where hiring mostly industry experienced people for the positions (like I was).

So for me the time and investment was not worth it.

One of my friends made it halfway through his PhD. He then got sick of the politics and drama and noped out.

I am of the opinion that most “supply” issues are due to investors. Except in certain geographic areas we do not have a shortage of actual physical housing. What we have is a shortage of available housing at a mixed pricepoints for purchase.

All housing that investors purchase for rentals removes it from the supply.

Traditionally investors have sought out entry level housing for rent. They invest in building rental complexes. They make all cash purchases and then rent it out to people who otherwise would have been first-time homebuyers. Investors used to be the low end offer. Blatant price fixing has increased rent outrageously. Now investors are the high end offer and removing supply constantly.

With AirB&B, the middle and even upper range market that traditionally has had less investor competition is now a major target. This has led to price wars for investment purposes on previously safe segments.

The first solution to the housing supply is simple: taxing income from rent so that selling the property is financially more lucrative. It will have to include a prohibition against rental increases to cover the taxes as well.

The second is to mandate zoning and new construction to match the market needs not the needs of the investors.

Last would be to create a program where builders who focus on entry level housing receive incentives from governments (also include hefty penalty for substandard construction).

Windows did a few vital things that Apple failed miserably on in the 90’s.

Mac dropped support for legacy software and hardware on every new OS in the 90’s. Microsoft maintained backwards capability. It was a major reason windows was more resource intensive and had more bugs. It was a smart move because windows OS was able to handle more software and hardware than Macs. This is the top reason why windows demolished Mac in sales.

Microsoft’s business model allowed greater range of pricepoints. Most users in business or at home do not need the capabilities of the lowest priced Mac model. You don’t need much to check e-mail, browse the web, and do some basic word processing. Apple did not service this largest section of the market at all.