It cost at last 50 million in a fancy name designer fees.

Because flossing sucks…

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3894074/

Or be in a religious cult like Mormons. Of course they will send you to a foreign country and confiscate your passport until your 1.5-2 years are over.

Coincidentally, this also blocks most of the importation of chicken and beef from the U.S. giving their domestic producers an almost exclusive market.

A happy little accident I guess.

Chickens do not receive any hormones. It’s been banned in poultry in the U.S. since the 1950’s when it was tested and shown to be ineffective. Beef commonly gets hormone implants in their ears. No hormones are approved or used in feed.

The rapid growth of the birds is mostly due to selective breeding and nutritional improvements. The growth rate and adult size in animals can be massively changed by breeders. Just look at the Great Dane and mini-yorky in dogs.

They also use antibiotics in the feed to reduce the bacteria load of the birds. This does increase the growth rate and reduces sick birds and deaths. It is not a good idea when it comes to antibiotic resistance buildup in bacteria however.

2009 with the $8K tax credit. My wife and I purchased our first home then. Nothing but foreclosures on the market. Most prices had dropped by 50-60% from the peak.

Human intelligence is segmented and specialized. People who are smart at few things are usually very dumb at others. A person who can speak 9 languages can’t do more than basic math. An expert computer programmer, who can’t figure out how to keep a plant alive. Etc…

Polymaths are very rare. Very few people have advanced understanding and skills in multiple areas.

A better estimation is waist to height ratio. If your waist is more than 50% of your height, you have an issue. It tracks a lot better with cardiovascular disease and diabetes risks than BMI.

Tall people are often calculated as being obese as well. BMI has me at 30.8 because I am 6’2" and weight 240lbs. I have a 34" waist however and constantly moving.

The groups need an established core of well informed and experienced people to work together and shape the culture of the community. The moderation team also needs to be responsive and consistent.

I got pulled into being part of one of those teams years ago. It was a pretty simple formula to make the community healthy: The creeps/spammers got banned and reported. The ignorant got educated in a logical and coherent manner by a team approach. The trolls were played with for a while then banned when they eventually violated a rule.

A good group can save lives and help a lot of people. A bad one can further harm the already damaged and vulnerable. There are many of both groups out there.

You have to be born into wealth and not fuck it up.

2 sets of my great grandparents were quite wealthy. Unfortunately my grandparents and parents pissed it all away on stupid schemes.

Just some basics about the company.

Revenue Income US$8.93 billion (2022)

Operating income US$4.31 billion (2022)

Net income US$3.32 billion (2022)

The bulk of the difference between operating income and net income in a research driven company is the R&D. They are running at 11% just under $1 billion per year. A publically traded company can’t really hide their research costs, only obscure it for the uniformed.

Their net income is 37% of revenue. So they are paying for over 4 years of research for every year (3 past years plus current gear). So their argument they need the high prices to cover past research costs is pure bullshit. I’d give them the current year and one past year. But 4 years?

This is pure price gouging for profit over people’s lives. Invalidating their patent is fully justified.

In this instance, the publicity is an effort to do more damage.

Ukraine wants the Russian people to know that their tax records are wiped out. Hopefully many of them will skip paying or underpay. This will cut into the governments incoming revenue for many months or even years.

I haven’t seen my parents in over a decade. Born in '50 & '51 they check all the boxes of the worst stereotypes.

Republican ✓

White ✓

Racist ✓

Bigoted ✓

Ultra-Religious ✓

Limited education ✓

Entitled ✓

Narcissistic ✓

Physically and emotionally abusive ✓

Depended their parents assistance until their mid-30’s, kicked their kids out at 18 (17 for me). ✓

I honestly have no clue if they are MAGA or not. I suspect they are because my older sister was pictured in the news at the orange cheetos inauguration.

They have proven many times over that pirating/accessibility have inverse relationship.

My most frustrating example was when I needed one song for a project my wife was working on a long time ago. I looked to try to purchase it online and could only find it on iTunes. In order to purchase from iTunes you had to download the application and install it. However I had an old machine running Linux… By the time I figured this all out I had spent 2 hours trying to pay $0.99 for one song. I could not find an approved way to do it. So I went the alternative route and had the song in under 5 minutes.

They keep pushing accessibility down recently. I am not playing their games again. When they want to be reasonable they will get paid.

It wasn’t that bad in 2003. Too bad it’s still stuck there.

That is one thing I dislike about all of the modern OS’s is the flat bland style. It’s boring and completely unnecessary with modern hardware.

Current copyright law is ridiculously long. Life +70 years in many countries. So my grandfather’s books who passed away last year, will be locked up until most of his great grandchildren are in their 80’s or older.

It should be moved to a flat 45 years, the expected career length of a working person.

The amount the company must maintain on hand depends on the state. In some states it’s less than 1% of the policies written. Most of the time they only hold enough out of their premiums to cover an average of 2-3 years of claims.

The reason it’s so low is because of federal disaster relief when something big happens. The insurance companies advocate for it to be called a federal disaster. Then the government steps in and foots part of the bill. The poor are usually left losing everything.

My wife worked for an insurance company for most of a decade as the complaint liaison with the states regulating body on insurance.

Insurance companies in the U.S. come in two types.

Type A: Rely on repeat business and word of mouth to slowly grow their business. They pay out reasonable and fair amounts based upon the loss. They follow all applicable laws/regulations and operate in good faith. These companies are quick to reject people who have bad histories.

Type B: Rely on recruiting new customers constantly by excessive advertising or purchasing other smaller companies. Pay out well below the market on anything they can and flat out refuse claims until lawsuits start. These companies routinely break state and federal laws because the fines are less than the profits. These companies prey on the lower income, elderly, and poorly informed. The larger companies have hundreds of brands to give the illusion of choice to the consumer.

Any amounts of excessive marketing by and insurance company indicates that they are shit. Also research into who owns any the brand they are are marketing. If you recognize the parent company as advertising, they are shit.