"Overtime pay has to come from somewhere, most likely from reduced hours, reduced salaries or reduced bonuses. "

I'm a cis straight male in New England who has a number of guys that I consider close friends, but who notes that I tend to make friends with women more easily, and get along with them more readily. Any number of people have called this out as indicating vanity, self-deception, insecurity, and/or misogyny on my part.…

It's about touchstones, not prerequisites.

On the elevation of textual culture over quantitative inquiry, see C.P. Snow:

The quality of life in those years that human beings didn't have the technology of maths was which: higher, lower, or the same as we have now?

I expect he meant white as in candid, not white as in Caucasian. That is, candid as in naive, without guile. See also "Candide" by M. Voltaire.

"Most, if not all extinct animals, are gone for a reason."
In a trivial sense, true enough (show me the effect without a cause, etc). But in the teleological sense, this strikes me as a reckless breed of determinism. That consequences should be considered before we act does not mean we are living in the best of all…

Harry Potter grew up with style? The hell you say:

And sword-fightery can be useful if you get sucked back (along with the island of Nantucket) to the Bronze Age and have to show the local warlords that they ain't the end-all be-all of badassdom. #marianalstonftw

There's also the fact the Apple sold subsidized workstations to schools teaching media design... ?

Storm Large makes a pretty good case for re-normalizing the word "vagina" for celebratory use.

"... now pronounce you mainframe and wraith."

For sale: baby language, never spoken.

The starships weren't invading, but returning.

Poor Turing, trapped in his machine.

Now Hiring Exorcists; must know Fortran.

Wise robots avoid Dunwich whenever possible.

Few could understand the kittenlamb's hunger.

I was going to respond to "the idea of shale or a pipeline giving them 2-3 dollar gas..." but then I saw you already did so: "The whole damn thing is an exercise in short sighted brilliance." Yes, that hits the nail on the head.