To be fair, first Plato was born in aristocratic family and got best education possible at the time with private tutors. He definitely did not go to equivalent of 3rd tier university.
“Fortunately criticizing Putin isn't grounds for being assassinated, as can be seen by the literal millions of people in Russia who haven't been murdered yet. It's easy: be nobody and have a discussion about your political beliefs in the kitchen with only close relatives.”
All well known recent deplatforming cases were done on a flimsy grounds for off-platform activities. They are very hard to defend.
Giving cash back creates wrong incentives and you sign up different audience than if you offer airline miles. Airline miles are in demand for people who travel often (affluent) in comparison to people who wants to get $150 after signing up for cc (poor).
That said there are offers to get cash for signing up. Some time ago First Republic Bank was giving $300 for cc sign up for Google employees (aka rich people).
Employers definitely need to know where you live to pay myriad of payroll taxes. if you lie, you commit tax fraud. It’s true virtually anywhere in the world - including all countries in Europe, not just US thing. You can often skirt law if you are small enough though - nobody cares about random web designer on upwork.
Tulsa is not geographically limited and has enough empty space for practically unlimited build out (similar to bay area or LA in 50 years ago). Tech in Tulsa will cause construction boom but not bay area house prices.
Many foreigners treat PhD and especially Masters program as a way to get visa and access to USA - doing actual research is secondary goal. $30k/year is poverty wage in US but solid pay for somebody from eastern europe, India or China. Programs will be in jeopardy because they won’t be able to do visa/salary arbitrage which could positive thing and lead to more Americans in those programs.
You do not really spend much time in cabin - you are either outside the ship during stops or in restaurants/bars/deck/pool during sea time. Inside cabins are often amazing value and work well if you do not have kids.
5 acres in area where minimum lot is 5 acres is much cheaper than in area where minimum is 5k sq ft. In most areas you can’t subdivide lot - that’s the reason houses in Atherton on huge lots are so cheap (relatively).
There is argument that it's easier to build car now than in 60ies because car parts manufacturing was decentralized in 90ies. In 60ies vertically integrated car companies dominated market and you could not buy car parts at any price if those companies did not want to sell them to you. Now most parts are produced by third parties (that often used to be part of fully integrated car company like Delphi Technologies) and you can build modern car like legos, outsource pretty much everything and only do final assembly. Still not easy (30k+ parts in every car) but doable.
Find country that need (but does not have yet) ICBM capabilities and pitch them that you can build rocket for them. They will provide all funding you will ever need.
It can be zero sum game short term (<1 months) but medium term (6 months) it's definitely not zero sum game. Pool of applicants that can be firemen includes all able-bodied males (and potentially female) 18-50 which is 10 million pool in California alone. Good pay will attract out of state candidates too. I would expect training to take less than 6 months or so. Considering fires happen every year, California can have as many firemen as it wants (and willing to pay for) by the time next summer fire season starts.
Pando failed as publication with last article from June and before that for a year or so all articles were written by Sarah so no money for journalists. It's not so much selling publication as selling web site with residual google traffic.
I am sad - I was subscriber at one time and attended a few events. Lots of good content a few years ago. Good journalism is expensive and Sarah failed to make finances at Pando viable. Now competition for subscriber dollars is intense with theinformation, business insider, digiday, etc and ad dollar will never support niche publication with no unique audience like Pando.
Amazon, Apple, Google and Facebook has huge number of non corporate employees - if you exclude them the FANG club is more exclusive. Nobody boasts that they work as a picker at Amazon or content reviewer at FB.
Cost of coffee in cup of latte is less than 25cents and Starbucks sells latte for $4.5. I am sure Starbucks has small price advantage compared to local coffee shop but this advantage is minuscule for widely traded commodities like coffee, milk and paper cups. I doubt that's their main competitor advantage.
Personally for me ability to order Starbucks coffee online and have it ready when I get to the store is a game changer + consistent user experience. Local coffee shops are always hit/miss.
Outside of truly unique skills, it's basically true - engineers are interchangeable with sufficient time to ramp up.
I learned this lesson pretty early in my career when most senior engineer on the team left. I and everyone else freaked out because he was the only one on the team who fully understood how everything works. But you know who was not freaked out? My manager. And he was right, we did not even miss deadlines. In two month everything was back to normal with other people filling his shoes.
Obviously you can't replace Principal engineer with fresh grad and expect success but most of the work done is not that unique or hard.