Monthly Archives: January 2024

1.28

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“I cannot see how Boeing can continue like this,” said longtime industry expert Adam Pilarksi, of aviation consulting firm Avitas. “They are getting killed.”

Meanwhile, Acts 29 itself has struggled with pastors in the network breaking off in a variety of different cultural and theological directions with some going more progressive while others have taken a reactionary conservative turn.

The marketing departments of the camera companies long ago lost the thread on all this. Japanese continuous iteration engineering will always extract a little more with each generation of product. They’ve been doing that most of my life now in tech, and I don’t see them stopping. However, the first few generation gains are the most dramatic, and once we’re in the tenth or later iteration, the gains are so minimal that the marketing teams can’t even see them, let alone describe them.

Why did this happen again? There is no doubt that as the suppliers of flawed technology, Fujitsu have a case to answer. During my time in government, it was made clear to me that they and the Post Office would be following the same playbook they always had, regardless of how often that had been shown up as inadequate. They had no interest in embracing the new ways of working GDS was advocating for. -and- no more “big IT failures”.

The “stuff” that is CES are all the products and technologies that influence everything that gets built. Stuff that looks silly today might very well vanish, but even if it does it will influence the stuff that shows up and transforms the world. There was an incredible timeline of CES on the wall from LVCC to the Westgate hotel illustrating “stuff” from every year of CES (it was too difficult to photograph). Likewise, the IEEE (yes that one) had an exhibit of long but forgotten gadgets from decades past, even voting on which one should be erased from our memories. In reality as silly as some of these look today, such as the laser disc player or cable TV tuners, each were just part of “gadgets and stuff” that came in past years. If you ever want to wind me up, then say there was nothing transformative at CES.

Altogether, this illustrates the fact that it’s not common for our sweet receptors to get activated by small calorieless molecules, and chemists must have eaten a lot of weird things to find the synthetic sweeteners we currently use. This is when things get out of control.

…and so on! The remaining bytes yourself are for you to practice on. You can stop when you’ve read the number of characters indicated by the length field previously.

It’s the second time Boeing turned to an admiral in connection with 737 MAX crises.

This middle class, however, is feeling less sure these days, as the economy keeps getting whacked. The trouble with Xi Jinping is that he is 60 percent correct on all the problems he sees, while his government’s brute force solutions reliably worsen things. Are housing developers taking on too much debt? Yes, but driving many of them to default and triggering a collapse in the confidence of homebuyers hasn’t improved matters. Does big tech have too much power? Fine, but taking the scalps of entrepreneurs and stomping out their businesses isn’t boosting confidence. Does the government need to rein in official corruption? Definitely, but terrorizing the bureaucracy has also made the policymaking apparatus more paralyzed and risk averse. It’s starting to feel like the only thing scarier than China’s problems are Beijing’s solutions.

Other times, you might want to ask more complex questions about what you see. Let’s say you’re browsing social media and come across an image of a delicious corn dog with some unique toppings. You’ve been seeing a lot of these online and are curious to learn more.

The Boeing inspector recorded in CMES that the repair was not done properly, that the Spirit team “just painted over the defects.” As a result, the repair job was reopened. Looking at it anew, the Spirit mechanics then discovered that, in addition to the problematic rivets, the pressure seal sandwiched between the plug and the airframe was damaged and needed replaced. “The big deal with this seal,” the whistleblower wrote, was that the replacement part was not on hand in Renton and needed to be ordered, which could threaten to delay the jet’s delivery schedule.

To think about Apple’s commercial, one really has think about the context of the start of the year 1984. The Orwellian dialog was omnipresent. Of course as freshman in college we had just finished our obligatory compare/contrast the dystopian messages in Animal Farm, Brave New World, and 1984 not to mention the Cold War as front and center dialog at every turn. The country emerging from recession gave us all a contrasting optimism.

“The U.S. Constitution foresaw that States should not be left to the mercy of a lawless president who does nothing to stop external threats.”

Jen O’Malley Dillon, the new campaign manager for President Biden’s 2024 reelect, previously worked as a consultant to Bill Gates’s VC arm and Mark Zuckerberg’s personal charity foundation. Here’s her disclosure from her work during 2020.

This sobering letter from former FBI, Homeland Security, and other law enforcement officials describes the chilling reality of why @POTUS’s open border is a clear and present danger to America.

Publishers: Ditch Google search addiction or die
Google’s switch to generative AI-written search results could send many publishers out of business.

10 of 10. The DEM maps disenfranchise between 600,000 and 751,000 citizens. By contrast, the courts in ’92 and ’02 kept disenfranchisement below 260,000. In an earlier case, Justice Dallet said that true neutrality requires that the effect of disenfranchisement is kept minimal.

Last year the US surpassed Qatar and Australia to become the world’s leading supplier of LNG, which is natural gas supercooled and condensed so that it can be economically carried on ships. Its seven operating terminals can produce as much as 87mn tonnes a year — enough to satisfy the combined gas needs of Germany and France.

“This is a worst-case scenario, which is currently trapping thousands of well-healed residents who took out large mortgages,” says one Chicagoland residential real estate investor. “Northside condos appear to be taking the biggest hit,” he observes.

Our aim is to expand the universe of ideas that policymakers can consider to restructure the airline industry. We offer a set of policies that take seriously the problems in the industry and are designed to address them. These policies fall into four categories:

(1) Resilience, Competition, and Geographic Access

(2) Fair and Transparent Pricing

(3) Protecting Passengers and Ensuring Safety

(4) Oversight and Enforcement.

In each of these areas, we offer concrete proposals for how policymakers can improve the flying experience for passengers, workers, communities, and the country.

“but that’s because they’ve pulled in men from those groups who respect strength and are repelled by victimology”

Their business model seems pretty focused also. Flying to lots of smaller regional airports with quick turnaround times – so high utilisation rates, flights from 0600-0100, loads of auxiliary revenue, lots of advertising paid for by the destination and the airport operator owns the risk of flight delays – so if a flight gets delayed due to an airports ground handling turnaround time being missed, Ryanair will get a rebate which it doesn’t have to pass on to passengers?
I really don’t see U2 being so focused as FR.

The wealthiest American cities in 1949.

It was the inspiration for Emeryville-based Pixar’s hit movie “Toy Story.” “After 75 years of gratefully serving the San Francisco community, the store will be closing next month. The store has been struggling for a number of years, due to the perils and violence of the downtown environment, inflation, the decrease in consumer spending and the demise of retail across the world. The family is saddened it has come to this and we’ve explored all other options to try and keep the business going. The leadership of the City of San Francisco and the Downtown Association have their work cut out for them on how to revitalize what was once a vibrant and fun downtown experience,” said Ken Sterling of Sterling Venture Law, attorney for the family. “We are working through this complex situation with the landlords and creditors and at this time, I’ve advised my clients to not be interviewed by the press.”

Complexity, Quality and “out of the crisis”

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I recently recommended Deming’s book: “out of the crisis” to a friend.

The Boeing mess offers a front row seat:

The Boeing inspector recorded in CMES that the repair was not done properly, that the Spirit team “just painted over the defects.” As a result, the repair job was reopened. Looking at it anew, the Spirit mechanics then discovered that, in addition to the problematic rivets, the pressure seal sandwiched between the plug and the airframe was damaged and needed replaced. “The big deal with this seal,” the whistleblower wrote, was that the replacement part was not on hand in Renton and needed to be ordered, which could threaten to delay the jet’s delivery schedule.

Well worth reading!

Bonus: Deceased Boeing Engineer Joe Sutter’s book is worth a deep dive as well.

And:

For years, Boeing management was accused of focusing on money rather than products, performance or people. Between 2014 and 2018, it gave away $53 billion in dividends and buybacks. But that shareholder focus no longer works. Boeingis the only large-cap aerospace company in the world with a flat share price throughout the remarkable demand surge the industry has seen over the last three years.

1.21

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By analyzing data on tens of thousands of people across four continents compiled between 15 existing studies, a team of researchers has landed on a more comfortable figure: the optimal number is probably closer to 6,000 steps per day, depending on your age.

The foulest thing about the weekend wasn’t the miserable weather, but rather Bears fans’ collective mood after watching Love go from promising first-year starter to budding superstar in a 48-32 dismantling of the Cowboys.

The anti-inflammatory effect of exercise was much greater than most people had expected. That raised another question: whether inflammation might also play a dominant role in other lifestyle illnesses that have been linked to cardiovascular disease, such as diabetes and dementia.

Boeing’s Legacy Vanished Into Thin Air. Saving It Will Take Years

Chrome Users Now Worth 30% Less Money Thanks to Google’s Cookie Killing, Ad Firm Says

Scott’s dad had a couple of rules when collecting hats. They had to have a patch on them or an advertisement, they couldn’t be plain, and they couldn’t have any dirty sayings, Legried says.

With McCarthy, it was essentially the same. Running back Ryan Grant compared the dynamic on those Packers offenses to mankind’s relationship with artificial intelligence in my ‘19 B/R story: “When you put a quarterback in a position and you talk about how cerebral he is and you give him flexibility to make some changes, guess what? … You develop A.I., because it has the capacity to run without you. And then when it runs without you, it’s like, ‘Wait a minute!’ But in the same breath, if you’re not actually able to stay ahead of it, it’s going to outthink you and it’s going to say, ‘Me making the decision is the better decision.’”

In fact, back in August 2016, the Texanist, apparently weary of the unwavering heat, went off on the perpetrators of what he considered to be an exceptionally infernal utilization of the heat index. “Hey, meteorologists!” he wrote. “Enough with the damn heat index! ‘And we’re looking at a high of 101 degrees, but with the heat index it will feel more like 118.’ That’s like saying, ‘It’s going to be hotter than two rats making whoopee in a wool sock, but it will feel hotter than the devil’s nether regions.’ Or the other way around. Either way, it’s completely unnecessary. It’s hot. Can we just leave it at that?”

How to eliminate a political opponent. Here are 20 classic tricks. 1. Arrest & prosecute them.

It’s bad enough when people fail to consider events that obviously could happen but haven’t. But it’s even worse when people fail to consider events that have happened hundreds of times, treating each new instance as if it demands a massive update.

A self-styled glaciologist, Rabot undertook four expeditions to the Arctic in his lifetime; when he wasn’t voyaging to polar climes, he was writing about them in his capacity as editor of the journal La géographie or advising the likes of the prince of Monaco on their own itineraries. His written accounts theatrically capture the difficulty of life in these harsh climates, as in a description of the struggles of providing medical care in rural Scandinavia:

“Software is getting slower more rapidly than hardware becomes faster.” That creates a problem as the software slows down despite the hardware’s improved processing power.

In Madison, other workers currently waiting for contracts include game testers at Middleton video game studio Raven Software, who voted in a union in May 2022; seamstresses and screenprinters at custom clothing company Crushin’ It Apparel, whose votes were tallied in November 2022, and bakers and bread sellers at Madison Sourdough Company, who voted in a union last April. Hundreds of office workers at Madison-based financial services company TruStage, who went on strike in May for the first time since unionizing in the 1940s, finally ratified a new contract in December after close to two years of negotiations – likely the longest lag in the company’s history.

A new report from the Legislative Analyst’s Office warns that loss of state fuel tax revenues could have dire consequences for the upkeep of roadways. Taxes on gasoline and diesel fuel now total about $14.2 billion a year. More than $4 billion annually could disappear by 2035, when the state’s ban on the sale of new fossil fuel cars takes full effect.

Red Ventures has been quietly approaching strategic buyers, mostly other large media holding firms, for several months to gauge their interest in CNET, but talks began to ramp up before the holidays, sources told Axios.

Google search really has been taken over by low-quality SEO spam, according to a new, year-long study by German researchers.

The researchers, from Leipzig University, Bauhaus-University Weimar, and the Center for Scalable Data Analytics and Artificial Intelligence, set out to answer the question “Is Google Getting Worse?” by studying search results for 7,392 product-review terms across Google, Bing, and DuckDuckGo over the course of a year.

They found that, overall, “higher-ranked pages are on average more optimized, more monetized with affiliate marketing, and they show signs of lower text quality … we find that only a small portion of product reviews on the web uses affiliate marketing, but the majority of all search results do.”

Chip and Joanna’s New Hotel Is Just One Reason to Visit Waco. The latest Gaines project, Hotel 1928, beckons Magnolia fans with its on-brand decor, thoughtful touches, and excellent location.

The Eagle Ford still produces more than a million barrels of oil (mmb/d) and 5 billion cubic feet of gas per day so that’s the first thing to expect about the future Permian. Plays don’t crash and burn but follow an undulating path downward over years or decades.

One should never underestimate the Houthis. They don’t fear disrespect.

I paged through, stopped and smiled when I saw it. There it was, the innocuous phrase that hid an $800 million secret: “expediting production.”

“Courtesy cards,” are cards given out by the NYC police union (and presumably elsewhere) to friends and family who use them to get easy treatment if they are pulled over by a cop. I was stunned when I first wrote about these cards in 2018. I thought this was common only in tinpot dictatorships and flailing states. The cards even come in levels, gold, silver and bronze!

“You cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent. I’m not jokin’.”

These cafes had all adopted similar aesthetics and offered similar menus, but they hadn’t been forced to do so by a corporate parent, the way a chain like Starbucks replicated itself. Instead, despite their vast geographical separation and total independence from each other, the cafes had all drifted toward the same end point. The sheer expanse of sameness was too shocking and new to be boring.

The state’s current approach to valuing farmland amounts to a sort of double discount: the first is well understood and the second is unknown even to some experts. This approach is notable, especially in the context of the current housing affordability challenges facing many Wisconsin communities, since it puts more of the cost of government services onto residential and commercial property owners. The current approach may also distort to some extent both market values for agricultural land and state aid to school districts.

As Molly White said, “there are never purely technological solutions to societal problems”. To fight surveillance capitalism, we need E2EE, regulation, justice, and education.

One of my dreams is to someday convince the State Legislature to teach the curriculum they teach us prisoners, in elementary school, that people like me can learn it better without having to go to prison to learn it, I’m try my to convince some people to pitch it to legislators—if any one would like to help with that please let me know. It will help with more than just avoiding prison—it will help with all relationship conflicts, and who does not have those…? The prison parenting class should be taught in High School too…[page 23 follows]

Steep drop in electric sales in Germany was main factor in sending EU sales down for the first time in 16 months

The emergence of the New America is not just a move to red states but includes population shifts within blue states. In California, San Francisco and Los Angeles may be experiencing declines, but outlying areas such as the San Joaquin Valley and the Inland Empire continue to grow, a trend expected to continue for the next several decades.

Some of the world’s most important breakthroughs have come out of Bell Labs, including the first transistor, the laser, radio astronomy, the dawn of cellular and satellite communications and the beginnings of artificial intelligence. Bell Labs was also the birthplace of the UNIX computer operating system, C++ and numerous programming languages.

The perverse fisheries consequences of mosquito net malaria prophylaxis in East Africa

“Brilliant young female Czech player fatigue”.

If the proposal passes, which would still need to be approved by both chambers of the Legislature in the upcoming budget session, it gives legislative direction to the State Board of Land Commissioners to dispose of the Kelly Parcel directly to the federal Department of the Interior.

Same campaign stop 3 years later. That’s a 28% increase.

From new AI combating self-checkout shrink to digital shelf systems, vendors unveiled grocery innovations and new retailer tie-ups at the annual conference in New York. Here are some of the top ones.

“The fact that the Beltline is totally dry and surrounding jurisdictions have clear main streets is evidence that Madison could also have clearer main streets.”



University of Florida Pushes Back on Offer of Academic Credit for Pronoun Listing

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Jonathan Turley:

There is an interesting controversy brewing at the University of Florida after Professor Autumn McLellan offered academic credit for those who list their pronouns in class. The University has pushed back that “pronoun policing” is not a valid basis for academic credit.

The controversy arose after conservative groupsand sites reported on the offer.

Professor McLellan sent out a notice to class that:

“Guessing or assuming a person’s pronouns can lead to uncomfortable and unwelcoming environments. Displaying your pronouns helps others know how to address you respectfully, even if you feel like your pronouns should be ‘obvious’ to other people.”

McLellan teaches sociology and criminology with stated interests “Collective Action/Social Movements” and “Stratification/Inequality.”

Many faculty and students object to requirements or pressure to use alternative pronouns on political, religious, or biological grounds.

The University itself was quick to push back.

1.14

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The hero of Walt Disney’s ‘Steamboat Willie’ has entered the public domain but others deserve their freedom, too

In late 2011 a fresh-faced Elon Musk could not contain a chuckle at the idea that Tesla could ever be challenged by Chinese carmaker BYD: “Have you seen their car?” “I don’t think it is particularly attractive,” he explained on television then. “The technology is not very strong. And BYD, as a company, has pretty severe problems on their home turf.” A decade on, the Shenzhen-based company led by Wang Chuanfu has claimed Tesla’s crown as the biggest producer of battery-powered cars. In the fourth quarter of 2023, BYD, which was founded in 1995 and counts Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway as a shareholder, sold a record 526,000 battery-only EVs to Tesla’s 484,000.

The ruling sets a precedent for future cases involving Indigenous land rights and resource extraction.

Understanding how many people are involved in the creation of a robust Production System and its surveillance program, we finally get to ask the pointy questions.

Why it matters: Their differing approaches to the first contest of the 2024 primary season — the intensity of their campaigning, their number of public events and the communities they’ve targeted — shed light on how each candidate views Iowa, and their strategies for moving forward.

So how does Boeing build back its credibility with both the airlines and the flying public? “I think that will take showing integrity,” Robison said. “Part of the reason that Boeing struggled so much with the MAX crisis was that there were multiple moments when it was found to be saying things that weren’t true. There was a moment I described in the book where Boeing was claiming after the first crash that it was maintenance errors. But pilots in America knew that was not the case. Boeing, both in public and behind closed doors, needs to show absolute integrity.”

In 2008, a Dutchman played a crucial role in the United States and Israeli-led operation to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program. The then 36-year-old Erik van Sabben infiltrated an Iranian nuclear complex and released the infamous Stuxnet virus, paralyzing the country’s nuclear program. The AIVD recruited the man, but Dutch politicians knew nothing about the operation, the Volkskrant reports after investigating the sabotage for two years.

But here is the main point: those © symbols on UK museum websites and catalogues are now redundant if the original artwork is itself out of copyright. There is no reason not to use these images for free (and nobody would argue against paying for new images, if needed). The National Gallery marks images “© National Gallery”, and in its terms and conditions forbids reproduction unless “expressly permitted under copyright law”. But since there is no copyright, reproduction is indeed permitted (expressly or otherwise, there is no distinction). No major UK museum has taken anyone to court over copyright of such images, and no sensible trustee will let them now.

Third, the high-density deployment of the Starlink project poses a serious threat to the security of space assets of various countries and affects the normal operation of satellites from other nations. In addition, the Starshield satellites can undertake suicide missions against space vehicles and carry weapon payloads for space strike missions, which poses a threat to space security.

Scale versus scope in the diffusion of new technology: evidence from the farm tractor.

Love how this just omits the entire Obama presidency.

To summarize, Michelle Mbekeani, who is the head of the Cook County state’s attorney’s office Conviction Review Unit, also appears to run a for-profit company, known as Period, that links inmates with wrongful conviction claims with private attorneys.

Our boat was permanently moored there on account of its being about to sink: it leaned heavily to the starboard, and I had to rig up a plastic chute around the bed to catch the unnervingly treacle-coloured leaks. In winter it was a little less well insulated than a cardboard box and the electric wiring around the hull was worryingly exposed. We were eventually evicted because the boat was rightfully condemned.

“The performance of the prime manufacturer can never exceed the capabilities of the least proficient of the suppliers,” Hart-Smith wrote. “These costs do not vanish merely because the work itself is out-of-sight.” 

1.7

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After two decades of paying as little as $200 an acre for farms across the plains of Kansas and Colorado, he now wants to rent all his farmland back to local farmers. If all goes as planned he will stop farming on roughly 130,000 acres in eastern Colorado and western Kansas, and let other farmers grow grain to store in his Weskan Grain elevator at Sheridan Lake near the Kansas border. “Because I can see that the farmer is affected by me making money off the land,” he says, noting how the price of acres has appreciated exponentially since he first began buying farms “and that’s money farmers could have made.”

Instead, implementing a knowledge graph as the background structure for a documentation site, with clear guidance about how to connect the nodes of the graph, has the potential to improve search results for readers and allow flexible categorization for writers.

Some of you may have been following our advent-style countdown calendar which revealed day-by-day through December our highlights for these new public domain entrants. The last window was opened yesterday, and while such a format was fun for the slow reveal, for the sake of a good gorgeable list we’ve exploded the calendar out into a digestible array below. Enjoy!

ASML Holding NV canceled shipments of some of its machines to China at the request of US President Joe Biden’s administration, weeks before export bans on the high-end chipmaking equipment came into effect, people familiar with the matter said. More.

The achievements of Tesla are even more incredible when contrasted with the continued struggle of legacy automotive manufacturers to ship a compelling electric car, or even stay out of bankruptcy. At the very end of 2023, it is telling that no other company has yet managed to ship a profitable car with better performance than the very first 2012 Tesla Model S. There are now several non-Tesla electric cars of comparable performance that are sold at a steep loss and/or at achingly low volumes.

The Harvard story covers the total systemic rot in every corner of the Left. It wasn’t “journalists” at big-ticket Gatekeeper of Truth media orgs that exposed the malfeasance, it was outsiders. Big media journalists fought to bury the story and are STILL trying to spin it.

The logistics of digital nomads can be challenging.

Hazards of mouth pipetting.

Our new analysis examines trends driving politics & policy: 10 takeaways from 2023, and 10 look-aheads for 2024. Bottom line: The biggest challenge today is lack of trust… in leaders, in institutions, in America. 2024 may test us in ways even 2020 did not.

Each consultant will be paid an hourly rate of $450, up to $100,000 total, but the state director of courts has the authority to exceed the maximum amount if she determines it is necessary, according to the contracts.

The suspect who left pipe bombs in Capitol Hill the night before Jan. 6 has still not been caught. Three years later, the Justice Department isn’t even taking questions about the investigation. What happened?

Philadelphia Police Department’s first DEI officer is fired

The Washington, D.C.-based Environmental Law Institute (ELI) created the Climate Judiciary Project (CJP) in 2018, establishing a first-of-its-kind resource to provide “reliable, up-to-date information” about climate change litigation, according to the group. The project’s reach has extended to various state and federal courts, including powerful appellate courts, and comes as various cities and states pursue high-profile litigation against the oil industry.

On Christmas Eve, just before the deadline for public input on the proposed MAX 7 exemption, the Foundation for Aviation Safety — a lobbying group set up by former Boeing manager and whistleblower Ed Pierson following the two deadly MAX crashes — filed a submission calling on the FAA not to certify the airplane until Boeing fixes the safety defect.

“The report compared the FBI and Justice Department’s voracious investigation of Trump’s connections with Russia, to its allegedly lackluster approach to its Clinton probes ‘tippy-toeing’ around the former Secretary of State.”

His business in a snapshot:

5 BHPH dealerships
3,600 units sold per year
10,000 customer accounts serviced
$19K average sales price
$500/month avg customer payment
19.9% avg customer financing APR
40% of customers default on loan

What questions do you have?

There is no “Ingravescentem Aetatem” for American politics. The term “gerontocracy” was coined in 1828 by Jean-Jacques Fazy, a Swiss republican, in the title of his book De la gérontocratie. He jeered that, in political terms, “France has been reduced to seven to eight thousand eligible individuals, asthmatic, gouty, paralytic, impaired, and only aspiring to rest.” In the contemporary US, the gerontocracy seems even more exclusive and its membership even older than the one that was swept away in France by the July Revolution of 1830.

Manhattan is also close to the water. Why hasn’t the Sulzberger New York Times Company made plans to move?

She said that Wing deliveries typically take under 30 minutes, and have reached their destination in as fast as three minutes.

CJR admitted Russiagate was fake. Which means Democrats spent four years publishing false stories about a debunked conspiracy theory of 2016 Russian election fraud. The impeachment was fake. The Pulitzers were fake. It was all fake. Agree?

On July 29, a United plane was nearly totaled after a hard landing. Who was flying that aircraft? Was the co-pilot a former flight attendant who was FIRED and then rehired through United’s DEI program despite being on a list to not return to United?

The lawsuit argues that, based on prior incidents involving Lt. Byrd, the Capitol Police, Capitol Police Board, and ultimately Congress, as Lt. Byrd’s employer, “knew or should have known that Lt. Byrd was prone to behave in a dangerous or otherwise incompetent manner:”

ULA had tried to kill the baby. When SpaceX sought a launch site for its Falcon 9 rocket at Cape Canaveral in 2007, the parents lobbied the Air Force brass hard to stop the lease of Space Launch Complex-40 to Elon Musk and his rocket company. But the commander of the 45th Space Wing with oversight of Cape Canaveral, Gen. Susan Helms, approved the lease anyway. Since then, ULA and SpaceX have been uneasy bedfellows in Florida, working side by side at nearby launch pads. Some of the rivalry was good-natured. Every week, for a while, engineers from SpaceX and ULA would meet up at Hogan’s Irish Bar in Cape Canaveral for trivia night. They would vie for nerd supremacy, drinking Guinness and blowing off steam.

“No one can match BYD on price. Period,” says Michael Dunne, chief executive of Asia-focused car consultancy Dunne Insights. “Boardrooms in America, Europe, Korea and Japan are in a state of shock.” While the US government has responded with a slew of subsidies to encourage domestic manufacturing, the prospect of millions of low-cost, high-tech cars made by Chinese companies hitting European shores poses a dilemma for lawmakers there.

Just about a week after signing a controversial contract with the UK’s national health service, Palantir Technologies Inc. launched an influencer marketing campaign to counter criticism of the patient data platform it’s building, potentially breaching terms of the deal.