My rescue dog truly loves everyone. He's super friendly and extremely social. If he had his way we'd spend all day walking the streets finding humans and dogs to meet (on a typical day he only gets 1-2 hours of this). He has friends across our neighborhood he visits. Seriously, there are a dozen or two people I don't know at all but he leads me to anytime he smells them nearby because they are his friends--they pet him, play with him, and give him birthday and holiday presents. But I am also without question his favorite person. He will walk away from a crowd of adoring fans with treats if I'm leaving his sight. He is a smart people pleaser but checks with me before obeying commands from others, even my husband. He would probably follow me into a volcano. He's such a great dog our friends argue about who gets to dog sit him when we go on vacation, but they also always tell me he seemed a little sadder without me around.

They are calling it "cognitive surrender"

Seriously, after reading about Greenland's recent agreement to increase in American troops. My mind instantly thought of Neville Chamberlain

https://www.3m.com/3M/en_US/p/d/v000181200/

Canister lights can get VERY hot, so I wanted to be extra safe with fire rated foam. It was only like $1 more per can.

Had almost this identical insulation situation when I bought my house. The ceiling just had some thin rock wool. First I went to Lowes and got a few cans of fire-rated spray foam and used it to seal around all ceiling fixtures, canister lights, wire penetrations, anything air can leak from. Next I built a little dam with scrap wood around the access hatch. Then spent one Saturday with a friend blowing insulation in. 8 hours of blower rental was free for every 3 bags of insulation you bought, but it didn't take nearly that much time. Had it up to R-48 depth in only about 4 hours of blowing. I submit the receipts to my state's energy rebate program and was 100% reimbursed. I think the blow-in did a much better job and was easier to get into odd shaped framing than bat would have been.

My winter gas bill halved, much better than I hoped. I also wasn't expecting for my summer AC to bill drop by almost 75%. My house was MUCH more comfortable too. Almost all the draftiness disappeared after that.

I paid $0 after rebates, spent probably 12 hours labor total, and save easily $100-$200 a month.

My cousin's dad was recently T-boned in an intersection, he was ok but his car was totaled. Before paying him out the insurance company bought the high res footage of his car in a grocery store parking lot just minutes before the collision. The company sent him an itemized list with zoomed in shots of every scratch, dent, windshield crack etc and knocked off $5,000+ from his payout. That's why it's called surveillance capitalism 🤑

I think as stories like these become more common, you'll see more people willing to vote out politicians who refused to outlaw these. Just imagine if these things were allowed to be used for traffic tickets, they wouldn't last one election cycle!

My local newspaper was also stupidly paywalled, but one day a civil prosecutor noticed they were a non-profit and paywalling was a violation of their tax exempt status. Within weeks they dropped the paywall but tried to brand it as something enabled by generous donors and not a legal requirement.

That's a picture of the instructor not the student

That is actually the opposite argument as this project had. We'll never know the full truth because in the Utah legislature the Republicans exempted themselves from FOIA/GRAMA requests. What it looks like happened based on the emails and records we do have is the Republican House Leader Stuart Adams (a land developer) bought 640 acres of waterless desert land for $10. He then tried to lure the data center to the land next to his by promising Kevin O'Leary it would be tax exempt. This would have made his plot exponentially more valuable.

The local county (about 50,000 cattle and peach farmers) government calculated the data center would cost the county government about $5 million per year because they'd be on the hook for police, fire, ambulance, water, sewer, snow removal, road maintenance etc. The county government didn't think it was a fair deal for them so they got O'Leary to agree to a one time payment of $20 million, long enough for these local Republicans to win reelection and then everyone forget by the next cycle.

Fun fact O'Leary originally proposed a solar, wind, and battery powered data center but the state level Republicans put a condition on approval that it must be fossil fuel powered. The Utah Way!