steverb's comments

I would think so, yes, although I doubt that "completely safe" is an achievable reality.

To incentivize vaccine manufacturers to produce vaccines that are affordable to the general populace.

In the US you do still have some recourse for injuries caused by vaccination: "The National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program is a no-fault alternative to the traditional legal system for resolving vaccine injury petitions.

It was created in the 1980s, after lawsuits against vaccine companies and health care providers threatened to cause vaccine shortages and reduce U.S. vaccination rates, which could have caused a resurgence of vaccine preventable diseases."

https://www.hrsa.gov/vaccine-compensation/index.html

"But my experience, and those among my friends (I was part of a local VW enthusiast club) is that the cars are fine. But the kicker is you need to stay on top of your maintenance. If you skimp on the regular work, you end up paying for it in the end. "

This is the absolute truth about most modern cars. The main thing I look for now in a used car is parts availability and how well the car has been maintained.

I spent some serious time as teenager training myself out of my southern accent for this reason. You could have a PHD in Astrophysics, but if you speak with a southern accent people will assume you're an idiot.

The only downside, is that I have a slight speech impediment, but it's mild enough that most people don't notice.

And for some reason I still (25 years later) tend to pronounce hill as "heel".

You might be coloring that one with your own perspective. "Failed to realize" and "Didn't see" both parse with the same emotional connotation for me personally.

This is the computer I learned to program on (the TS1000 US Version). The manual for it still has place of honor on my bookshelf.

Knoxville here, can anecdotally confirm an increase in the number of California plates I see around town.

I would further add that those oversimplified concepts of how the brain works have hung around because they are useful for us as an abstraction to think about how our brain works.

They may be bad abstractions at a lower level of detail, but for general purposes they seem to be useful enough.

My daughter has narcolepsy and (according to her) always lucid dreams, so I hope this isn't completely true.

I actually had a T-shirt in the 80's that said "I got the Babel Fish". Bought it out of the back of some computer magazine(maybe Compute!)?

The original game came with some very cool props that I wish I still had. Peril Sensitive Sunglasses (Do not wear while driving.), A microscopic space fleet in a plastic bag, some lint, and a "Don't Panic" button.

I've never had to pay spotify a monthly fee to list a song. I've had to pay some one time costs to get the song listed (via a distributor), but I've never had to pay a maintenance fee of any sort.

And I assure you, the stuff I've put up does not make enough money to cover any fees (20 listens a month).

Fair enough

Fair enough.

And somehow terrestrial radio stations, which have no subscription base manage to make it work.

As I said in the comment above, artists are free to NOT put their music on Spotify if they don't think it's a good deal, but regardless streaming services are only commercials for artists. Spotify is far from the worst offender. :-)

From wikipedia: "Spotify pays royalties based on their "market share"—the number of streams for their songs as a proportion of total songs streamed on the service."

Regardless, Spotify is free to pay whatever they think is fair and artists are free to accept or reject that compensation as they will. But if you're an artist, Spotify (and the other streaming platforms, which mostly pay even less) are not going to be something that you can ever expect to be an income source.

A radio play is around 9.5 cents per play. Assuming there are no royalty splits, then that would be 11 plays to earn a dollar.

I think royalties of 1 to 3 cents per stream are completely reasonable. Subcent royalties are just platforms taking advantage of the content creators.

Which is why most artists see all the streaming platforms as merely a way to advertise for live shows and merch. That's the only way to really make money without hitting Taylor Swift levels of streams.

It is pretty straightforward to get your music on Spotify and all the other streaming platforms. No record label needed. There are very inexpensive services that will do all the leg work for you, but it take approximately 230 streaming plays on spotify to earn a dollar.

You mean like https://www.cygwin.com/ ?

Having lived through my parents being audited multiple times I am definitely afraid of the IRS boogey man.

Merely dealing with an audit (even if everything you id was correct and above board) can be extremely stressful and time consuming.

My parents also thought their CPA was really good an knew what they were doing. Turns out that even CPAs screw up sometimes. :-)

Question, is the association for you with a singular sound or with a series of sounds (as found in the simulator)?