You're idealising one government rule to stop other government stupidity. The fact is that enforcing that kind of thing is meant to be the electorate's job. Instead of howling these people out of office as the spent, bought-and-paid for geriatrics that they are, they keep electing them instead.

That's a really solid set of counterpoints to which I'd respond that the foreign policy has not merely been to maintain supply of oil, but to do so at discount prices and prevent other powers from developing it. This has demonstrably not improved stable access to oil and necessarily requires bringing an increasing fraction of the world to ruin and relative turmoil. In short, it's bad long-term strategy because it's not sustainable. Meanwhile, they've notably resisted efforts to diversify access to alternative sources of energy that'd reduce that reliance on oil.

They'd be better off trying to align themselves neutrally and dropping NATO.

"Remember that pirate fleet that tried to tie weights around our neck when we were taking on water 20 years ago?"

"Yes, why?"

"Well they're about to sink and I think we should tether our ship to theirs."

> Bonus: put some typos in the quiz that don't matter. Red flag for the people that get hung up on that.

I feel like after presenting a great solution to the stupid, cryptic, arbitrary interviewer games where you have to guess the rules on your only attempt at playing the game, you've added one at the last minute. What if one of the values is attention to detail?

Attention to details that matter and knowing what to pass on, is what's important. If they did poorly on the important stuff but then point out the typo, clearly they were putting their efforts in the wrong places

I loved everything about this.

me too

I'd take the attribution with a wheelbarrow of salt. If Iran was as dangerous as Unnamed US Official has been claiming for the past 50 years, they'd be running the world by now. Iran hitting US mainland targets would be a big departure from the doctrine they've been following so far.

Microsoft 364, am I right?

It ceased to be independent. It still exists and I have agricultural products at work that still bear its trademark.

I am not a lawyer, but my understanding is that plant breeders who develop a new cultivar or variety are generally awarded seven years of exclusivity on registration, which seems reasonable to me. For fruit trees that take 3-6 years to become productive, you could make a good argument for perhaps doubling that time.

In fact, I think a lot of IP law would be better if it resembled this arrangement more closely, in that it would incentivise the actual author, developer, inventor, etc to be rewarded for their work without letting people who had no connection to that work to collect rent for decades or centuries thereafter, long after those people have moved on or died. Walt's grandkids should not still be collecting rents directly from his work.

Extending these rights on plants via patent law is ridiculous on its face to me for all the reasons you've already listed, and should be thwarted at every turn. Using a tool that someone else invented to tweak a species that has existed since before civilisation, and which has been improved throughout civilisation is no more a new invention than changing your irrigation and fertilisation timing to improve yield. It doesn't deserve a patent.