It really isn't hard to imagine how much Lovecraftian dread pre-scientific man would have experienced when looking up at something like this.

And it's an amazing testament to the human appreciation for beauty that we can still experience a similar sense of awe and wonder, even though we know the naturalistic explanation for the phenomenon.

someone has to cut down a tree

Especially a peanut tree! They're already so rare that most consider them to be a plant of myth.

I am absolutely terrified of the potential of real time deep fakes combined with AI voice impersonations being used to scam the elderly. Obviously, that's a ways off. But I fear it's not that far off.

Hydrogen, Nitrogen, Flourine, Oxygen, Iodine, Chlorine, and Bromine

some functionality will be restricted without a paid license

I think that's why. But maybe I'm just overly cynical.

You missed the opportunity to throw "thorough" in there after "through".

Do not try and bend the spoon, that’s impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth… there is no spoon. Then you’ll see that it is not the spoon that bends, it is only yourself.

Because the major export product of the United States is American culture. UFO/alien abduction/government cover-ups are kinda baked into American popular culture at this point. Just the idea that the government is simultaneously incompetent yet able to successfully hide far reaching evidence of alien visitation is as American as baseball and apple pie.

I've no doubt people are looking up at the night sky all over the world and seeing things that they think are possibly alien craft. I've also no doubt that there are stories and folklore about abductions in every country on earth. But American culture is insidious and infects just about everything. This forces every other event to be reframed in reference to the American UFO phenomenon.

I appreciate your "aww shucks, kids gonna be kids" worldview; however, the data is clear, we have dramatically reduced the rate at which young people smoke cigarettes by instituting rules and guidelines concerning advertising targeting adolescents. Further, we have clear data showing that level of education greatly effects the likelihood of an individual using tobacco.

So with all due respect, this is something we can easily tackle. We know for certain the adolescents respond readily to marketing, and we therefore can control tobacco adoption by reducing said marketing to their demographic. This isn't anywhere near as futile as you're making it out to be.

You're just spreading incorrect and out of date information here. Here's a quote from the union Railroad Department Director Al Russo with the IBEW:

“We’re thankful that the Biden administration played the long game on sick days and stuck with us for months after Congress imposed our updated national agreement,” Russo said. “Without making a big show of it, Joe Biden and members of his administration in the Transportation and Labor departments have been working continuously to get guaranteed paid sick days for all railroad workers."

Source: https://www.ibew.org/media-center/Articles/23Daily/2306/230620_IBEWandPaid

There have been three accidents related to nuclear power generation, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukashima. There were a total of 33 deaths attributed to those three incidents (32 from Chernobyl and 1 from Fukashima.)

There are 58 deaths per terawatt-hour attributed to coal alone, mostly due to air pollution.

I'd say that nuclear power is very close to completely harmless in comparison. Certainly in contrast to its perception among the general public.