It was all about "Encouraging more digital adoption by nudging customers to go online to self-solve," and "taking decisive short-term action to generate warranty cost efficiencies."

If you wanted customers to go online to self-solve, you'd write proper manuals, provide well-documented and granular error codes and allow people to run diagnostics on their own devices... By not providing either it's clear the warranty cost efficiencies they're talking about are people giving up on trying to resolve their issue and just buying a new one

Or avoid a decrease in profit, which is why you get so many posturing bandwagons which slow down once enough people have forgotten that it won't affect profits anymore, eg all the statements and policy, name, logo etc changes due to BLM in mid-late 2020

This looks to be completely political, their profits are huge and from the article it seems like the closures are largely just reshuffles, with the real job losses coming in management... I really wouldn't be surprised if they end up refilling the positions though and just wanted to make a point that they don't like being taxed on their huge profits

In Portuguese (as spoken in Portugal, Brazil, USA, Japan, Ghana, wherever) they're an americano/a but in English (as spoken in USA, UK, Brazil, Portugal, Nepal, wherever) they're South American but not American because it's a linguistic difference rather than a geographical/cultural one

Also you can actually see the stars and can hold a regular sleep schedule unlike in summer where it never actually gets beyond twilight

Yeah either you live in London so are paying at a minimum 1600/month or 20k/year for a 350k mortgage, or if you live in the north or less desirable parts of the south you're gonna be paying 750/month or 9000/year for a 175k mortgage, either way if that's 40%, once you consider tax, bills, heating, food, transport (because no way can you afford to live within walking distance of work as a first time buyer) and whatever else you frankly don't have a whole load left all in

Apart from tigers and a few others which went through even worse bottlenecks

My favourite theory of time travel is that in the vast majority of timelines, travelling back in time guarantees that events will unfold as they always will, as given an infinite number of timelines in entropy there will be at least one timeline that forms a loop, and from that point effectively every timeline follows that loop. It may even be a multi-step loop, but it's still a loop and the time travel causes the events that leads to the time travel.

"Most historical settings"

Roman sure, especially as you get closer to Africa but nonzero elsewhere also

Middle ages, mediæval and renaissance almost certainly limited to higher nobility households either as nobles or "interesting" servants or major trading ports, especially closer to Africa.

The chances of a mediæval serf in a germanic country not looking northern Europe, or Mediterranean at a huge stretch, are functionally zero though, as anyone who came with the Romans will have been long dead with their genetics widely dispersed, and anyone who came over recently would likely be in an urban area, with marriage or higher level employment being their only chance to end up in a rural area.

Still more than the 10 days I imagine you get by stating it as 2 weeks though I guess

About 165 minutes for Anchorage... For reference, Helsinki is also 165, Glasgow is 135, London 120, even Milan is 95

Coming from anywhere in Europe the idea of somewhat balanced day lengths throughout the year sounds wild

The websites (or at least Google & Facebook - not sure about Microsoft, it could just be low value ad space that nobody really wants?) you've described are known as "walled gardens" in advertising, meaning the DSP (demand side platform, where people who run ad campaigns manage those campaigns), SSP (supply-side platform, where websites & apps with available add space list that space) and at times the website itself are all part of the same company.

This creates a conflict of interest - essentially DSPs want to place as few ads as reasonable as they only want to advertise to people the ads will have an impact on. SSPs want to show as many ads as possible so they get paid more. This results in walled gardens, like Google & Facebook, showing ads more than they should be resulting in overcharging as a result compared to an optimally run campaign. Many reputable companies and ad agencies are aware of this and so advertise less with the walled gardens, resulting in proportionally higher scam ads, as no agency would run a campaign for them.

There's also the fact that they have no relationships to maintain. If a DSP is constantly showing scam ads in the ad spaces they buy, then they'll get blacklisted by the SSP. Same the other way around if the SSP keeps selling misrepresented ad spaces that will never be seen or will be resold every 5 seconds to the DSP, or otherwise not being a trustworthy partner to work with. As the walled gardens don't need to maintain this relationship and there's no risk of being blacklisted, they can effectively advertise whatever and put ads wherever on their website - they're generally powerful enough that people will use their product anyway, so there's no downside for them to accepting scam ads if they're paying.