This is the plot of "The Freshman", which is an excellent movie. Starring Matthew Broderick, and featuring Marlon Brando parodying himself in The Godfather!
Sorry, I'm showing my age. When I was a boy it was common to play "slug bug". Sighting a Volkswagen Beetle was an excuse to punch your friend/sibling in the shoulder without retribution.
Does nobody remember Enron? They encouraged their employees to invest in company stock, and when the company collapsed those employees were doubly screwed: no more job and no more savings. Too many eggs in one basket IMO. Investing in your own company is only for people who can tolerate very high risk.
The important thing to understand here is that you shouldn't write on a latex balloon with a Sharpie. It works well for a while, but when the balloon inevitably pops or deflates, the Sharpie ink will re-liquify and get all over the place. Then you will learn the meaning of the phrase "indelible on porous surfaces".
Debating the pros and cons of different languages misses the point IMO. Shell scripts are useful not because of the language but because the interpreter is already available absolutely everywhere.
Be advised using the last auto-incremented value as a "high water mark" and getting everything greater than that is not 100% reliable, because in some scenarios auto-incrementing values can be written out of order.
Many years ago my sister had a job going door to door asking for donations for environmental causes. I was shocked to discover that the people doing the canvassing immediately pocketed half of the donations as they walked away from the door. And that was only the percentage taken by the people on the front line!
Personally I would prefer social media without the ability to "retweet" at all. I want actual original updates from the people I follow, not news (fake or otherwise) or chain letters.
I'll bet they achieve commercial success with the reverse application. Imagine being able to mute that one obnoxiously loud person with an annoying voice at a party!
Do any of the video call services support full duplex audio? It feels so stifling to have to be perfectly silent while others are speaking, compared to the give and take of a normal conversation.
How does the air "push the water up"? What mechanism prevents the air from simply bubbling up through the water column? I'm assuming some kind of valve or piston, but would be interested to see what it looks like.
Tip for "collecting structured data": you can prepopulate the email body using a mailto: link with a "prompt" to the sender to fill out the data you need.
Flying with wings strapped to your arms! Not outside on the moon of course, but could maybe work in a cave or building pumped full of air. I remember reading about that in some scifi novel long ago.