Notions of "noon" is a relic of a preindustrial lifestyle.

Make all the clocks world wide set to UTC.

Bitcoin is working well right now. Tulips worked well for a while. Pets.com had a Super Bowl ad. US housing -- remember the folks who said you can never lose money investing there? I can't prove Bitcoin will crash, but I think its only value is that people think it has value; if others decide they don't want your Bitcoin, you can't eat it or wear it or make anything useful with it.

Challenges here are a lot like time-outs in other sports. There's strategy in when you use them or lose them. That shouldn't be surprising. More than 90% of games don't go into extra innings. And if this new rule leads to a disparity that makes the game not fun, expect another rule change.

Very true about learned helplessness. How many of us can arrive in a city we've never been in before, and successfully drive somewhere without electronic navigation, only paper maps? But this isn't just an individual problem; this helplessness is societally-enforced as most gas stations don't have maps for sale and AAA no longer stocks the same depth and detail in paper maps they used to, thanks to our reliance on electronic nav. We used to read user manuals; now everything's online if it exists at all. But every generation says this; someone else will tell you they hand-tuned their spark plugs and kids are missing out.

We are a GLOBAL economy that is based on information. Call it Post Industrial. Information moves at the speed of light.

Pretending we Americans live in a giant castle surrounded by a huge Moat (aka Oceans) isn't going to protect us from what is happening elsewhere. Offshoring is going to kill our economy.

We have a dying generation who still sees the economy as post WWII, because that is the world we grew up in (Last of the boomers here).

We had better get used to it. Build things better, faster, cheaper.

Yes, businesses can respond to commercial signals. From the summary:

I have two problems. First, competition didn't CAUSE. It let people see things and make decisions, and make excuses for the decisions. Your competition doesn't run your business; you're free to be heterodox. The parent who says, "If all the other parents let their kids drink bleach, I have to let you do it too, because of competitive pressure" is guilty of child endangerment. OpenAI wasn't forced to do this; they were just greedy and not wanting to lose short-term market share to less honorable competitors.

Second, the commercial pressure that you are relying on to hopefully cause them to stop doing this is the very commercial pressure that was their excuse to start doing this in the first place. The blowback may be strong enough that they'll change things for the better this time. But do not expect the trend to be noble; people have a tendency to be lazy and self-seeking. Most of the bad press will move on when something newer happens, and then the feature will quietly return.

This generation had a Real ID Act passed in 2005. It was supposed to take effect in 3 years, in 2008. In reality, 20 years later they are mostly there. "On January 14, 2025, the Transportation Security Administration maintained in principle the deadline of May 7, 2025, but allowed flexible enforcement, for example by warning holders of noncompliant documents rather than refusing them altogether, until May 5, 2027."

Microsoft and the government are not the same, but we have a cultural history of holding onto things longer than someone in a central office decrees.

Interestingly, I read that the "cash for clunkers" program largely killed off demolition derbies. Why, you ask? Because they established a minimum sale price for cars. Californians could get $1500 for surrendering their old car to be crushed, and the folks who previously paid $500 or so for an old beat-up car that they'd modify to enter in the derbies could no longer buy a car for that price. The prize money in derbies wasn't rising, so people stopped entering and the events died out.

Is it harmless? That's an opinion. Not one I share either.

Is the change an overreaction? That's also an opinion. My answer is, it is no more an "over reaction" than people clammoring for the change in the first place is .

Why is it NOT an overreaction when a feather needs to be changed because someone somewhere was offended, and removing it offends someone else? Who's Offense Matters MORE? Is it offensive or is it honoring? That is the real question and who gets to decide?

And Who gets to decide who decides? Thats the real problem.

It depends. In aggregate, if 20-30 people leave the public school system, you have some meaningful cost savings -- you don't have the expenses of educating them. One less classroom to build and maintain, one less teacher to hire, fewer Chromebooks and handouts and so on. Maybe overcrowding is alleviated, or kids don't have to learn in portable trailers that cover up the ball field.

How much does the public school get per student in state funding? The smart voucher programs give the family a portion of that money, not all of it. And that's the magic right there. California per-pupil spending is almost $24,000 per year. A classroom of 21 kids costs half a million dollars on average. If you give a family a voucher for $10,000 of that, and they decide they can now afford to put their kid in a private school with the help of that $10k, the state just saved $14k on educating that child, money that it can spend on making school better for everyone who stayed in the public schools. The family is getting an education that they value. The state is able to better fund (per capita) the existing kids in the public schools. People interested in teaching can choose between public school and charter school and private school careers. You, the taxpayer, are not spending any more. Everyone wins.

This brings a question: given human nature, is there any way to prevent all the corruption, so that communism or democracy or a federated republic could be purely implemented? If you don't have one, then we're just playing No True Scotsman. Greed is a part of human nature, emerging at differing levels and expressions across individuals in the population, but it cannot be hand-waved away in practical philosophy.

Dutch Tulips!

Nothing new under the sun. This is the same same. I view most Crypto currencies this way. They are mostly worthless, with people waiting to rug each other.

Also, the average person has approximately one testicle. Really, average numbers are meaningless in a lot of situations. With my family not buying protein supplements, this means someone else is spending $280/year on them.

"Stolen" clearly indicates you are just repeating the MSM cover lies to cover up their "all the hallmarks of Russian Disinformation".

It was NOT stolen, it was ABANDONED by Mr Biden (the crack addict) at a repair shop.