Paris was lovely... at least the tourist parts are. Saw way less sketchy types than I was expecting. Felt safer there than several other big cities in Europe and USA (despite all the crowds and pickpocket warnings). Saw zero Palestinian protestors, for instance.

Well, some of that is for classes for people who can't see that default 3-pixel wide scrollbar on Windows 11 in high contrast dark mode. :-)

Fair. Just making fun of Windows 11.

Yeah, you're blessed to have one of each. Until they start conspiring against you, which you KNOW is going to happen.
ha!

Hopefully we'll raise them better than that. And let them see us honoring our parents.

You charge to "upgrade" to Windows 11? How evil are you? :P

For all my pro-life ramblings, we were granted only one child.

Precious. I feel bad you couldn't have more though. G-d has been very generous to us.

Keeping up with two toddlers after age 50 can't be easy.

And yet i wouldn't trade it for anything! Thank G-d, we have a lot of help. Especially, when some neighboring girls come by to take our son for a walk. G-d bless them all.

... now they are ultra-expensive pets. This is the prime driver behind birthrate decline. On top of that comes hormonal birth control that _significantly_ alters women's perception of men. Add to that social media that amps said perception of options, self-worth and alternate reality 10x and you've got the perfect storm of an aloof late-stage decadent society on the brink of dying out.

Curiously enough there are historic records of exactly this happening throughout human history, with astonishingly similar effects in society, like rising property prices, disenfranchising of mid and low-status mem, whore becoming a desired choice career for women and dissolution of sex/gender definitions. Rome, Maya culture, Weimar Republic and some vanished societies in far east Asia are examples from recorded history that show similar trajectories.

The "West" will collapse and some other society will take its place. If we don't all die out completely from some global Ecological Tilt brought about by climate change and pollution that is.

Always a safe bet, even when bought refurbished. I rely on ThinkPads to this very day.

... allowing sideloading and installing a completely open source boot process and OS. I don't know if that still is the case but a few years back Xperia phones where the last ones that allowed for this sort of thing. A good thing IMHO and worth supporting.

False equivalence... democracy-autocracy is a scale, and there's a difference between having a persistent cough that pesters your day and having to be intubated because you can't breath and your O2 is dropping. And now technology is opening new avenues for totalitarianism than the Stasi could have ever dreamed of.

I remember events somewhat differently: they first encouraged people not to buy up n95 masks because it was more important that healthcare workers have them. That was true. Then they said homemade/cloth masks don't work, and that was also true in the sense that a mask doesn't provide the wearer with reliable protection from COVID. But then they realized that maybe it did "work" in the sense of reducing the infection rate, particularly when worn by infected persons. That is somewhat true... certainty it was a reasonable guess and a valid change in tactics even though later studies cast doubt on how worthwhile it was. You see "liars", but I see public health officials scrambling to make the best decisions (within the framework of their medical understanding) while working with a lot of unknowns in a serious, quickly changing situation. If course, it didn't help that some politicians were overzealous and/or hypocritical in applying mask mandates. Localities that closed public beaches, for instance, were clearly being absurd. It's the job of a politician to balance competing concerns (medicine vs economics, for instance), and there were many who did a shit job.

I'm pretty sure a pill isn't going to fix my lobsided skull or my staggered teeth and underdeveloped jaws. A problem evidently linked to wrong post-teething toddler nutrition rampant in modern societies around the world for roughly 200 years. There's even a book on the problem (Jaws: The Story of a Hidden Epidemic).

... going balistic in a society that is 110% dependant on digital systems and networks up and running 24/7.

Nice. I like it.

And somehow I get the inkling that Visa and Mastercard won't be able to ignore this or brush it away.

Because it's not free: it was bundled with the purchase of my PC and the manufacturer paid a hefty sum for that privilege. Why do we tolerate abusive behaviors from the products we buy?

No one? I'm disappointed in y'all.

> There's not much taught in a college class that can't be learned from books. Yes, but how do you know which books, and which chapters, and who do you get clarifications from, and what projects do you undertake to get beyond book knowledge, and what tools (labs, software, specimen, etc) do you use, and who struggles thru the learning with you providing mutual support, and what group do you discuss literature and philosophy with, and who provides expert perspective, where do you find a community of fellow scholars, and how do you evaluate your progress, and how do you signal to the job marketplace at large that you've acquired some skills and are capable of holding a professional position? You might be able to figure out or stumble upon some of these answers (hard to do since you're starting from a position where you don't know much), but a University can answer all of them.

The things holding back Linux for the unwashed masses have diminished to minor annoyances in the last 15 years, especially when compared to the nonsense wintel still puts its users through. It finally has gotten through to ords that there are solid reasons why experts don't even consider Windows as an option when doing mission critical stuff these days. ChromeOS and Android are signs of the things to come and Windows isn't even on the radar with those usage patterns.

Looks like linux has finally gotten critical mass for regular end users. I certainly wouldn't mind. My last Windows was Win2k and that's been a while. I occasionally bump into poor bastards using whatever the newest Windows is and always experience a bizarre throwback into distant and long gone times messing with ultra proprietary systems and their bullshit. Very strange. Personally I fundamentally do not get why M$ even has a business case with their system. And I even am a well paying customer who is quite happy with his XBoxes.