When I was a kid, we too had stupid things. Besides elephant jokes (how many elephants can you fit in a VW Beetle? Five -- two in the front, two in the back, and one in the glove box), the dumbest joke I remember was to run up to a friend fast and breathless and demand "Guess what!" as if you'd seen a UFO or fire engine run by, then shout "Langendorf bread, that's what!" and run away cackling like Kamala Harris.

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Freason.com%2Fvolokh%2F2025...

It's a legal blog with a legal perspective.

I hadn't even considered this, but I think you're right. Microsoft doesn't really stand to lose anything by getting rid of the console hardware at this point. They probably realized the income brought in by selling the hardware isn't even worth the marketing costs, the need to provide warranty coverage, etc. etc.

Everything they sell to play on X-Box can run just fine as a native Windows PC game, and there's a convenient Microsoft Store included in every copy of Win 11 for people to shop in and download the titles.

Yeah... this would be my bet, honestly? Most of the other suspected causes mentioned are really things you'd be hard-pressed to pin as things only the millennials would be predominantly exposed do. Ultra-processed foods, for example, are consumed in large quantities by Gen-X -- because they were the "latch-key kids" who got used to the whole idea of fending for themselves at an early age. As a pre-teen or teen trying to fix their own meals, they turned to all the fast/easy solutions available to them and it became ingrained as the way to eat, over time. Circadian rhythm disruption? Come on now... You're going to tell me nobody ever worked odd shifts until they came along?

The glaring issue is stress.

How gullible are you, and how gullible do you think I am, or anyone else?

They've been screaming for decades that 1.5C is the panic point, and 2.0C is right out. There's your tenths.

They claim they can predict the global temperature in 75 years within a tenth of a degree. How much more accuracy do they need?

Answer: they don't, unless their models are so inaccurate that the claims of knowing the temperature 75 years from now are false.

They lie.

Cattle in Greenland is historical fact. I learned it in grade school and a simple google finds all the confirmation you need.

The 97% fallacy is also easy to verify.

You lie again.

Again: rebut my assertions and claims, or you are a fraud. If all you do is skirt the issue and claim to be right and I am wrong, without any evidence but the sound of your keyboard, you are a fraud.

Explain where I have confused climate and weather. You didn't, and you won't, because you can't. You make arguments with nothing to back them up because you don't know what you are talking about, and because you don't want to risk anyone rebutting your claims.

That's also why you didn't rebut a single one of my claims. You don't believe your own claims. You are just another climate alarmist yelling at the clouds and wearing an onion on your belt.

Your faux-concern is so touching -- and fake, as you well know.

I'm glad you at least recognize you treat people as stereotypes instead of pondering what they say and responding as if you had actually read and understood what they say. You may eventually cease to be a stereotype yourself some day.

You're an idiot.

Of course *climate change* is real. It's been changing for 4.5 billion years.

What's not real is the fantasy that humans are changing climate so fast that we have already passed several tipping points on the way to Venus, that polar bears and penguins have gone extinct, that New York City has been drowned, that Arctic summer ice has vanished, that Mt Kilamanjaro has lost its peak snow, that snow has vanished from the Earth ... how many more failed predictions do you need to discern a pattern of lies?

CO2 was 6000 ppm 500 million or so years ago. It was 4000 ppm during parts of the dinosaur age. If it falls below 150 ppm or so, plants go extinct, and without plants, all animal life goes extinct. 280 ppm was the so-called baseline 150 years ago; how much closer to extinction do you want to get? It's 430 ppm now.

The global climate was warmer during the Medieval Warming Period, as attested to Greenland actually being green enough to raise cattle. It was warmer during the Roman Warm Period, and earlier eras, as attested by olive trees growing above the current tree line. Glaciers retreating up mountains now from warming have uncovered forests which grew for 300 years, 1000-1500 years ago, until they were knocked down, in situ, by growing glaciers.

I saw a map of the US Atlantic coast, showing claimed recent sea level rises. Coastal cities only a couple of hundred miles apart showed remarkably different sea level rises -- for the same ocean on the same coast. Oceans can't do that, but land can, meaning these were not sea level rises but different degrees of land subsidence.

The climate alarmists have made failed predictions and lied about so much for so long, that anyone who still puts any credence in them is a blithering idiot. People who have truth on their side don't need to invent so much fraudulent data and lie so thoroughly.

The claim that 97% of scientists agree that AGW is real is based on selective cherry picking of self-selected survey results. It also flies in the face of demanding trillions more dollars in research on global warming. If it's settled, why do they need trillions more dollars to study it? As the old saying goes, "If it's settled, it ain't science. If it's science, it ain't settled."

If you like being taxed to support bullshit artists, why not donate a little extra all on your own?

Yes, I wish more people would pay attention to what he said about them.

I don't think anything better illustrates the corruption of free money than the climate alarmists simultaneously wanting trillions more funding for science that is settled, which is an oxymoron to start with; if it's settled, it ain't science, and if it's science, it ain't settled. So shut up and give us your money. After a while, along with a few fiascos like Fauci, the public begins to notice they're being plucked.

The art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest amount of feathers with the least amount of hissing. -- Jean-Baptiste Colbert

One need not see very many current science papers to see how much nonsense is being peddled as science. Aside from the fakes, from both AI and paper mills, most of it contributes nothing to knowledge. Too much has the appearance of being "publish or perish" trivia that will never be referenced or even read beyond its title.

The problem is politicians who think the way to advance their careers is to shovel money at "science", and that scientific knowledge is measured in dollars and euros and yen and every other currency. Plenty of bureaucrats are ready, willing, and able to funnel it to their buddies, because the only way bureaucrats can measure their professional success is in bigger budgets, more underlings, and fresh regulations. After all, a bureaucracy which does not issue new regulations is declaring "mission accomplished" and its own obsolescence.

If you bought one of these things, you deserve it. :)

This reminds me of a story too. I was working at a place just rolling out Microsoft Office 365 and the whole 2 factor authentication thing. We started looking at the devices people had registered for MFA. Obviously, you mostly had various smartphones and a few people even used iPads or other tablets. But this one guy had a Samsung smart fridge as his device. He explained that, "I work from home and have a desk in the kitchen. So it's easy to confirm the authentication from the refrigerator screen. And this way, I know I won't just lose it someplace like I might lose my phone!"

But seriously, I really dislike this trend of making basic home appliances Internet connected and/or computerizing them needlessly. My old Black & Decker 4 slice toaster finally gave out on us last week. I was shocked by how much a new toaster costs now! I was expecting to run out and grab something for maybe $20 or so? Nope! Many of the highly rated models are well over $200! The cheapest I could find was about $45, for one at Costco that has 2 digital strips down the front. One side lights up with icons of toast, in various levels of darkness, and the other depicts all the different foods you mgiht toast; bagels, waffles, pastries, toast...

We got it home and tried it out, and guess what? When you select toast with a darkness of "3 out of 6", shown as a medium brown? It absolutely burns it! The lightest setting just ejects warm, untoasted bread. I couldn't find any point to a setting on the thing other than the second-lightest one! Highly inaccurate. All of this seems really unnecessary, when the light/dark knob on my old toaster worked just as it was supposed to.