The only thing I ever got out of doing homework at Uni was a case of beer. The reward for our team coming first in an assignment to devise a strategy for maximizing throughput through a telecoms switch. A far as grades went, midterms and finals set them, 50/50.

But my high school was the same, come to think of it (though it was a Montessori school, a bit different from others). Teachers assigned homework, some even checked that you completed the work, but the only homework that was actually graded were essays. Teachers usually covered the homework quickly at the start of the class, pausing to clarify things if a student had questions. Seems like a good way to find out what students are struggling with, and provide some reinforced learning.

In other words: homework can be a tool to help struggling students to catch up with the class, not to punish them for falling behind. Grading homework is worse than pointless. And in this age of AI, grading homework only further encourages the use of AI.

Reminds me a little of the short story "Manna" about AI taking over all production, and 2 outcomes for society. As a staunch capitalist, I think that in an AI-driven world, or a "post labour" world or whatever you want to call it, capitalism as a means of distribution of wealth is not going to work. Yes, I think many would argue that it is already failing in that regard, but I would counter that the safeguards we have against people falling through the cracks still mostly work... and more importantly, that we have no better system to replace it. But if work itself pretty much becomes redundant, capitalism will only continue to work if we can find a good answer to the old question: who owns the means of production? And those means ought to include natural resources and land as well.

I am sure there are some good answers, and a way to organize society around that new reality. But I'm not at all convinced either that this is where we are headed. By the time governments would have to take action, they'd be wholly owned by the new aristocracy.

The proposed EU age verification app is a good deal less intrusive than any of the nasty mechanisms that some social media is already employing. Most of those are a privacy nightmare. The EU app, in contrast:
- Site / App operator does not get your identity, only a proof of age.
- Government does not get to see which sites you visit.
- Actual verification takes place once, and whatever ID you use does not need to be stored (and can't be subsequently stolen)
- App is open source, so the workings can be verified.

In the grand scheme of things someone being here illegally and working construction is about last on my list of priorities

They bother me.

They are taking up housing that US citizens could use....everyone keeps complaining about needing more housing, eh?

They are a burden on our schools and other public resources.

They are dead weight on our medical system...in many cities they overrun the ERs of hospitals making it difficult for true US citizens to get emergency care in their own country.

Just a few examples.,,....the US budget would save a lot of money if they were GONE.

It turns out that immigrants commit fewer crimes than citizen

There you go again, conflating ILLEGAL migrants with LEGAL migrants, especially those that actually wish to come legally and become US citizens because they want to melt in and believe in our principals ans way of life.

Add some guard towers with machine guns and the border is starting to look like post WW2 Berlin.

Except in Berlin they were trying to keep people IN....there's a big difference from letting people freely leave if they want....and invasion from foreign entities.

Frankly, iI'd be all for settting up our snipers, they could get some free practice...

And a No Man's land....complete with a field along the border of land mines.

Ok I have a name for the project...

Operation: Hot Tamale

Thank you...thank you....I'll be here all week...

I fly 200ish flights a year so figure 70-80 nights away.

2025 was 100% hotels but 2019 was about 80% Airbnbs.

Airbnb will never get my business back. Ever. The professional scammer hosts are so good at finding a way to nail me for a fee. Iâ(TM)ve taken perfect check out video and still had to spend hours fighting fees.

Airbnb allowed making guests do it.

They lost so much money to hotels theyâ(TM)re banning hosts from requiring it.

Has it though? In the West, certainly. It's what the MBAs all parrot: focus on your core strengths, divest everything else. Or at least split it off under different names. But there are still Japanese, Taiwanese and Korean conglomerates that make everything from oil tankers, appliances, musical instruments to motorcycles. All under the same name. Somehow they are not too concerned about brand name dilution or core strengths. Like the MCP guy says in Robocop: "Good business is where you find it".

The stock argument is a good point... I'd love to invest in SpaceX the aerospace company, not so much in SpaceX the AI company with a satcom division and its own rocket department. Certainly not if they add an automotive department that seems to have lost its way. Though I don't know if this is about Musk's wants, it smells a lot more like the acquisition of X and xAI by Spacex: a trick to artificially pad the company's valuation, or something like that.

Audiophilles will be convinced they can hear a difference. They can't, but they will be convinced of it.

"And the UK handed you the brand new computer industry on a plate by destroying all the computers it had built during the war while not requiring that you do the same with the licensed copies you had built."

The UK decided to destroy its computers on its own, don't blame us for your idiocy. "Require"? What were you going to "require" we do? And how were you going to enforce this "requirement"?

And what licensed copies are you talking about? Britain shared the Bombe (which was basically an upgraded version of the one the Polish built, but of course Brits insist they're the geniuses who broke Enigma), but ENIAC was a US production.

Business school is a 2-year cocktail party.

Capitalism just means that the means of production are privately owned, by investors with a profit motive. That's all. You mention the post WW2 era as an example when life was still good for even the lower incomes, and that was also a capitalist era. Capitalism has brought a standard of living unheard of in most of human history, not to the rich but to the working class.

It took more than capitalism to make that happen, capitalism does not provide equal opportunity to everyone nor does it necessarily distribute wealth fairly. And it seems that capitalism tends to concentrate money and with it power into ever-smaller groups. It takes unions, governments, laws and watchdogs to ensure that businesses keep their proper place, play fair and do right by everyone. And they used to do that fairly well for over a century. It's those entities failing us now, not capitalism. GP is right about that.

Yes and No.
MBAs are taught to look at the wrong things. But that "wrong thing" is not the profit motive. Profit is the purpose of a business, in its essence. A founder or enlightened CEO might give it purpose beyond that, but at its core, profit is the goal.

The real question is: what agencies and regulations exist to ensure that this profit motive - useful as it is - serves society's higher goals?