QuarterReptile

Windows 8.1 and 10 were both better than 7.

Windows 8.1 was a great OS. Touchscreen seems to have driven movement toward low-anination, so the start menu opened instantly. Touch forced big-ness on the start menu, so it wasn't so damned cluttered when you opened it up. If you started looking at lists, though, the text was pretty close together and somehow a great font and shape for looking through lots of text.

In my experience (I have a 2015 TV that's been EOL'ed by anyone doing apps for TVs) streaming services are increasingly not allowing chromecast, instead requiring you to log in on the TV.

I cancel those services... but I recognize that many people go the other way.

It's maybe more maddening when you realize it was part of Intel getting completely out of memory, so that stings a bit. On the other hand, Intel needed focus rather than the multi-pronged MBA-driven mediocrity they'd been pursuing.

The overnight fix, to be perfectly clear, would require illegal firing of federal judges and getting rid of the filibuster, just to start fixing.

Deficit spending is one place where the major parties are in complete agreement. So it just wastes political capital, unless you see Thomas Massie somehow amassing a majority of Congressmen interested in his issues.

I think, despite all the furor whipped up and attempts by high-ranking officials to foment a coup, the military is actually very unlikely to disobey Presidential orders; this is based on my frequent interactions with military officers over the last ten years. Do you perceive some other, more likely, coup scenario?

In fact, the current administration, not headed by someone from the military (and VP has military credibility but not leadership) is not at all aligned to the military except in that their base appreciates the imprimatur of honorable military service. In fact, Trump 1 was in many ways a huge refutation to Trump of the idea that the military guys were leaders he could count on. Their brain-trust positions had more left-alignment than he maybe imagined. His administration, in 2025, fired high-ranking officers in a way that suggested he entered with the reverse conclusion: not military leaders as high-competence straight-shooters, but as all being suspect for having risen unstoppably in a system pervaded by partisan platitudes and shibboleths. Fortunately, the administration didn't take the Soviet approach of purging all those under suspicion.

They just finally had to fire their SecNav because reality butted heads with their ideological conclusion was that business experience was more conducive to military success. Unfortunately for their very-much-not-military-led plan, SecNav probably needs a bit more user experience from time in Navy leadership to successfully work within that labrythine bureaucracy.

Your "brighter kids" probably did their reps already, when you weren't watching. My 4 year old likes to quiz me on addition and subtraction at the dinner table -- two years from now, in some school, it'll look like he 'just gets it', which he will, but only because he already did his reps.

For a long time, college education was the easiest way to legally discriminate against applicants. The signal is weakening and the expense of exhibiting the signal has skyrocketed.

The school system is going to crash out in the US. The public school teachers will readily share symptoms ("enrollment going down", "2X the IEPs of 3 years ago", "non-verbal ipad kids", "kids only sleeping 4 hours a night because of ipads", etc.). As everyone with means or time escapes, the system increasingly distills problems and legitimate special-needs cases while no longer spreading them out among cooperative kids, and teachers will continue to burn out in such a thankless environment.

At varying times in various places, public school is or will become just like riding the bus: technically a viable option for a needed service, if you have no other choice and are ready to suffer in a place that tolerates all manner of dysfunction.

Compared to what, and measured by what?

On the other hand, healthcare administration headcount has grown over 1000% since 1970, and few things grow as fast. Feels like plenty of runway.

I think Maryland deserves a special shoutout. It's illegal, and not just in a CPS-steamrolls-your-rights-and-family sort of way, for an 8 year old to be left with children <13.

Growing up, I think many girls had ended their babysitting careers by 13.

We have a regulatory regime that requires that SUVs be bigger each year. It saves the environment that way.