It's about making sure kids can read. It's about making sure our tax dollars are spent on making the next generation of people into functional adults.

I don't want the country spending billions on an education system that churns out adults who are genuinely illiterate and can't write.

And are completely susceptible to disinformation/misinformation campaigns.

It's NOT the schools. They are well funded and as you say, pretty helpless because teachers, even younger ones, just aren't able to deal with kids whose parents shoved a smartphone into their hands at age 3.

It's NOT the parents - in order to keep up with the jonses in those towns, you have to work like a dog and most likely, both parents are in high stress demanding environments in order to make enough to live there. I was fortunate that my dad did quite well for our family, but there's no way I could raise a kid in that environment.

It's the fucking devices, and the drive to put tech everywhere in the classroom. When I was a kid we had a single Mac in the classroom (besides the teacher's computer), mainly to dick around with Oregon Trail, Math Blaster, or some typing app. We wanted to play games? We went outside and played sports, or stayed inside and played games like scrabble or chess.

In high school we had to do genuine research 15-20+ page papers as early as Sophomore year. There was zero Wikipedia, much less ChatGPT or Claude.

Of course, a book, which requires attention, effort, and has no distractions, is not going to capture the attention and imagination of someone who has had the world and all of its distractions at their fingertips since they gained consciousness, and weren't made to socialize without devices.

And no, we cannot allow people to pass to the next grade without mastering the skills required of their current grade. This needs to be completely iron clad and not up for debate. I was nearly held back 3-4 times. I am an idiot. I was miles ahead of where elementary school and middle school kids are today. I don't care if a wealthy Ivy grad and his management consultant wife donate a bunch of money to make sure their kid can pass - if their kid can't read or write, their kid can't pass.

I wished I had known this earlier in my life.

I once interviewed at a healthcare startup ran by the brother of someone very closely related to the current occupant of the White House. This was 3 weeks after I graduated college.

I went through the first round, no problem. 2nd round, it was Halloween, and a nurse dressed up as a cow (spotted makeup and all) comes into the room and asks me to role play a situation where I have to deny life-saving insurance claims to a cancer patient who's been given a life threatening diagnosis.

Halfway through the exercise I asked the interviewer - "so, this is an insurance company, and the insured has been paying premiums for a while, probably 10s of thousands of dollars, and they have what is otherwise effectively a terminal diagnosis...and you're asking me to deny this person their only chance at survival?". I was given the response of "that's how insurance works"

Sad.

I have Claude basically doing all the coding for me for a simple game I am making. However I don't consider this vibe coding. I spent several hours thinking out the design on a piece of paper, playtesting it in person. I came up with a list of potential mechanical issues within the game, and asked Claude to come up with more. It found more issues, and we solved them all together. Once the game was mechanically sound and edgecases were solved for, it built an MVP. I ran the program, and found more bugs. I came up with my own solutions, and Claude did the same, and we figured out which were best to implement. Claude then wrote more code, and raised issues when they came up, and we worked through them together. I'm incredibly happy with how its turned out so far.

In my city, Zoox are already rolling out driverless taxi services, and the vehicles they are using are completely autonomous.

I get my GF pasta from a local italian food importer. the quality of the pasta is out of this world. i've done blind tasting tests with said importer and he couldn't tell the difference between GF and non GF.

there are crappy brands out there for sure and definitely some GF products are bad. some aren't.

Here in America, we're also sick and tired of vultures buying up everything just because they can.

I am left handed for fine motor skills (writing, fork/knife) but throw righty and play single handed sports with my right (except for table tennis which i can do either hand at a good level). I can play two handed sports (hockey, lacrosse, golf) pretty much with either hand with little issue. Right footed, but can kick with my left pretty confidently.

This needs to be shouted from the rooftops.

I am from NYC and live in Miami.

I have seen hedge funds try and fail to bring talent down here, and paying talent through the nose to convince them. It has failed, because 1. local private schools won't let Ken Griffin buy his way to the front of the line; and 2. there's no local talent pipelines to recruit from that come even remotely close to what is found in the Northeast, or in the Bay Area.

UM pales in comparison to the fact that almost every Ivy League school is within a 3 hour drive of NYC, not counting other strong school (NYU, NEASC colleges, MIT, etc). FIU or UF isn't even in the same stratosphere.

Taxes pay for the establishment of a strong educational foundation so that even local public schools can send kids to Ivies or top colleges. Taxes pay to keep that going.

I've been told that it's effectively a mental illness if discovered during childhood (as is ambidexterity). Yet I can't help but think that it is not a mental illness, but rather something else.

There's a difference between a few people getting together and petitioning the government for redress; versus, a multitrillion dollar corporation (that pays little to no tax, and is the recipient of very generous government contracts) buying its way to the front of the line and whining until it gets its way.

Hey brown or yellow immigrants - the conservatives will gladly accept your vote, but the second you walk away they won't even refer to you by name in conversation, they'll refer you to with every slur in the book. I grew up with some very far-right types who had money...nice to "the help" in person, but soon as earshot is out of range, you hear the n-word like it's as common as the word "the". And just because you're not black, doesn't mean they don't hate you too. I've heard some horrid things said to Indians, Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Pakistanis, etc.

Anyone remember the young republicans club at Florida International University scandal? Lots of young male Cuban immigrants (or kids of immigrants) desperate to be seen as white. Problem is, you pull any one of those kids out of Dade county, they'll be called a Mexican and told to go make tacos.

Garry's actions on social media remind me of those kids, albeit someone with a bit more money, and a little less perspective on things.

Corporations might be "people" but they aren't citizens. Especially if they participate in shenanigans designed to "minimize" their tax exposure that involve shell corporations in other countries.

break up Apple, Meta, MSFT, etc... while we're at it.

Or, keep it simpler - if a company passes a market cap of 1 trillion dollars, they must forgo lobbying and "government relations". if you're worth a trillion dollars or more, you don't need the government to hold your hand.