I personally prefer desktop workstations. They are better.

There are key phrases that a school is scam central. Any time they try to say "X percent of students went off to college" that school is a scam. If they speak of creating "computer literate" or "technology literate" students, the school is a scam.

Check out how easy many of the reading and math tests are, then you will know how horrible it is when schools only have 20-30% of students getting to their grade level. It has been a bizarre transformation where schools went from being oriented around student learning to being oriented around teacher wellness and teacher preferences.

We should be hiring teachers from Singapore and Hong Kong to fix our schools. Instead we hire creepy education consultants that get rich peddling idiocy. It iw a crime against children.

An example: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-takes/2023/09/08/c...

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/22/us/reading-teaching-curri...

I do know that even my TI-85 was programmable. I made a few different functions with it. If you try anything too sophisticated, there really is not sufficient space for it, but it was the first device I ever wrote any kind of program on. I used that through university, but for work I had the HP 12c with reverse Polish notation. Now that was useless. I could never understand why old men preferred that to Excel. Excel is better in every way, and one can write pretty sophisticated functions and simulations in Excel VBA. I spent years doing so.

Overall, I do not see the point in bringing out new calculators. I do think the existing ones should have more RAM and storage with a bit more computational heft, but only 1-3% of owners are ever going to use that, but it will make them so much better.

Frankly, I would recommend you think on why you are so sensitive to random criticism? That is not healthy. I had the privilege of growing up in a rough place where ridicule was the norm, so I was rather immune to insults by around age 14. I mean, it would hurt if it came from someone I respected, but not a drug dealer or bum on the street. That is what internet commenters are, homeless junkies throwing insults out of powerless rage. They do not matter.

I do not know you, so I will not provide the tough love I would give to a friend or relative, but you should not care what unimportant people say about you. Such insecurities are dangerous and counter-productive. If some crack head on the street pointed out your deepest insecurity, it should not bother you. He is a crackhead. He does not matter. You do. You need to let that shit go. It will eat you up inside. If you have legitimate insecurities, fix them. If you are bothered by silly stuff (appearance, ethnicity,...), you need to shake that off. No one should be able to use that against you. That is giving others too much power over you. It is an insane submission for no benefit. Let it go.

So my advice is to let it go. Choose to stop reacting to these comments. You CHOOSE to react. The comments are irrelevant. The problem is that you are letting yourself react negatively. You need to stop that. There exist evil people who will use that weakness to control you. PLEASE fix it before you meet someone of that nature. Insults are like cockroaches. You do not need to fear them, but you should never let them into your home.

From what I understand, ADHD folks do not get the high part, so the addiction risk is not there.

You are free to leave. There are plenty of low-tax countries. If you want to live in the US, Europe, Japan,..., then you must pay to be part of our reindeer games.

That said, PLEASE get involved and try to direct public funding and attention towards core activities (roads, schools, infrastructure) instead of ever more ridiculous programs to employ Berkeley graduates in virtuous-looking jobs. Utah does a great job at this sort of thing. Instead of learning from them, our political elite degrade them and insult them for their religious beliefs. I once repeated a colleague's obscene jokes, only I stated that he said them about Muslims instead of Mormons. He lost his mind trying to correct me. It was amusing.

There is a problem with high taxes on earned income, but anyone complaining about the 15% capital gains tax has problems. The estate tax only applies to this who are very, very fortunate. These are not even earned. Again, if one hates his country, he can move to Dubai, Bermuda or the Glorious Sultanate of Brunei and enjoy their lifestyle.

I do understand that people in California get angry because the state is so poorly run, but most of the US has easily avoided the self-created problems of California and New York city.

I have found my peace, but large company nerd divisions are great for brilliant wierdo's.

Now, obnoxious white people in Silicon Valley would be upset that multifamily housing had allowed displeasing minorities in, but man would that make life better for everyone. I lived in East Asia, and it is really nice when cities are not too expensive for regular people to live in. Furthermore, I have no sympathy for rich @holes who complain about losing their expensive view.

Freedom helps all, but especially the poor. The leftists have tricked people in California and NYC into thinking the system fails the poor, when in reality it is their stupid regulations that made these places expensive.

I do not think it can be stopped, but the days when a wealthy person could safely live in a suburb and have the kids imagine that they are middle class is long gone. It is terrifying. The best thing for a wealthy discrete person to do is move to Singapore or Australia, or somewhere with a sufficiently low crime rate to feel comfortable, or get quality security, which sucks.

From what I understand from my cousin, a career criminal, there are entire theft rings working off of databases such as these. He knew mostly of car-related theft rings, but I hear about safe-cracking burglaries quite often, usually stealing Rolex watches or precious metals.