2. I have enough attention thieves in my life to have to "work" to determine if I should read it.

This is my biggest gripe with HN. You'll see a headline like "Norville Grub has died" and you look him up and he wrote a Unix timestamp parser in the 80's or something. This is pretty much the only time I wish we had moderators; it isn't that difficult to write "Norville Grub, original Unix timestamp parser author, has died". I pretty much skip every obit unless I recognize the name.

I'm sure extrapolating to future movement was difficult, but starting today, and seeing the Baja peninsula rocket north through Alaska unphased was kind of funny.

I feel like this is 3/4 of a coffee table?

Yes, I have de-googled to the extent possible. I haven't used it for search in more than 3 years, I'm off all of their cloud products including gmail, and I don't use them for auth whenever possible. I'm 100% sure I've missed plenty, but I have to do SOMETHING about Techno-Feudal-Fascism.

Eh, not so sure. My son got a 32 on the ACT the first time he took it, and after 4 months of private tutoring got a 35, with 36 on math. Could he have grinded himself and got there? Possibly, but I doubt it. Having someone who knows what they're doing and holding him accountable was invaluable.

Now, this is a pretty phenomenal position to be in for most Americans, I can't complain too much. But, my oldest (white, straight, varsity basketball, 4.7 GPA, 35 ACT, 36 on Math) wants to go to a school like USC or Vanderbilt, and we will get 0 aid help. I refuse to let my kids suffer through student loans like my wife and I had to; at one point I made $2500/month as a postdoc, and $1800 went to loans while I had 2 kids under 2. My search history at that point was pretty grim, involving what circumstances life insurance would pay out, etc.

So, assuming all 3 kids go to a $100K/year type school, and we pay cash, that is $12 MILLION dollars over the next decade I will be paying (ignoring inflation, etc). This is the worst case, etc, but still bleak. And, apparently Stanford CS students can't get job offers, so they are entering a horrific job market. I don't think any college is worth that, not even Ivys, but not going to a good college is still worse. If I had a crystal ball 10-15 years ago, we would have left the country.

My favorite was at a drive-in in Kentucky. We used to rent boats at Lake Cumberland over the summer, and one night we watched JP at a drive-in. I remember the drive back to the dock late at night, driving through the woods, and imagining it was a Jurassic jungle. Then, back on the houseboat, going reading through my "Making of Jurassic Park" book with a battery operated book light.