We get about 2/3 of the down and there's now nothing, so I say -- with some desperation -- "If someone would be willing to switch seats so my daughter and I can sit together I'll give you $20." A guy says "I don't want the money but I'll switch."

Which sort of shows that if you're not a jerk, and you ask nicely, often people will go out of their way to help you.

Families who seem to expect other passengers to move, especially when there's assigned seating, are another story, and deserve the condemnation they get, IMHO.

IME, a scientific/empirical mindset tends to lead one to a state of epistemological modesty, in which few things are unassailably true, and beliefs are provisional until disproven. One crucial feature of that mindset is the notion of falsifiability. Knowing if/how ideas may be falsified helps one avoid leaping down conspiracy rabbit holes. <- (A likely unfalsifiable statement!)

I have a theory that, wrt knowledge, the relative advantage of age has been at least partially eroded by rapid technological advancement. In traditional/tribal societies, prior to the 20th century, wisdom actually accumulated with age, because the pace of change was slower. Wisdom & knowledge could be passed on from generation to generation.

Now, wisdom and knowledge become obsolete quickly. Many things you knew 20 years ago are outdated. The ICE engine you learned how to fix as a kid is now computer controlled, or has been replaced by batteries. Your optimistic/open/friendly mindset now makes you easy pickings for online scammers. Hell, even your family's secret cherished muffin recipe is spurned by your grandchildren because it has gluten or they're vegan or keto or whatever.

All this is just a take, but when I look at voting patterns in particular, I find myself pessimistic that the elderly are wiser than average.

Yes, and... In states where property taxes fund schools, there are basically two ways to pay for a good school: a) go to a private school, b) live in a school zone with high real estate values. At various points my wife and I calculated that 8 years at ~25k/yr tuition would work out to about the same as the ~200k house price delta we'd have to pay to move to a better school zone.

And I suppose option #3 is rationing, which is how some schools do it (our daughter is in a gifted academy where admission is limited via lottery.)

Imagine if there were product goals ("implement feature X") with some reward [1] attached and you could leave it up to teams or individuals to claim that goal if they desired. You could choose the goals you wanted to claim, recruit coworkers to help you, (eg, self form teams). PMs/Management would basically be in charge of allocating rewards for the goals.

I imagine it'd be a terrible system in practice for a number of reasons, but I enjoy thinking about ways you could attempt to make it workable. For example,

[1] rewards -- I don't think you could tie rewards directly to people's paychecks. Do that too much and I think you'd create perverse incentives. But perhaps things like swag, gifts, time off, or just bragging rights, honor, and glory might work.

[2] coordination -- a danger would people redundantly working on the same goal. You'd need a way to prevent that.

[3] other perverse incentives -- you might get an overabundance of folks choosing the "fun" goals, for example. (After all, engineers may be more motivated by that than other things.) Here I imagine the rewards for unsexy things would need to rise over time if nobody opted for them. Or, you make first dibs on some other "fun" goal the prize for achieving a less fun goal.

I honestly don't understand those who say Florida has great weather. We have basically two seasons:

Wet season: Hot and humid. Being outside after ~10am feels like being in a sauna. It rains nearly every afternoon. Usable daylight hours for outdoor activities, when you subtract the hottest part of the day and the rain time is like 3-4 hours.

Dry season: Mild & less humid. Less rain.

The problem is that wet season is like 6-8 months out of the year! I wouldn't call any place that's this miserable for this much of the year a place with "great climate."

Yesterday, I took off work and went to Bok Tower Gardens with my family (neat place, btw). It was insanely hot and humid, and I was pretty miserable.

Prior to living in Orlando I lived in Austin, TX, which is also hot but felt more comfortable because it's so much drier. And perhaps I'm bitter and making an unfair comparison, but Orlando, at least, is a cultural wasteland compared to Austin. And although real estate was luckily much less expensive when we moved here in 2021, prices have risen rapidly over the last few years and aren't quite the bargain they previously were. You can find cheap housing if you want to live in one of Orlando's many soulless exurbias, but if you want to live close to downtown or in Winter Park, prices are on par with Austin.

So if social medial is harmful in general, I don't view prohibiting it a "punishment" for boys; perhaps like less of a benefit? Regarding your second point, I imagine the data would provide some clues. If the kids that are now teens were always more depressed, I'd imagine that we'd see more pre-teen depression ~3-8 years ago. I haven't looked into it closely.

And I grant that social science statistics are often problematic -- I imagine it'll take a while to really know what's going on.

[1] https://www.afterbabel.com/p/international-mental-illness-pa...

Having struggled with various forms of screen addiction myself, I find it sort of odd that a lot of people are so laissez faire about giving children the most addictive device ever created.[3] Whether or not this law is a good idea, I think it's incumbent on parents to monitor and limit screen time and access to social media. Which is difficult! When my wife and I are tired, setting my daughter down in front of an ipad is the easiest way to get a break.

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S23522...

[2] https://jeanmtwenge.substack.com/p/yes-its-the-phones-and-so...

[3] Sure, it's not technically "the device," itself, but rather what it makes possible.

(Incidentally, for those old enough to have encountered that magazine, you can see it online at: https://archive.org/details/omni-archive/). I have a ton of nostalgia for Omni. It reflected the techno-optimism of the era and along with G.E.B., was a profound influence on in my life, ultimately leading me into CS.)

  * Forward billing vs billing in arrears. We had to treat different customers differently. 
  * Tiered billing -- e.g., if a customer used > X amount of services, they got a discount.
  * Special rules around when billing starts for new customers (e.g., no bill for the first month).