Except if you go to the Air Force Academy, where it's free. Or join ROTC at a school and get your tuition picked up. Either way you can get out of college for waaay less than someone who doesn't join up

45 years old: Celestion Dynascope. Tracking drive still mostly works, although I did have to inexpertly replace the cork clutch which explains the "mostly"

30 years old: HP-11C calculator, Kenwood audio amp, Bose speakers, AKAI tape deck are all still running after 30 years, although they don't get much use, the tape deck especially.

25 years old: Yamaha PAC-921 guitar. Had to replace a potentiometer but it works perfectly, and with decent maintenance will probably never fail. There are tons of people with older electrics

And the current champion, which I don't think anyone's mentioned: my Dad's hand me down 60-year-old slide rule. Still works, and I threaten my students with it occasionally

I got my HP-11 my senior year in high school, 1984, so it's 30 today. Still works. My HP-28s did crap out after 15 years, so I bought a used 48G off of eBay about 10 years ago and that's still going.

The former because it's probably the best general news periodical around, even when you disagree with their (fully acknowledged) slant. S&T is nice for the photos and paper charts- my son still has the four page foldout detail of the Milky Way up on his wall. Skeptic just for the off-the wall stuff- it's a good snack time at the table read.

Not a bad idea- so long as you couple it with a "How much do you get back from the government" sheet. The majority of Americans get back more than they pay, and the ones who complain the most are often the biggest mooches.

$250 for a decent Chromebook? How about $200 for the Acer 720p? Find me a Windows laptop with specs anywhere near it for $200- and it better include a SSD because the 10 second boot on a Chromebook is pretty essential. I can't even find a new Windows laptop on Amazon for $200, and the few used ones have Atom processors, 10" screens and Windows 7 Basic.

Yes, it's not a great development device. But it boots in seconds, needs no antivirus (or even maintenance), has a 8-10 hour battery life, a 13" screen and a decent keyboard and trackpad. Stick Linux on it if you want to hack away

Actually, Dogecoin is still deflationary, just not as bad as all the rest. There are 100M Dogecoin in the first batch and ~5M/year afterwards. Since the number is fixed, the inflation rate goes down- it's 5% the first year, but only 2.5% 20 years from now. The world's GDP growth is running about 3%, so assuming that's constant (yeah, yeah) Dogecoin will turn deflationary in about 15 years and accelerate after that.

Have you fully checked out the New Braunfels Republican Women website? Republicans like porn too, and Republican porn....

That's what one of the lab supervisors I worked with at an old job used to write up on the accident reports of about half the students who hurt themselves. Picked up a piece of glass without checking to see if it was hot? You've got some nice blisters to go with that learnin'. Forgot to check the stopcock on a buret and dumped concentrated NaOH all over your experiment and books? (That was me) Oh well, buy another book. Ice shifts suddenly while you're trying to get a beaker full of fuming nitric acid into an ice bath and you splash your hand? (Me again) Get used to having no hair and brown spots for a week. Minor accidents are great teaching tools- so long as nobody loses an eye or fingers everything's good.

Meanwhile, back when I worked in industry I got to see an open can of ether sitting on a benchtop (not fume hood) and the chemist smoking less than ten feet away. Oh, and my desk was in the radioisotope lab for a while- the one with two broken fume hoods and an area around the balance that was hot enough I didn't like to be near it for long periods.

Online donations of a 2-month-old cryptocurrency named for an internet meme featuring a dog that talks in broken English raised $30,000 to send the Jamaican bobsled team to the Olympics.

Seriously, I'm not sure it gets any weirder than that.

I'm working my way through System Shock 2 on Impossible as an OSA agent. I've *finally* gotten to the point where my powers are beginning to be effective and I don't have to rely on wrenching every single thing to death now that I've hit the command deck

I also downloaded The Void last night on a whim off of Steam. Really, really bizarre, and the strategy is not obvious at all. I'll see if it's more an art thing or a compelling game

and haven't flown since my first kid was born. As so many others have mentioned, the economics just don't work anymore. I trained on C-152s many years back and they're a nice plane, but even then they were $80/hour to rent one from the local FBO. They sold them right after I got my license and the next cheapest was a 172 at well over $100/hour. To keep yourself from literally being a danger to yourself and everyone around you you need to put in 100 hours/year. $10k/year on a hobby? Yeah, there are a few folks out there who could do it, but not me. Buying a new plane will run you as much as my house, and a used one will cost thousands a year just in inspections and even more in hanger fees.

The only way I think you could do it was the way my old neighbor did- he was a master mechanic who was working on his FAA certificate. He'd signed up with a couple of wealthier folks and he got a fraction of the plane free if he did the work on it.

Students love grade inflation because they love getting A's

Faculty love grade inflation because they spend less time dealing with pissed off students and helicopter parents

Administration likes grade inflation because it means fewer people drop out, which is good for the bottom line. More degrees with honors sounds great too.

All we need to do is fix students, faculty and the administration and we can solve this problem right away.....

The most annoying thing about trying to land on a comet is that you can't timewarp past 1x anywhere close to it, and the gravity is so low it takes forever to actually land, or have your Kerbal come down after jumping.

(Would be cool if they'd add a couple to KSP. I bet there's a mod that does)

FARK has a tool like this that puts up a little banner asking you to either subscribe or turn off Adblock. I decided to actually give it a try one day. Within less than 30 minutes, my background music was stomped on by a very loud, unskippable, unpauseable video ad.

Adblock went right back on.

I don't mind ads. I understand this stuff isn't free and I'm willing to put up with them provided they aren't going to scream in my ear. But the ad makers don't seem to be willing to adjust their side of the equation.