Why would he feel inadequate when, according to a trustworthy source, he's a better boxer than Mike Tyson, fitter than LeBron James, hotter than Tom Brady, one of the top minds in history with a near-Olympian physique, the world's best runway model, better at resurrection than Jesus, the world's best bottom (ahem) (cough) and the ultimate throat goat?

Sooner or later, we'll end up at the point where trying to maintain the ways of the past is a fruitless fight. Teachers' jobs are no longer going to be "to teach" - that that's inevitably getting taken over by AI (for economic reasons, but also because it's a one-on-one interaction with the student, with them having no fear of asking questions, and that at least at a pre-university level, it probably knows the material a lot better than the average teacher, who these days is often an ignorant gym coach or whatnot). Their jobs will be *to evaluate frequently* (how well does the student know things when they don't have access to AI tools?). The future of teachers - nostalgia aside - is as daily exam administrators, to make sure that students are actually doing their studies. Even if said exams were written by and will be graded by AI.

Yes, there are corridors and city pairs in the U.S. where high-speed rail could get people from one city to another quickly and efficiently. But what do they do when they get there? How do they get around?

...laura

Hmm... Does that sound like a feature I would want to help pay for? The answer may surprise me. I think it sounds like a "Maybe" or even a "Yes" if the description was fleshed out a little bit. However I can also see where it belongs in an optional category for people who want it... Seems to me like the real cost would be quite large, but for an "ancient" and kind of fundamental reason: The HTTP links only go one way. That means there's no easy way for Scrapbook to know the target webpage has changed...

So ancient that my memory is fuzzy, but I'm pretty sure the original design of the WWW was supposed to involve bidirectional links. At least as an option.

But mostly Firefox updates these years just seem to be annoying stuff that I would not offer money for. It feels like there is a constant stream of annoying pitches for new features I don't want or need and almost nothing that actually improves my "browser experience". When did they add that "Open All in Tabs" thing? Must have been years ago. I use that feature about once a day to avoid the <Ctrl> key. But I wouldn't have chipped in ten bucks for it...

I think (hope?) the age of Donaldian Decadence will end soon. The YOB seems more likely to implode each day...

But not the joke I was hoping for. These days most of the crossovers or callbacks seem to depend on looping AI into the joke.

Rather shallow FP, but Subject is the joke I was looking for.

However the biggest jokes these days are explanations of why stock prices do anything at all. It's become a fantasy game. My newest joke along these lines:

Too many incommensurables.

Pretty good joke, but the story had lots of potential and this was the only official Funny.

Quoted against the censor trolls, though I actually regard it as a rather weak FP. More of a fundamental economic problem that America is not dense enough for trains to be profitable.

Maybe I need a disclaimer of some sort? I stopped driving when I was less than half of my current age. Quite happy with walking and local trains. Rather rare that I ride in a bus, car, long-distance train, ship, or airplane (in order of decreasing frequency) and I don't like any of 'em.

My point seems to have been missed on this branch. However doesn't seem worth pursuing the diversion, though I will note that The Anxious Generation by Haidt is informative on the topic of raising children.

Basically concurrence except with your time limit (unless we unleash a fresh catastrophe). I currently don't see "global warming" as an existential threat by itself.

That's why I said it was such a big IF. It is pretty clear that long-range forecasts are not possible, so the solution approach along these lines would involve continuous interventions based on short-range forecasts--and the main threat would be that you might push the system into a non-recoverable state. Perhaps helpful to compare it to fly-by-wire fighter planes with negative dynamic stability? Yes, you can keep such a plane under control, but the corrections and adjustments have to happen quickly, sometimes too quickly for a human pilot to do anything helpful if something bad happened...

Actually that's my initial reaction, too, but I do think there might be some kind of solution. On third thought I'm sure this is not it, but...

If (and that's actually a huge IF) we were able to model the atmosphere well enough, then I think we might be able to intervene in a sane way. My own favorite fantasy solution would be large arrays of orbital mirrors rotated as needed to control the solar energy reaching the earth. Take a bit off the sides here, add some extra crops there...

Time for a joke? We could use the mirrors to FINALLY get rid of DST. And if we had that atmospheric model we could do it without the adverse side effects...