You're not helping your case by quoting a quack like him. He's a pop sci author that specializes in junk science. Exactly the kind of guy that I would expect to do a lazy study pointing to cell phones bad.

Like I mentioned on other comments I'm still not at all convinced and correlation is not causation.

I keep coming back to the fact that these same studies have been done with every new form of media and they always find a correlation.

The problem isn't the New Media the problem is we don't support parents and kids enough so the parents plop their kids down with Penny dreadfuls or radio or TV or Internet and now cell phones and screens.

In another hundred years these same dumb studies will be done for cyberdecks.

So I'm aware that the abstract says that they controlled for socioeconomic factors I'm just dubious of that.

It's far more likely that kids spending a bunch of time on screens is a symptom of other problems.

That said on the off chance that the phones are a problem they are a miniscule problem compared to everything else kids are up against in 2025.

Taking your kid's phone away isn't going to magically make them get better grades or take up sports.

Even so I think it's far more likely that you're seeing the same basic problem across different economic groups. And because of that you could replace the phone with basically any form of media. Which is why you get the same little panic every time a new form of media comes out and the same group of social scientists running the same experiments blaming the New Media for causing the problems.

I'm not a huge fan of folk music but having listened to a little bit of it just because I'm a lefty and Lefty's tend to blare the stuff I can tell you that the same problems that we had a hundred years ago or more we're getting sung about in folk music back then and are getting sung about it and folk music today. We haven't solved any of the problems. And it's the same damn problems. The only thing new is obesity and that's just because we have reasonably reliable access to food for most people... Most people. There are still several million kids having sleep for dinner every night...

It's entirely possible even likely that what we are seeing here is just that latchkey kids are more likely to have smartphones at an early age.

The problem isn't the phone itself it's overworked parents with low pay and no social support.

The abstract at least says that the account for socioeconomic factors but I'm not able to read the actual study past the abstract.

Also I guarantee that these exact same studies can be found for television, the internet and if you go back far enough you can find the 18th century equivalent of these studies for Penny dreadfuls.

Every time a new form of mass media or a new device for mass media shows up you can bet somebody is going to find a correlation between everything bad and if. Meanwhile we never actually do anything about things like child hunger or forcing kids to get up early to go to school when we have plenty of studies indicating the teenagers need more sleep and it needs to be later in the morning...

You know whether people should or not they do. I've more than once come across somebody using Excel like a database application. It's exactly as bad of an idea as it sounds but people do it and for the most part despite time spent debugging problems it does work.

I guess what I am saying is the answer to, there isn't a tool that can do what the customer wants to do, should not be, tell the customer to knock it the fuck off.

Antitrust is mostly how Microsoft stays in power but they do one thing. It's called the 80/20 rule and the idea is that 80% of your features are used by 20% of your customers but it's a different feature for every single customer. So you can't just take features out because you will rapidly start losing customers even though on paper very few customers are using those features. Basically when you have a sufficiently complex application it has a ton of features only used by a small group of people but you keep adding those groups up and suddenly you've got market dominance.

Before the industry consolidated that was part of what put Microsoft on top. Of course nowadays they just don't let anyone compete

Headline is they refuse to give up Instagram reality is that they refused to gag order.

I just got a article in my feed that the lead actress for the Asoka series at Disney refused to do another season because she wasn't paid enough.

The actual facts are that season 2 filming is already done and one of the other less important characters didn't come back because they didn't offer her enough money to afford to live in London where the shooting was.

I'm so sick of clickbait. Lately it's being written by shitty AI so it's gotten even worse.

Nah, just sounds to me like, "Notice me! I need grants!!!!"

I don't know, the climate change alarmists seem to have plenty of cash and free time. Maybe they can do something useful for a change.

Oh, and since part of the problem with the Sahara was constant human intervention (herding goats next to it), maybe it won't require as much intervention as you think. And once it starts getting going, the water cycle should kick back in. Or maybe we need to blow a hole in the Atlas mountains. Should be fun either way.

Well, thank you for lying about me so thoroughly. Using Hamas' propaganda to do it too!

I don't see anyone as dogs. I don't see them as rats either, that's just what the rest of the Arab world calls "Palestinians". I think they're a group of people who want to see Israel destroyed more than they want to live. That's the only explanation I can come up with for the situation. Hamas has openly stated that it isn't interested in governing (though it is the government) and believes that Israel and the UN, not it, are responsible for keeping its people safe. Hamas only cares about its stated mission of eradicating Israel. Hamas can and will burn in Hell. https://youtu.be/Yg4VqiW0dyo

Gaza could be a paradise for the Egyptians who live there ("Palestinian" is not an ethnic group, Gaza is populated by ethnic Egyptians), but Hamas has been in charge, and they don't care how much their people suffer if it hurts Israel.

Oh, and just to be clear - I 100% voted to have every illegal immigrant rounded up and expelled. Not because of hate or cruelty for cruelty's sake, but for Law, Order, and Reason. They spat in my face and wiped their asses on my laws. They'll have to go.
You're the racist for assuming they're all "brown" or Spanish speaking.

Oh, so a way to make Windows headless without paying for a Server license?

Is it wise to give someone political power when they repeatedly demonstrate that they look at everything through a lens of control and benefit? Why give power to someone who is clearly obsessed with possessing it?

But more importantly, the entire education system has collapsed. Districts are graduating students and sending them to college where they take ELEMENTARY level remedial courses. Like, 2+2=?.

If you think someone wants the population to be as dumb and pliant as possible, shouldn't you look at who changed the education system in a manner that would achieve that goal? It won't have been a billionaire. It won't have been through Federal action. It'll be who runs the schools, who teaches at the schools, and who educates the educators. Who was it that decided to graduate a student that couldn't pass 8th grade tests? Who couldn't pass 6th grade tests? Someone decided not to hold students back anymore. Someone decided to send kids to college when they weren't qualified to be in high school. Someone decided to let students into college and then charged them to re-take the 6th grade.

Those are the people trying to produce an ignorant and docile population, whether or not they realize it.

And then having people check it. The result is every single update can randomly break shit that doesn't get caught.

Having people check the AI code at slop doesn't really work because the entire point of AI coding is to do it fast and cheap so there's going to be enormous pressure to do as little checking as possible.

Not that it matters. Microsoft has a monopoly. Any viable competitor will simply get taken out by well-known and well understood anti-competitive tactics. And because we refuse to enforce those laws because we refuse to vote for politicians who will enforce those laws Microsoft can basically do whatever they want. With the occasional bribe to some of the larger governments that might try to regulate them.

I think Europe is actually trying to quit the habit but I don't think they will be able to. I can tell you right now that there is no alternative for Microsoft Excel when you're doing large complex spreadsheets. Open offices nice but it just doesn't cut it. Some of that's because of shitty little patents Microsoft has but the system is designed to let them keep generating new patents that make it difficult to compete. And some of it is just that it's rough going writing office software so it's tough to compete with someone who can pay people to do that kind of boring dreary work.

And of course you have the aforementioned anti-competitive tactics that work like a charm.

I'm not even going to say we need to decide what's more important, software freedom or whatever bullshit that makes us vote for pro corporate anti-capitalist political candidates (and mark my words pro corporate is just as anti-capitalist as any socialist or communist just in a different direction)

It doesn't matter what the reasons are the end result is we don't enforce laws.

My dear friend, please stop with the strawmen. "The core fundamentals of right wing politics are trickle down economics and a blind faith in authority." No, this is false. Wildly false. Right wing politics favors free markets and individual responsibility. "Trickle down" economics was based on the recognition of a fact - the relationship between tax rates and revenues is not linear, it's a parabolic curve. If tax rates are very high, tax revenues go down.

I think you're also mistaking the fact that conservatives function better in hierarchical environments than liberals do for a "blind faith in authority". No, they are two very different things. Liberals are very good at creating new hierarchies, but not good at working within them.

Fun fact - Marx developed VERY hierarchical/authoritarian systems. Socialism/Communism are managed through multiple hierarchical layers of committees. Socialism is an incredibly authoritarian system. It must be, it's totalitarian.

Maybe you hit on one of the key problems. YOU write better. Does the average student entering college write as well as AI? Reason suggests that in order to graduate and be accepted into college they should be able to write at least as well as a mindless robot. But do they? Well, given how many students are being sent to college to take remedial courses (including ELEMENTARY level material), no. AI probably writes better than most of them.

So, they're just trying to keep enrollment up in the face of collapsing primary/secondary public education. The new students don't belong in college anyhow, might as well let AI do all the work while they go into permanent debt and the university admins roll naked in cash.

What else are they going to do, be closed for not doing their job anymore?

No benefit, just an exciting fad. Since at least the 1960's, American education has been fad-based, rather than experience or outcome based. New ideas are leapt upon and deployed with little to no testing. I can't think of a single pedagogic change that has been made that was even thought out before being widely implemented. Social promotion, new math, creative core/Singapore math, whole word learning, ebonics, zero-tolerance, more tests, no tests, no grades, no failing, pick any.

And regardless of outcomes, those ideas tend to stick around. They get implemented because they are attractive theories, and the people who adopt them refuse to ever admit they made a mistake in doing so. Doesn't matter if none of their students are capable of doing grade level work, they won't change policies.

Please keep in mind that Idiocracy was based on a genetic decline, not a decline in the education system.

If you have an IQ over 115 and no children, then Idiocracy would be your fault. And, sadly, mine.

The solution to avoid Idiocracy is simple. Upon graduating from college/university, immediately get married and start having children. Don't wait, just reproduce. Don't worry about being ready, nobody is ready until they've already had a kid.