I dunno about the other guy, but I am currently sitting in a red state hotel, and will be subjected to quite a lot of it tomorrow and Friday when I'm at my aunt & uncle's place for thanksgiving; and it will probably be on every television in every airport on Saturday until I get back to SFO. I don't know how often you have to venture out into the lion's den. But people here treat that shit like it's a 24/7 prayer service or something. It was also on just about every airport TV on the way here once I hit Atlanta. And it was on three different televisions on the hotel's lobby level when I checked in. You can't get away from it here unless you hide in your room by yourself.

I'm actually kind of surprised that they still exist in the first place. What do they even still make or sell anymore besides shitty DRM'd printer ink and the occasional toner cartridge for a 1990s-era Laserjet that just won't die?

There's not even a point to that anymore. Tapping those cables worked back in the day because everyone thought they were so untouchable that they didn't bother to encrypt the message traffic. Now? Ever since the US Navy demonstrated to the world that the cables CAN be reached and they CAN be tapped; you can take it to the bank that everything, particularly the military and government traffic that would merit tapping them in the first place, is encrypted to a fare-thee-well.

So unless the NSA has a quantum computer at Fort Meade no one knows about that can break all conventional encryption; there's not much point to the taps anymore.

You could use CAPTOR mines, placed along the cable's shallows and reprogrammed to fire if the adjacent cable section is cut. That little ASW torpedo isn't likely to *sink* a full-sized surface combatant. But it should be enough to muck up the prop and rudder such that the cable-cutting vessel will wallow around in one place long enough to round up a Super Hornet or Eurofighter to put a few Harpoons into the stack of crap.

I don't know much about firmware, so maybe somebody here can help me out. The capability is still in the CPU, but Dell and HP have disabled it. How long will it be until some bright star who understands these things writes a firmware revision to re-enable it?

I'm ancient...I recall when overclocking was an edgy, high risk activity. Not so much now. Can we look forward to a new generation of hackers who will find ways to make computer components work the way they were actually designed to?

I've plenty left over for that, but that's not quite as simple. Pure capitalism is pure poison. Properly managed (which is not the case in North America), it isn't a bad way to run an economy.

In any case, there's the human factor. A business owner can choose to be evil, or choose not to be. I knew a guy who left money on the table rather than compromise his ethics. His company was profitable, and he was respected in the local business community. He prospered, even though he refused to squeeze every nickel out of is staff, or illegally dump waste when he could easily have gotten away with it.

I've always been against the death penalty, but for the conscienceless monsters marketing this dangerous crap for children, I might be willing to reconsider.

Yea... I have long since forgotten most of my math. But I actually graduated with a minor in mathematics, basically because I only needed two more MA electives (Differential Equations 3, which, admittedly, was a beast and Advanced Number Theory, which was a "Why the heck is *this* a 400-level class?" class.) than I already had for my CS degree. A few years back, I ran across one of those "This is how kids are learning now under Common Core" articles. And DAMN!!! WTF sort of jobs do the people who came up with that garbage think they're preparing kids for? Counting out how many McNuggets to put in the little cardboard box? Because CC sure as shit isn't teaching them the math they need to be scientists or engineers.

On the plus side; the defective educations that kids were already getting at the primary level, combined with the current administration's war on higher education, means that my cohort of GenX, which is getting to be about the right age where it would otherwise be a concern, is going to have to worry a lot less about ageism than previous 40-somethings. So... yay for silver linings!

Yeah, but with RFK and "Doctor" Oz running the nation's health care, how can we even actually trust vaccines in the US at all anymore? If I'm going to get stuck with the needle, I want it to have an actual medication or vaccine in there; NOT colloidal silver or green coffee bean extract or essential oils or lysol or whatever other quackery has their attention at that moment in time.

Fortunately, I'm traveling overseas next spring. One of the things I'm going to get from my doctor at my next physical is a list of any boosters that are coming due any time soon. So I *WILL* be fully vaccinated because I will be getting my shots in a country with real medical leadership who practice and promote real science and medicine.

Stockton Rush is a rare example of a tech bro who didn't get to walk away from his monumental fuckup and leave the rest of us to clean up his mess. Fortunately for us, his collapsible submarine only murdered a few people, along with the "genius" himself. We're just lucky Rush didn't decide he liked reactors more than submarines. No doubt that deficiency in America's tech bro-volution will soon be rectified.

If I weren't an atheist, I'd say, "God help us all".

And there's the rub...the very idea of an art class is anathema to a lot of people who call the shots at all levels of education.

At first blush, this bill looks like just another Republican attempt to appeal to the base while at the same time distracting people from the real reasons why the US education system doesn't stack up well internationally. This is probably true, but there's something far more important at stake. Teaching children cursive writing at a young age develops fine motor skills, and that's something that can pay big benefits down the road.

No doubt you're right, but it would be lovely to see the people who squawk about subsidies for renewable energy held to the same standard they demand of everybody else, even just for a little while.

There's a much easier way. Cut all fossil fuel subsidies, direct and indirect, to zero. End corporate welfare. Let people pay the actual, unsubsidized price, and you'll see things change pretty quickly.

I love this idea! I've got friends and relatives of all ages who love board games, quizzes, murder mysteries and stuff like that. I can see these games, especially the Knives Out one, providing some really fun get-togethers.