A better example of it a society can function with a low average IQ score is the US.

IQ increases by roughly 3 IQ points per decade, and the tests are periodically renormalized so that the "average" IQ is 100.

In 1932, the average IQ in the US is estimated as being less than 80 if we were using the modern scale.

Why IQ has increased over time is up for debate. It may be a healthier population, it may be a more stimulating environment, or it may just be that more people are familiar with taking tests. IMO, it's probably a mix of all these factors.

The gains do seem highest for the low end - there's not been a drastic increase by those with high IQ scores, but there's been a large increase on those on the lower end of the scale.

Similar effects have been observed in other nations, like Denmark and Japan.

the glitch that kid triggered was done deliberately

The glitch is more of a bug - at a certain point, the NTSC version of NES Tetris may take too long to calculate the score, which results in a game crash.

An analysis of the game itself shows that it's quite hard to avoid after a certain point - one would have to go out of their way to avoid crashing the game.

Which is what happened to Blue Scuti - he was aiming for a single at line 1480 - that was the earliest way to trigger the bug. But he missed and did a triple instead. He continued playing normally, and triggered the bug by random chance shortly thereafter.

It's ruining everything, including history.

Historians are going to still discuss history, and argue over it.

The only thing that some hand-holding may do is change how history is taught, and here's a big spoiler: That's always been happening.

History is full of horrible things. You don't have to go that far back to find attitudes entirely divorced from modern day sensibilities. Regardless of who you are, you'll find that the history that lead to your culture is full of some very uncomfortable events. Most people don't like this, and most people don't like their children hearing about it.

Not to mention the complexity of history. We like to simplify things into a few groups, while in reality that is rarely the case - more often there are multiple groups, with different motivations, sometimes working in parallel, sometimes against each other. And we often like to tell the story about the good and the bad - while the reality is that it's often these people did horrible things and these people did even more horrible things more frequently.

So instead we get a sanitized version. Often names, dates, and key events, and we don't delve too deep into it.

WeWork specialized in offices which took the brunt of the covid shutdowns. The only thing that could have been worse for WeWork was if a meteor hit the earth.

The story I heard is that WeWork got a lot of venture capital, and worked on the "we'll get customers first, then figure out profitability" model that other startups were using.

They managed to get a huge amount of venture capital - billions of dollars. And used that to overbid on properties and give discounts to their customers.

Just another startup that couldn't turn a profit, and died when the funding dried up. Covid likely didn't help, but its trajectory was set even without the pandemic.

So we're mainstreaming vulgarity, now? Can't point out how spectacularly bad HBO Max is without using the word "shit"? Is this the vocabulary to which watching HBO Max leads?

"Enshitification" is a reference to Cory Doctorow's essay on how platforms end up abusing customers, then users, and finally both, in order to profit themselves.

Personally, I'd be more concerned about the concept behind the term rather than the fact that the term includes the word 'shit'. The former seems far more vulgar than the latter.

Except a switch can't tell the difference between a wall and a chair-leg.

Does it matter for mapping? If a chair leg is considered to be a wall of 1" length, how does that effect mapping?

I would imagine a more practical limitation of switches is their size/fidelity. A camera of some sort (visible light or elsewhere in the spectrum) can detect objects like edges of furniture that may be suspended off the floor, and the size of such objects. While one would have to have multiple switches for that, or repeat tests with a single switch, which would either drive up costs or operating time.

The dumb simply outbreed the smart. And that in turn is a function of what we call civilization.

How are you measuring 'dumb' and 'smart'? The Flynn effect shows that IQ generally has been increasing, although IQ is a flawed measurement of intelligence.

Brain size has basically been the same, although we are not as large-brained as our Neanderthal cousins were. That may be a pre-civilization change though - there's some speculation that brainsized decreased in our ancestors as humans formed stronger social groups and we offloaded some of our knowledge to others.

The only statistically rigorous evidence I've seen that people are getting dumber is a small drop in IQ scores over the past 20 years, although there's a question if that shows a decline in overall intelligence or just what IQ measures. That seems to be across the board as well - young and old. It may mean we are shifting to fluid intelligence instead of crystalized intelligence, which IQ tests don't measure. Or it could be environmental factors - more distractions like smartphones.

Since we manufacture nothing, costs for most goods would explode overnight.

The US is the second largest manufacturer in the world, with China being first. The US is ahead of such nations like Germany and Japan for manufacturing.

You've never played a Fallout game before, have you? From the start you could choose a female protagonist, and you still can.

My comment to OP was sarcastic. Obviously action rpgs are not running around insulting their target demographic, as a general rule.

As for the choice of gender for the protagonist, only a complete misogynist would assume that is insulting men.

Exactly what action role playing games are known for - insulting their prime buying demographic.

Let's see....until now, not connected and worked EXACTLY as desired:

Stove

Oven

Refrigerator

Chest Freezer

Washing Machine

Dryer

Dishwasher

Here's an example from your list - having your dryer alert you when it's done with a load. That's useful. And if the alert fails, it still operates are a regular dryer.

Although mostly my use case is having the exterior lights turn on at dusk and turn off at a certain hour. There are still switches that'll work if Home Assistant goes offline. But it's kind of nice to have it turn on automatically, especially when I'm away from home.

Now the trick is to find devices and protocols that aren't complete garbage now and will be obsolete in a few years. I'm not really interested in my dryer needing the cloud to operate - dryers tend to last longer than a company is willing to keep their cloud active.

You numbers and reasoning make sense, but as a non-American I am confused by the repeated mention of cloth seats. Are cloth seats "good" or "bad" in this context? My 1990 hatchback has cloth seats which have survived 320k km and are still just fine... so in my mind, cloth seats are a positive feature of a car. What is the alternative? Leather? Fake leather? The only leather seats I've seen after 30 years and 320k km are pretty gross, and even when new, leather seats are prone to getting uncomfortably hot and sweaty if the car has been parked in the sun, or it's a humid days, or your clothes are damp from rain..

The American new truck market is driven by fashion, not function. Once you understand that, the styles make a lot more sense.

. Because it is supposed to break down in the environment within a few days to weeks, its use is relatively under-regulated by most public health agencies.

I looked into glyphosate, since I needed a stump killer for an invasive species. To say it breaks down in "days" is assuming very ideal conditions and rather misleading. A more typical number I've seen is a half-life of under seven weeks - meaning that after about seven weeks, about half the applied glyphosate will remain in the soil.

I did end up using glyphosate as a stump killer. It seemed better than the alternatives I could find. But then again, I applied it directly to stumps along my property line, and other usage like that. I don't use it as a weedkiller on my lawn. YMMV.

Sure beats the old scam of suing surgeons for imagined "damages", which led to doctor bills becoming insanely high so normal people had an increasingly hard time paying their doctor bills.

Many states enacted tort reform for medical bills, which allows us to analyze the impact.

Studies on the result show that the impact on healthcare insurance premiums is around a 2% drop in cost.

It ain't lawsuits that are driving up the US healthcare costs.

Maybe whitey is just better at not getting caught.

There is the infamous "veil of darkness" study, where researchers looked at traffic stops around the time when daylight savings changed the time the sun set. It turns out that when the sun sets earlier, black people are pulled over less.

The researchers conclude that darkness makes it harder to identify the driver's race, and that there is a persistent racial bias in traffic stops.