Fwiw I'm a reader of everything.
My wife's a reader constantly but generally of short form stories and science articles.
We have 4 kids in their late 20s-early 30s.
We read to them every single day until they wouldn't simply because we loved doing so :)
They always had access to scores & scores of age appropriate books, and as they grew older our own library of typically around 3000-5000 books, approx 50/50 fiction and non.

Two of them (1m, 1f) grew up to be voracious readers. One of those has basically abandoned books and only reads texts online/his phone. (Weird to me but Shrug)

The other two (also 1m, 1f) absolutely don't enjoy reading at all. Both were 28+ on ACTs and did well in college.

It's not always just "the parents" is my point . Kids are different.

... They never weren't.
The churn was across everyone else.
The well connected remained well connected and enjoyed the benefits. A well placed friend of mine landed his college dropout daughter an "internship" for north of $100k.

It's never been, and never will be, any different even if the roster changes.

Right because government never made stupid mistakes before.

You know what?
I'd trade some fake names in a map for $200bn, thanks.

Oh grow the fuck up.
Not everything is about whatever your TDS has you upset about this morning.
I think the Venezuela thing was possibly justified but stupidly done politically.
The Greenland thing is just 100% stupid to to bottom.

But not everything is about your politics.

It's sarcasm.

It is literally every talking point that beats around the bush about why kids aren't learning.

They aren't learning because we're spending more time fixing everything BUT why they aren't learning.

What we need is more social programs. We need more anti whatever training because kids are disproportionally affected by something or another. The overweight kids need more food because obviously they are starving or something. And also, more after school programs and later start times for schools because reasons. For all this, we need more administration and testing for our students so that we can know more about what they aren't learning in pretty reports and stuff. And tech, we need more distracting tech because they don't get enough with their phones.

And taxes, we need to pay more because all these programs aren't free.

Maybe THEN we'll tackle illiteracy.

*I'm in IT for Education. Schools aren't teaching kids because the schools are distracted by everything but educating kids. Oh, they'll claim they are "trying". My dad used to say "Trying is a noisy way of doing nothing".

OK, replacing utterly-ass touchscreens with buttons. Good move.

Now, let's think about why. Used to be I could drive along and think "huh, I'm a little warm, let me turn up that fan a tick or two" and WITHOUT LOOKING reach over and easily find the knob, clicking it rightwards once or twice* I'm feeling more refreshed.

Now with your new "buttons" can I do that?
Not really. At least from the image, I see what, 24 nearly identical buttons on the steering wheel, another 9? identical buttons on where I'd expect the a/c controls to be.
In the olden times, there was a REASON the radio knobs FELT DIFFERENT than the climate control knobs, which felt different than (in even older cars) the heat/cool sliders. All of that could be done without looking or in the dark (not everything on your dashboard glowed back then, which I also sort of don't like today).

In short, good progress, keep going. (Faster)

*curiously as I wrote this I realized...it's AFAIK always 'clockwise = increase'. There's probably a long interesting YT video deepdive on that

I hope they're successful with this. Great move.

Is "hot desking" just a sort of variation on the open office theme that (afaik) basically everyone HATED?

I recognize that my case is not necessarily universal, but I'm genuinely curious if anyone has this at their workplace and likes it, or at least finds it useful.

Our corporate HQ in EU did the whole open office thing just before covid and frankly people were pretty angry. No personal desks (in reality, people self-organized informally where they could expect to sit) and if you were going to have an extended phone call you were supposed to use one of the "privacy cubicles" - essentially glassed-in phone booths - or meeting rooms.
Not just that, but essentially no partitions so if you ended up sitting opposite a coworker, you're about 1.5m apart all day.

For something "all about collaboration!" frankly it felt pretty massively dehumanizing.
Does this work for anyone?

I wish I could still upvote you.

What if they find Charlie Kirk persuasive? What if they like the Art of the Deal?

Does that change your opinion?

Katherine Maher - the head of NPR.
Shall we recall her Ted talk?
https://x.com/VivekGRamaswamy/...
"Our reverence for the truth might be a distraction getting in the way of finding common ground & getting things done"
Think about that statement.

It doesn't hurt when an ideologically captured judiciary refuses to punish people they agree with politically. Suddenly a spiteful little act is not only normalized, but protected - as long as it's directed the right way.

https://kstp.com/kstp-news/top...

$20k in damage GOVERNMENT employee - no charges at all.
https://www.fox9.com/news/tesl...

Funny that my above comment about thinking that it's envy not actual poverty was downvoted to troll.

They should have thought that whole "we will become the propaganda arm of the left" through more carefully?

Katherine Maher - the head of NPR - is an example of the privileged leftist elite.

Shall we recall her Ted talk?
https://x.com/VivekGRamaswamy/...
âoeOur reverence for the truth might be a distraction getting in the way of finding common ground & getting things done.â

Think about that statement.

Or from her own wiki bio:
"In April 2024, Uri Berliner, NPR senior business editor, published an essay in The Free Press[33] critiquing, among other things, alleged liberal bias at NPR both in management and content, leading to an erosion of trust with the public and with internal staff. Following Berliner's critique, conservative journalists and activists, including Christopher Rufo, criticized Maher for tweets she had made supporting progressive policies and about Donald Trump in 2018,[33] as well as comments Maher made about the First Amendment as "the number one challenge" in the fight against disinformation in a 2021 interview.[34] Berliner was suspended without pay for five days, ostensibly for failing to secure approval for "outside work".[35] On April 17, he resigned after 25 years at NPR and criticized Maher's appointment as CEO. In response to the criticisms, Maher defended NPR's record, stating that her comments regarding the First Amendment had been misrepresented and that she has a "robust belief in the First Amendment".[36]"

Or the trans'ing of Sesame Street? https://www.toughpigs.com/sesa...

I know a lot of leftist "progressives" are angry. They thought they'd won the fight. The first Trump was neutralized by (what turned out to be entirely nothingburger Russiagate). Then they had a dessicated marionette that happily auto-penned whatever came along.

You know what? HALF the country disagrees with you. (Given the last election, thanks to your overreach, more than half, but I'll concede it's basically even-up)

In a SANE society we could talk about things and find compromise. But "the resistance" doesn't want compromise, it never has.
So finally, you got Trump, a conservative (he's still basically a NY liberal, but opportunistically put on an elephant suit) willing to actually fight over this shit rather than allow the left's agenda to progress unchallenged. I know it's uncomfortable.

"no local weather alerts"

Right, because there's literally no other radio, tv, internet, or other source of information where, precisely again?

The system will be dead in less than 5 years. Samsung will change the terms of service and you will be left holding an empty bag having bought a pig in a poke. Not even a pig one can put lipstick on.

And Louis Rossmann will have to make yet another video about how wrong it all is.

It is almost like nobody pays attention.

Boomer here, get off my lawn. Yes, I've become the greybeard I used to make fun of 40 years ago.