Maybe itâ(TM)s time we demand an actual online public square for discourse, one thatâ(TM)s free at the point of service and that ideally has the same overhead to value our public roads provide.

And what do you think /. is? Anybody can come here, create an account and post whatever they want, either using their account name or as Anonymous Coward if they want an extra level of obscurity to hide behind. Not only that, the only equivalent of censorship available if you don't like what somebody says is downmodding them, which is the equivalent of booing.

We can always go into marketing, and if that fails, we can learn telephone sanitizing.

Hebrew (at least historically, no idea about right now) and Thai for instance have no spaces between words.

I don't know about Thai, but I can assure you from personal experience that even in a Sefer Torah, there are spaces between the words although there aren't vowels. And as far as sounding words out when you've only been taught whole words, I'd imagine that figuring out how to do it on the fly can be rather intimidating if you've never even encountered the idea before, especially if you're not a very good reader, but I'm willing to be proven wrong on that point.

and if you're stuck the teacher will tell you to sound it out.

And if you've never been exposed to phonics how are you going to know how to sound words out? I learned to read back in the '50s, when teaching phonics was at its peak, and it's served me well ever since. Being Jewish, I went to Hebrew School and learned to read Hebrew but not, alas, to speak it. Up through my 20s and into my 30s I could sight read it during religious services, but gradually stopped going and lost the ability. Now, I can still read Hebrew out loud, but slowly, sounding it out one word at a time except for the occasional word that I recognize. I very seriously doubt that I could do that if I only knew whole word reading because once you've forgotten what a word looks like, it's gone for good. My older sister can also read Hebrew the same way: she knows the letters and grew up with phonics just like I did. How many people do you think that can learn to read out loud in a strange language and a different alphabet by using whole word reading? Doing it with phonics takes time and practice, but once you know that alphabet, it's just a matter of practice.

I download all my books DRM-free from bittorrent.

My ebook reader is an ancient Sony PRS-650, it still works fine and it has no trouble reading files that haven't been messed up by Amazon. What a concept eh?

"What about the book's authors who aren't getting paid when you download their stuff for free?" I hear you say:

Yes, I wish I could pay for what I downloaded. But I can't. The best option I could find was to buy the paperback as well, so some of my money would trickle back to them. But that's mighty stupid and totally not environmentally-friendly.

I did try to pay an author directly once (the late Ian M. Banks) but he send me an angry email back saying even if he got money from me, I was robbing his editor and distributor, and I should just buy his book normally - which I would, if that didn't entail leaving an undeserved cut to effing Amazon.

So there we are: there's no mechanism to legally buy books that aren't hamstrung by DRM. So honest people who value their consumer rights can't be honest.

Neither is Elordi

Wood burning is very much alive - both old-stylee polluting open-fires and stoves, and ultra-efficient pellet, wood-chip and wood dust burning in power stations. And it's renewable. Try visiting any nordic country some day...

Also, just because burning wood has downsides doesn't mean it has to be ditcheds it entirely. Solve the downsides instead...

People who speak louder, thinking they're helping, are actually kind of annoying.

How very, very true, especially when you've already told them that speaking louder won't help, but clearer will. But there's one thing that's worse. I have a notch in my hearing, caused by exposure to too much outbound on the Gun Line back in '72, and some women's voices fall right into the range I can't really hear. Most of the time it's not too bad because women are usually good about shifting their voice down to a lower pitch, but there are some who either don't understand what's needed or just don't care if I can understand them or not. About the only way I've found to get them to cooperate is to speak so quietly that they can't hear me.

"A strange game. The only winning move is not to play." -- Joshua / WOPR

*I like mail. Because we have had decades of legal precedent around mail fraud formed."

And that's why law firms still use faxes. You can fax somebody a document a few minutes before midnight on the last day and you're considered to have them in on time as long as the originals go out in the mail the next day.

I fix my taxes so I always have to send some money to them on the Ides of April.

Cute, but wrong: "In March, July, October, May, the Ides come on the fifteenth day. The Nones the Seventh; all the rest are two days less for Nones and Ides." The Ides of April come on April 13, not 15.

Hillary and Kamala were perceived as - if I may use the word - bitches.

Hillary is most definitely a bitch, and a dominatrix to boot. The only reason she got nominated was because, "It's my turn!" Kamala struck me as more of a bimbo, and a bit submissive as well, with her "Whatever Biden wants is OK with me." attitude.

The effect is far from new and people have been concerned about it for generations. In fact, Cyril M. Kornbluth published a classic SF story about the problem back in 1951.

CloudFlare was an aggressive global internet surveillance and privacy invasion operation. Now it's an AI-powered aggressive global internet surveillance and privacy invasion operation.

Why don't I feel excited about it?

No one running at the national level in our lifetimes has *EVER* been interested in doing the most for the country.

Speak for yourself. I, OTOH, was born while Truman was President. Not that I remember him, but he was in office. I do, however, remember both Ike and JFK, and both of them did good things for the country, Ike by creating the Interstate Highway System and JFK by committing the nation to putting a man on the Moon within ten years.