The thing is that it is just the "cool" thing to say here, on Slashdot. I suspect they think that it makes them look unusually smart, a deep thinker who stands out from the crowd.

Yes, it makes them look like shallow idiots, but they don't know it. If the headline read, "Being eaten by hyenas results in terrible pain for the short remainder of the victems lives." The people who express their inability to understand causation would be stammering something like, "Well, maybe the hyenas were able to tell that this person was going to experience intense pain and die in the midst of it."

Yes, it is idioc, but frequently the "cool" kids are too.

I remembered reading this a while ago and looked in my Goodreads history. There it was, it was first published in 2004, and I read it in 2013.

The Wisdom of Crowds, by James Surowieki. He reported on the surprising accuracy of large, monetised, prediction markets.

Something I always had trouble adapting to, when I lived in China, was the long lunch. It is normal for the Chinese to take a three-hour lunch. This allows time to eat and socialise and, quite importantly, to take a long nap.

It is viewed as improper, even for a workplace supervisor, to interfere with the nap time.

As a teacher I use it quite a bit. I have the requirement to rewrite my lesson plans every two years. This is about filling in boxes on a form, which regularly changes in order to insure that the biannual rewrites are not just a copy and paste activity.

It is about rechecking the state standards codes, they are frequently revised even though there is little fundamental change, just the codes. These are the things AI is a great help for. I have them done without ever having to look at them and admin can check and see that they are done and revised on schedule.

My real lesson plans are entirely different documents. I used to put them at the bottom of my lesson plans until I was told that what I was putting on the plan were "lesson notes," which have no place on a "lesson plan."

So, AI is useful for doing things that have no need to be done, but are required to be done.

I lived in China for a bit more than eight years. I came to understand that they really see the types of things listed above as their duty.

On the other hand, they have trouble understanding why Westerners don't put their country first.

My work took me to the local PLAF (Peoples Liberation Air Firce) base a lot and I had a lot of meetings with one of the generals there (Don't be too impressed, they made a singer a General). He wanted to understand why the US would let Chinese people into research facilities in the first place. He made the point that, "They are Chinese, you have to know they are spies."

I tried to explain America's laws about racial discrimination. He didn't buy it at all. He felt that there had to be some underhanded strategy about it that he just didn't understand. It is a different way of thinking.

There remain ways to alter the voting system from the "winner-take-all" approach that would increase engagement and allow better representation of the residents of the states. The approach I am recommending is the, oft-recommended, district-based system.

This approach, which is in use in a small number of states, allows congressional districts to choose electors, with the Senate counts continuing to be winner-take-all. This would serve to increase engagement in minority districts.

Disclaimer: This was my experience as a social worker about twenty years ago.

I had a small number of homeschool students in my caseload, and I was supposed to drop in on them unannounced. I did have one student who was doing homeschooling effectively. The district had a homeschooling centre, and students could drop in to access resources and tutoring. Frankly, it worked great for that kid. I would check in on her at the centre and verify her attendance and academic performance.

The other two demonstrated an unintended, but predictable, flaw in the welfare laws. One of the girls (and yes, all three were girls) would predictably be babysitting an infant sibling, smoking on the couch, playing video games with friends who were cutting school. The third, instead of babysitting and video games, she just watched TV and smoked pot all day.

The flaw was that welfare reform linked the welfare benefit to the child's school attendance. This created a situation where the child was "earning" the family income. These children understood that and leveraged it into power at home. They didn't want to go to school, so they were enrolled in "homeschool." For the parent, it was that or lose welfare benefits that were relied on. The highly motivated child used homeschooling to her benifit. The other two were very ill served by it.

That sounds good in theory. Except that it doesn't make it to practice. They charge the same as any other shop in their franchise (or at least the ones that I have visited).

Very few of the cost-reducing things that supposedly allow business owners to cut prices or pay the workers more ever end up doing that.

There are small businesses, like doughnut shops, that charge extra for using cards. I realise that it is only a dollar (or 10%, whichever is more), but it annoies me. Seeing as it is a purely discretionary purchase, I just don't get doughnuts very often any more.

Here is the thing: I doubt they keep good enough data to see if the charge is helping or hurting their business.

It is a bit paradoxical, but to keep the division alive, they need to accept lower per-unit margins.

Very simply, they have exhausted their potential customers' willingness to pay. Raising the prices while sales slump is an Econ 101 type of mistake. This is particularly true when there is a strong marginal profit. There is no Velben effect going on here. It is simply poor marketing (in this, I mean the 4Ps' type of marketing).

Everyone has become addicted to ever-growing profits and margins. However, there are limits, and those limits will first be seen in discretionary goods. Those limits are beginning to show through the economy. They are not alone. However, they still have time to respond.

They won't fix it, but they have the time to do so if they want to.

I am aware of it because I follow a lot of van conversion people (not literally, I follow their conversion progress online). A small number are using Bright Drop vans. Not many, but some.

It's in the name, "Making America Second Rate Again."

A new way for men to risk paternity suits and having to support a woman they have, quite literally, never even met. Without meaningful support law reform all it will take is one round of careful judge shopping to establish a precedent.

. . . and in the US, we have extra taxes tacked on for Hybrids and BEVs'. Right now, in the state I am in, there is an additional charge every year of $100 for hybrids and $165 for BEV. Further, a tax of $.03 per kWh is being phased in at any public charging station, regardless of whether the charging station charges for its use.