A lot of cars now have features where they lower the fan speed on the HVAC system when a call comes in. They also override it for alerts from the car (like when it's trying to warn you that you're going to hit a pedestrian because the car is momentarily pointed at them on a slight curve, and even though they are on a sidewalk with a raised curb and everything). They can always find some reason that a feature might need that kind of control.

What I really love* is the onscreen messages that some cars pop up, sometimes after the car has been started and underway, warning you to pay attention while driving and requiring you to hit something like "OK" at the bottom of the screen.

* Note sarcasm. In fact I don't love this since it is the sort of idiocy that gets people killed.

It all depends on what you mean by "engineering". Some people mean designed for reliability, and some mean designed for performance, for example. For example, pretty much all modern BMWs are interference engines, meaning that pistons and valves are physically capable of colliding. Packing them in like that gives a performance and efficiency boost. Not an absolutely massive one, but decent enough. It allows more power with a smaller engine, which means weight savings, etc., etc. The problem is that if anything goes wrong with the timing chain, the engine rips itself apart. It doesn't even have to break, just end up a bit too stretched or misaligned because some of the fiddly little pieces that hold it in place fail/come loose/crack/etc. Basically it means that you really have to take the maintenance schedule seriously about replacing the timing chain at the scheduled intervals. Except it also means that, when the chain is replaced, you (or the mechanic) absolutely can not mess up because you don't get a second chance.

So, basically, for BMW, for the interference engine situation, and many other things in the car, they have chosen the definition of engineering where everything is sacrificed for that little bit of extra performance/efficiency that mostly only applies if you're racing the thing. So, like you say overly complicated and fussy, and also strict maintenance requirements and strict requirements for expertise for the maintainer otherwise things go badly wrong.

Oh dear... That synopsis... empty gas tanks almost immediately, all the plastic in the world eaten in a few days... I mean, the basic concept is interesting, but obviously yet another book on an interesting idea written by someone whose understanding of some basic concepts is essentially magical thinking or just cartoonish. I mean, empty gas tanks instead of being full of the microbe and its excretions? Probagating worldwide in days?

They may not be, but I want to hang with them anyway because they're both fungis.

Well, the price certainly has the potential to come down. For one thing, a big part of it now sounds like its mostly in breaking down the plastic before the yeast eats it. The current process sounds like it's basically boiling the plastic while adding oxygen, possibly in a pressure cooker. There may be all sorts of ways to improve that. Scale, for one thing. Aside from that though, doing it at higher pressure, with added catalysts or chemicals for it to directly react with, etc. may make the pre-processing much easier. Same for then feeding to the yeast. Various factors like the structure of the containers it occurs in, temperature, ph, the exact composition of the matrix, and other conditions. Also, heat can be recovered from the previous batch to heat up the next batch so it uses less energy. Then there's the yeast itself. The current version is a proof of concept, but there's no reason to think that they developed the most voracious and efficient organism the first time around. They may be able to produce something vastly more productive.
As it is, from what I can find, the average price of cookies per kg is anywhere from about $8 to $35. So, let's put this into perspective using the lower end of that. We will ignore for the moment that the cookies are just a proof of concept and no-one is actually saying let's directly turn plastic waste into cookies. The point is just that we can turn it from essentially non-biological material back into biological material. So, these are $60 per kilogram, then they are 7.5X more expensive than regular cookies. Improving this process to make it 7.5X cheaper or at least somewhere in that range seems like it might well be possible.

The requirement for submitting books has not been needed for copyright since the Berne convention. Technically, there is still a requirement for published works, except that it has been found unconstitutional on fifth amendment grounds, though it also would seem to violate the first as well. It is also insanely impractical in this day and age. As it stands there are millions of US published books not in the LOC, and of course, it's not like books published in the US constitute all of the books published anywhere. The simple matter is that some objects, though ownership does pass from person to person do have the aspect of a public charge tied to them. True, the owner can go ahead and use them as firewood and be legally covered (though not in all cases, since there are in fact cultural heritage laws around the world that might actually still make it illegal) people are also completely entitled to find that morally shocking and the people who do it to be scum.

Works cited, references, etc. still basically just a subset of the set of kinds of bibliography. A full bibliography involves every source used, not just the ones cited. The point was simply that once upon a time, this was required for pretty much any paper.

Yes, that's kind of like how people who run someone over with their car and then go to an alcohol treatment program ordered by a judge still get called dangerous drunks. Or, in other words, you're skipping over the precipitating events to him receiving that pendant and making sure to to display it at public events. Those events involved him doing clearly anti-Semitic things. I hardly find a publicity stunt like that convincing.

You seem to have completely missed that the comparison in the comment you originally replied to was talking about Cape Canaveral launches and people's reactions to those. Cape Canaveral has plenty of foliage. It's basically inside a wildlife refuge.

My understanding of the idea behind common core math is that their goal was exactly that students should develop an understanding of math that would allow them to easily spot all the different ways they could do such calculations easily. I think the problem was that a lot of their methods come from people who understand the concepts already and think that their methods are nicely illustrative of the concepts, but who don't grasp that they only illustrate the concepts if you already actually know what's behind them. Then you end up with the reality with the boxes, counting, colours, etc. where the actual students mind is reeling and they're saying to themselves "what the hell is going on here, why are we doing this!" even more than with the way it was previously taught. It's even worse when they expect the student to "show their work" with by drawing the boxes, ribbons, whatever for themselves. That's just adding 40%+ to the time of each problem when the student isn't thinking about math at all, they're drawing the same boring thing over and over on autopilot. It's not like that kind of thing is entirely new of course. I mean, thinking back, I wish I'd had a unit circle stamp and a stamp pad. Because, seriously, what was the point of drawing it over and over and over? Once you'd done it a few times, it was just a waste of time to draw it yourself. So, basically common core took that sort of thing and magnified it.

Others have noted that the article wasn't claiming that AI is the reason that math skills are atrophying. Also, it seems to be all in how you use it. The AI has gotten mostly good enough at this point that it can be a pretty good math tutor. I mean, it's maybe more like studying with a friend who understands the material pretty well, but still misunderstands some things about the questions. But, it's a friend with infinite patience. For some students, it will help them learn far better than a teacher or math tutor leaning down their neck. Of course, that's not going to be the same for all students. They still have to want to understand the material.

They're not so bad, they just define things like "it is easy to see...", "clearly", "it suffices to show", "recall that..." to mean completely different things than normal speakers of English or, well, language.

As a parent, you've got to be careful with that one. There's a set of people who tend to be the ones where most people start blaming, and they typically live in the same home as the children. Of course, as you point out the common core math stuff was terrible. It does sound like your kids at least had a textbook? Many parents had to deal with their kids just getting handouts and the only lessons on how to use the "ribbon diagrams" etc. being given to the students directly in class making it impossible for the parents to help (or consult the non-existent textbook, or write the author, etc. The worst thing about the common core stuff is that the actual goal by the creators was to help kids to really think about math to make it easier, but they made it tedious, boring, and stressful. I mean, the example you gave of 20X14 is exactly the sort of thing common core is supposed to help with. They're supposed to look at it, recognize that it's actually 2X10X14, do the easy 10X14, then double that.

All that said though, if your eldest is going into grade 12 and really only has 3rd grade math, you really need to start tutoring her yourself, and don't worry about doing it so she can "show the work" for the school. Same for the eighth grade student. Her actual grades in math are basically irrelevant to her actual education at that grade level so it shouldn't matter if the school has a problem how she shows the work.

Do you mean a bibliography? Maybe I'm misinterpreting, but it sounds like you got most of the way through a degree without having to put bibliographies on your papers. I'm not sure if that would be ironic given that you're complaining about the slipping standards for kids these days or if it would back up your argument.