Iâ(TM)m okay with either approach. Adblock filters all ads that are separate origins, and I can just fast forward past the inline ads.

Add to this the nuclear family.

The nuclear family is an other depressant to birth rates. Previous configurations were multi-generational homes where grandparents were right there and could look after the kids. Society has changed. We went from packs of free ranging kids who were allowed to be bored to scheduling kids lives.

Humans had evolved to live in groups where the group would take care of the children. Now its parents pretty much only taking care of their own, duplicating that effort. No wonder everyone is exhausted. Something's gotta give.

You don’t even know what you’re talking about. Diversity in promotions and hiring has lowered standards throughout corporate America as well as in government.

An example: a manufacturing company in the western U.S. needed to replace a mechanical engineer who was leaving. Hiring manager located an excellent candidate, but could not get sign-off to hire, because the candidate was a white male. He was told, “That would hurt our POC metrics.” The departing ME was a south Asian with dark skin, so they counted him as a POC in their ESG reports. After a battle, the manager was able to hire him. True story.

Boeing Corporation has aggressively pursued the hiring of underrepresented minorities, which necessarily has dumbed down what was once the world’s foremost aeronautical engineering company.

NASA same. Whistleblowers and general staff inside the agency have been complaining that the previous leadership was overly focused on racial equity and gender bias training and similar wastes of time. The previous administrator stated that it was NASA’s goal to land “the first woman and the first person of color on the moon”.

Then we could discuss how the FAA has been dumbing down Air Traffic Control. It is rampant.

And no, DEI is not about fairness. It’s about making whites in positions of power feel virtuous.

The Biden Administration sued Tesla for hiring on merit rather than skin color.

What dictator?

A helium leak was reported prior to launch, yet they proceeded with the mission because it was “minor”. Then, it became a major issue and they were forced to scrap the mission. Do I have it right?

The old NASA made occasional mistakes, but they had a culture of must-not-fail; each team had to prove their subsystem was nominal before the mission could proceed. Their dedication was legendary.

Politicization, DEI, and the general decline in American technical standards and work ethic have ruined Boeing and NASA.

I would have thought by now, after 40 years of computerization, that there would be some robust Asian language fonts available in the public domain or perhaps licensed through government agencies to promote their use.

All the way back in the 1980s, I was involved in a Japanese/Chinese/English photo-typesetter project using what I believe were freely available font sets.

Seems like the Japanese game companies should switch to Google or MS fonts. $20K/year in Japan is someone's salary.

The Chinese learn fast and iterate frequently. Likely their future launches will be more robust.

No Child Left Behind - teach test taking, rather than subject matter or how to think.

Continually being told "all you have to do is believe" - and similar fake encouragements.

If you look attractive, you'll get into hollywood - why study anything?

If you are strong, you'll be in professional sports - why study anything?

Teachers' hands being tied in how they customize their lesson plans for the students they have.

Attention spans are __gone__.

I'm probably missing half a dozen.

Everyone uses VPNs to bypass the Great Wall and get news from the outside world. Sounds like Britain's moving in the same direction. What a sobering thought!

They usually say the opposite of what winds up happening.

I’ve seen this from personal experience. Pure coding jobs are evaporating; the only way to make a living is by building new products or shifting into sales and marketing related work.

Why is this even news? Everyone has credentials that have leaked. It’s frustrating, but that’s the risk of using any service these days.

Reforestation is a thing, at least in North America. Since the 1970s, the U.S. has planted millions of acres of new forest (see United Nations FAO and USDA Forest Service for data). The U.S. currently is planting about 60,000 acres of trees annually, plus another 130,000 acres of regeneration.

The people overseeing this work are forestry experts, so one can assume they are planting the correct trees for a locale, in the right concentrations and groupings.

The real problem is that Brazilians are chopping down millions of acres of forest every year (albeit, decreasing). This is insanity. Also, because of food shortages and famines, some Africans have been stripping bark from trees, as well as harvesting the wood. Deforestation of that continent not only removes habitat for fauna (chimps, birds, etc.) but also leads to expansion of desert. Africa's just a total disaster.

the posting software eliminated the subscripts; that should read CO2 and O2 above. :D