The problem is that you can write that list slanted in the other direction just as adroitly.

You really cannot.

Okay, I'll bite that worm you've left dangling on that hook. Let's go down the list.

Sec. Def:

Biden: Gen. Lloyd Austin. 4-star U.S. Army General with 41 years of active military service. Former Commander of U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), Vice Chief of Staff of the Army, and Director of the Joint Staff. Oversaw the drawdown of 150,000 troops and massive logistical operations in Iraq.

Trump: Pete Hegseth. White-nationalist alcoholism-scandal-plagued weekend morning co-host for Fox & Friends, former Army National Guard major. Zero executive experience managing large military commands, defense procurement, or enterprise-scale organizations. Opened his tenure by leaking war plans to a journalist by writing about them on WhatsApp instead of secure messaging channels, and is currently losing a war which he promoted launching in Iran, with zero preparation for obvious threats like drones and Hormuz closure, while spending his time obsessing over testosterone levels and beards.

Department of Health and Human Services + Surgeon General:

Biden: Xavier Becerra: 24 years on key Congressional healthcare subcommittees; Attorney General of California overseeing the enforcement of public health and healthcare antitrust laws.
Vivek Murthy: MD/MBA from Yale, Harvard faculty member, practicing physician, and two-time U.S. Surgeon General with deep clinical and administrative credentials.

Trump: Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: Famous antivax-conspiracist brainworm-addled kook who eats roadkill, cuts of whale heads, measures raccoon penises, and swims in sewage. Zero medical degrees, zero public health degrees, zero experience running a hospital system or public health agency.
Nicole Saphier: Radiologist who's a strong advocate of Kennedy's conspiracy theories.

Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services:

Biden: Chiquita Brooks-LaSure. 30-year veteran of healthcare policy and public administration. Former healthcare analyst at the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), key drafter of federal health legislation on the House Ways & Means Committee, and senior official in the HHS Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight.

Trump: Dr. Mehmet Oz. Daytime television talk show host and former cardiothoracic surgeon, widely criticized by the medical community for promoting quack medicine and pseudoscientific wellness supplements on television.

Department of Education

Biden: Dr. Miguel Cardona. Public elementary school teacher, middle school principal, assistant superintendent, and State Commissioner of Education in Connecticut. Holds a Master’s degree in Bilingual Education and a Doctorate in Education.

Trump: Linda McMahon. Professional wrestling (WWE) executive and mega-donor. Most famous for fighting her husband Vince McMahon at WrestleMania X-Seven in 2009 before running for congress (twice unsuccessfully). Before getting into WWE, she earned an undergrad degree in French and worked as a secretary at a law office translating French documents.

Director of National Intelligence:

Biden: Avril Haines. Former Deputy Director of the CIA, former Deputy National Security Advisor, legal counsel to the National Security Council, and Georgetown/UChicago-trained national security legal expert with decades of experience inside the Intelligence Community.

Trump: Tulsi Gabbard. Former congresswoman and Army Reserve officer. Zero professional intelligence community experience, zero senior leadership roles in intelligence analysis or collection. Before her position she was most famously known for harboring sympathies for Russia and Assad.

Federal Bureau of Investigation:

Biden: Christopher A. Wray. Yale law grad; three decades of working as a US prosecutor and attorney general under both Democratic and Republican administrations, including heading the criminal division of George W. Bush's administration.

Trump: Kash Patel. Former congressional staffer, and podcaster. Zero track record in law enforcement. Has spent most of his time in office abusing its perks for himself and his girlfriend.

Department of Justice (AG):

Biden: Merrick Garland. Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (served 24 years on the federal bench). Former Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General who personally led the successful prosecution of the Oklahoma City bombers. Harvard College (valedictorian) and Harvard Law School (magna cum laude).

Trump: Matt Gaetz (first pick). Former congressman who was under active House Ethics investigation for sexual misconduct and illicit drug use; zero prosecutorial experience, zero judicial experience, zero executive law enforcement leadership.

Department of Transportation:

Biden: Pete Buttigieg & Polly Trottenberg. Buttigieg: Rhodes Scholar, Harvard graduate, municipal executive overseeing urban infrastructure redevelopment.
Trottenberg: 30-year veteran of transportation policy, former Commissioner of the New York City Department of Transportation (managing one of the largest municipal transit grids on Earth), and senior federal transit policy director.

Trump: Sean Duffy. Former cast member on MTV's The Real World: Boston, former congressman, and Fox Business commentator. No professional background in civil engineering, transit systems, or logistics.

How many more of these do I need to do?

I guess I should clarify... I disagree with the idea that my post is in opposition to the bulk of your post. I just never intended the thing you rebutted.

If you don't have or attend dinner parties, you should. It might seem quaint or antiquated, but sharing lives over food is one of the most underrated, easiest, least pressure-laden social experiences you can have. Even if the food fails to come out right, it generally works out fine.

I disagree with your clarification - and post in general. I addressed dinner parties and the like. Not the world at large. Some things need preserving. Casual social interactions are not among them.

Lazy, ignoring explicit instructions and hiding it, possibly blackmailers and unionizers... sounds like they're already direct replacements for people.

If I find out somebody is using wearables to archive anything that includes me without my direct permission at a dinner party I attend - video, audio, or stills - it'll be the last time I ever speak to them.

Almost precisely nothing that happens at these sorts of things needs to be preserved - in fact, it should specifically be fleeting. Experienced, then gone. This desire to preserve everything is a sickness.

Thanks for the advice on raising children, old guy with no kids.

I'm sorry, but when you look at the current administration, are the people at the top people who scream to you "I reached my position because of my competence and skill"? It is the crowd that's constantly screaming about "DEI" that has been the most obsessed with promoting people based on appearance and personality over any actual competence whatsoever in the fields they're being put in charge of.

And for the record, the guy who led the X mob against this person - Nathan Cofnas - has stated that beyond "whistleblowing", his motivation is that Beyond whistleblowing, he states that after a 'revolution' removes professors like Arday, it will open opportunities for him to become 'head of the department of eugenics and race science at Harvard'. Are these the sort of people whose side you want to be on?

That's not how tariffs work. He'd have to collect from crewmen at the bases that got bombed. You know, the importers.

If you dig into it, the deal is half of freshman will have normal grades, half will be pass/Fail. For various reasons (scholarships, internship and other opportunity requirements) the pass/fail students will have actual letter/numeric grades, but the students won't see their (secret) grades.

Incoming freshmen have somehow survived 12+ years in school getting actual grades and somehow handled it - why is it suddenly an issue in 'grade 13' (Freshman year)?

If a student can't handle getting grades, why not just let them sign up for pass/fail for each class?

Funny you write that. I was also acing in high school. Then I went to university at a top notch school, and my first physics mid term resulted in the grade... 33%. Yupe that's what it was. My friends had like 42, and 25. One friend looked at me and said, "it hurts doesn't it..." Yeah it did.

What I learned is that I might have been smart in high school, but there are some really smart people in a top notch university. Like seriously smart. It motivated me to work at it and I passed. In fact in the second semester I was doing rather well again. It required me to work. My friends on the other hand decided to move out of engineering. One became a male nurse (he actually was well suited for that), and the other became a remote sensing specialist. He explained it to me back in the early 90's as using satellites to do geography. The irony with that one is that it is now an amazing profession.

What I am writing is that in the end we all learned to deal with it and assess what we really wanted to do. I don't think the vibe approach will work out.

A 100% tariff does nothing related to national security.

But at this point I don't understand why any explanation needs to be offered for any tariff. They do what they want and the Supreme Court has been revealed as a toothless, sycophantic shell company owned outright by the republicans. Whatever losses they hand the right are performative.

Just don't say why. Follow any objections up with, "See you in court... eventually..."

I suppose when the automatic urge is dishonesty it's hard to override it and say nothing.

Also, people think they're so clever when they do this, when they generally don't actually work with modern models anyway. It just makes you look manipulative and unprofessional.

Whether we like it or not, whether we use Windows or not, Microsoft is going to insist on adding the tax whether the PC comes shipped with Windows or not. This is illegal bundling, Microsoft has essentially ignored prior rulings, and it's pretty much a certainty the courts will be fine with this.