I have a set of 5 Echo Dots around the house and ever since I "upgraded to Alexa+" -- it's a train-wreck. Sure, the AI gives much smarter answers to questions. But they continuously forget my preferences for the voice I chose for them to use. (My wife and I both prefer their "female 2, relaxed" voice, as most similar to the original and more "professional" sounding than the others.) But no, it keeps going back to a voice that sounds like a bubbly, annoying teenage girl. Worse yet, there's no way to set a voice as default for all devices. You have to go around changing it for each one independently.

And that's before all the creepy, info-stealing behavior it has. EG. Someone will come over and ask it a few questions. Next thing you know, it's asking them to share their name since it's a voice they don't recognize.

The private sector has a solution to all of this that "just works". You acknowledge the supply and demand. Swamped with public record requests? Great! Hire more people to handle them as their job description/title, and charge enough for them to cover their salaries or hourly contractor rates.

IMO, asking one group to pay $2.3 million for a records request is unreasonable. But why can't you ask all of them to pay a fair share so the process works smoothly and effectively for everyone involved? A qualified govt. contractor hired to fulfill FOIA requests is typically paid a midpoint salary of about $88K per year.

Fact of the matter is, TX has been more the extreme, modern Facist-Republican governed state than "traditional Republican" for decades now. It took a lot of people some time to come to that realization. But definitely by the 1990's, watching what was happening in Texas made me solidify my views as more Independent/Libertarian than Republican.

As just a couple of examples?

- TX passed a law requiring people get a permit to legally possess Pyrex glassware. (Thought was, if you weren't a research lab or a school, you probably only had it around your residence if you were making illegal drugs.)
- TX was well known for their "Vampire cops" who were legally allowed to hold a person down after they were pulled over, and draw their blood to check for alcohol.

The general populace of Texas doesn't necessarily reflect this at all, especially with so many liberal-minded people who moved there from places like California in recent years. But the people in political power there operate with a lot of support from those who like the traditional ideals Texas claims to stand for, while acting in ways contrary to some of those ideals.

Let me be perfectly clear about this: I am insulting you. I am calling you out as either being such a plonk that you keep old copies of People magazine around just in case ... or you are such a plonk that you google and select the answer you want.

Either way, you are a plonk. Your memory is reliable and truthful, mine is full of lies.

Yah, right, like I keep sources of everything I remember from 30 years ago. Uh huh. You of course, being perfect, do keep such sources, instead of just googling and reporting the results which confirm your own bias.

Lots of inventions were unasked-for until they were invented.

No we have not. That's another cherry picked date comparison. Corals have been bleaching and repopulating themselves for several hundred million years.

That's not how it was reported at the time, and I have no reason to trust People magazine.

If you were an anti-alarmist, you'd be crowing this shows sea levels dropping.

For another indication of how sloppy sea level rise claims are, the alarmists published a list of sea level changes along the US Atlantic coast, and funny thing, they differed considerably, as if the ocean were rising more in some places than others. The alternative explanation of sinking land levels was pooh poohed as climate denialism. But another funny thing: California's central valley was once reported as having sunk 22 feet since the gold rush days 150 years earlier, due to pumping out so much underground water. Gosh, could the same thing be happening along the Atlantic coast?

They made those loans because the government promised to bail them out if the loans soured, and the government said there would be consequences for not making enough subprime loans.

Oh yes it did, starting back in the Clinton era. I forget what they called it, other than subprime lending. Banks were specifically told the government (taxpayers) would back their risky loans, and if they did not cooperate, there would be consequences.

The claims were "extinction" and "disappearance" by now, not "lower from some cherry picked date". People don't resort to shenanigans like that when they have truth on their side. You, sir, act as if you do not have truth on your side.

There was a world record high temperature reported in Algeria a few years back. Turns out the weather station was situated at an airport, on or close to the tarmac where jet airplanes shot their hot exhaust at the area.

There are standards for weather stations, such as fresh white paint, size and shape of the containing box, louvers, situated with grass around it, no artificial heat sources nearby, etc etc etc. Something like 90-95% of Britain's weather stations violate those standards, some so badly that they are rated as only being within 5 degrees of correct. Britain was also reporting record high temperatures for weather stations that haven't existed for decades; they average other weather stations within 50 miles to create fake weather station data.

These same patterns show up in the US and other countries. The reported "record high temperatures" are nothing of the sort.

Again: people don't lie like this when they have truth on their side. They not only don't need to, they know that lies ruin their reputations. These alarmists don't seem to mind being caught in such egregious lies. Apparently they don't mind having shit reputations.

Your statistics are meaningless without providing dates. Anyone can cherry pick any starting date they want to show any trend they want. Al Gore and other alarmists specifically claimed "extinct" and "disappear", not "trending". Your strawman is another sign of a liar who doesn't believe his own propaganda.

Your stats on coastal flooding are not backed up by reality. An awful lot of people are moving to Florida. Obama still has that sea level mansion.

Perhaps you don't understand that "move heaven and earth" means not accepting the status quo on taking 30 years to build nuclear power, when it didn't used to take so long. Perhaps you don't understand the alarmists' claim of a tipping point and existential risk

Kindles and the Kindle app also allow changing font size, a real benefit as my eyes age. I bought a 1200 page book recently. The main font was just readable with a bright light. The 200 pages of footnotes were illegible. I bought the eBook version and breezed through it. Kindles might be able to change fonts, I don't know and never had reason to try before. I do miss flipping pages for something I read 10 pages back, but search more than makes up for that.

My Oasis batteries (Kindle and cover) gave up the ghost a year ago, and I can't stand the replacement without buttons. I switched to a TCL 11 NXTPAPER tablet and use the Kindle app. The screen has zero glare, zero reflections. It's not readable in bright sunlight, and the table is slow, but the price ($300) is about the same as a good Kindle but I can scroll books instead of flipping pages, and it runs regular Android apps. I gave my two Kindles (Scribe, Paperwhite?) away a week ago; hadn't used them in a couple of years. I probably would have kept using them if they'd had physical page turn buttons.