English would benefit from adding Eth (Ðð), Thorn (þ), and Wynn (ƿ).
Perhaps adding OEthel(Œ) and e-acute (Éé) to that list, especially the latter to help identify when to pronounce /e/ versus it remaining silent.

In practice I don't anticipate anyone changing the alphabet we use for English because people HATE learning something new, especially if they already put the time in learning the old way. No amount of improvement to efficiency or accessibility is likely to convince the majority of people to change their ways.

These trends in writing and society do wax and wane. A plain style emerging in the Age of Enlightenment, a period with social movements that valued rationality. A more prosaic style can reemerge in a response to perception that such rationality can be too cold and austere, such as during the Romantic movement.

In our era we see commercial oriented speech dominating all communication. A style that communicates concisely while also misleading the reader. Modern writing styles attempt to engage the most basic needs and feeling in order to elicit an emotional reaction in the reader. Commercial speech does not want rationality. Disrupting the conscious decision-making process is the goal when it comes to getting a consumer to buy.

And because commercial speech dominates television, radio, and the Internet. We have generations of people in the West who from a very early age primarily experienced English as a language used to manipulate and sell them something.

Reading is for NERDS

That reminds me when I interviewed for a start-up that wanted to make any app that could do real-time translation of any language. And suggested that with noise cancelling headphones you wouldn't even notice the person spoke a different language.

And I'm sitting in their interview pitch thinking: that's now how German to English translation works. You often need to get pretty close to the end of the German sentence before you can even begin the English translation.

that you bothered to use uppercase characters in your post indicates you are far more civilized than your typical slashdotter

Possibly a solution, possibly not. UBI in general tends to be more effective the broader it is applied. Attempting to test it in an isolate sub-group of the population has inconsistent results.

Philosophically, I tend to lean more towards offering standardized services instead of giving money out and letting people compete in a poorly regulated free market for those necessities.

In the future I suspect we'll see a mix of solutions, rather than a one size fits all. With basic income for expenses that individual decision making is practical. Like food or housing. But perhaps not in situations where individual choice is not practical like in healthcare. Or where individual choice is extremely inefficient like public education. (children should go to a standardized school that is physically close to where they live. shipping everyone off in random directions is inefficient)

This article has motivated me to change up my punctuation preferences; you see: we hardly ever use the noble semi-colon; a punctuation that adds a wonderful dramatic pause; while connecting each sentences into a thought-stream; and only once the complete train of thought has been completed; shall we finally terminate with the ignoble full stop.

I would prefer several types of people sit back and let the adults run things for a bit.

Got any data? I suspect you're influenced by social media covering an imaginary trend that is exists because it's great click bait.

Perhaps it was never great, but people certainly romanticize various periods of greatness.

It's related to the problematic romanticization of war in our culture. War always sucks. Even when you're winning the war, it can be pretty terrible at an individual level. Turns out that having blood in your hands doesn't feel all that great to the vast majority of non-psychopaths in this world.

The best numbers I've been able to find put that number at about 25% of car owners

In the US, I thought I'd seen the number being closer to fully 1/3 of the population that did not have offstreet private parking where they could recharge every day....

I'm not in favor of the govt intervening....I'm ok with them maybe helping to get charging infrastructure going a bit more, but I don't want taxes or incentives on EV or ICE....let the market work that out. When the EVs are truly beating out the ICE vehicles.....the public will switch....if they don't, then they don't...but the govt shouldn't be choosing winners and losers here.

We were never terribly great at democracy. There is a little bit of an observation bias, because historians tend to quote literate and intelligent people (both good and evil). And rarely do they share quotes of the barely literate rabble.

Initially democracy was for land owners. Implicitly men, and specifically white men.
Next we opened it up and any white man could vote. Even if they didn't own land.
Then we eventually we decided that black men are men too and they could vote, somewhat. They weren't allowed much justice, but technically could vote.
Eventually in 1920 we allowed anyone of the age of majority to vote, even women!
Imagine that, EVEN women could vote. That's quite a leap from where we started.

But there is a significant faction in the US that wants America to revert back to when it was once Great. We pine for the days when not everyone could vote and white men were respected for their systemically enforced power. The 2025 dream is to topple the series of events that occurred nearly 250 years ago, and guide this nation down a different path. A very hierarchical and undemocratic path, unchaining white men from restrictions they see under an egalitarian society.

I somewhat regret letting the fools run the world, while I dabbled with interesting computer projects.

Depends on if a Senator swore a loyalty oath to their party, or still believe in the oath the swore before entering office.

Making the little guys suffer is all part of how the system works. If you have workers that are broke and desperate, then the labor market is in surplus and it keeps wages down. Plus you don't have to be nice to your employees.
For the middle class, trimming a bit off the top of their retirement savings is very profitable. They simply have to accept a lower standard of living in retirement, possibly working past retirement age. Again this is very good for business.

A SCSI scanner should at least be a standard so it shouldn't need device specific drivers...
An ancient SCSI scanner from the 80s or 90s should still work today, providing you have a working SCSI controller.

Much worse are the scanners with proprietary interfaces, or proprietary protocols over other interfaces (parallel, usb, even their own proprietary isa/pci controller cards). You may find your scanner wasn't actually SCSI at all if you had to get a specific controller for it, a proper SCSI scanner should work with *ANY* SCSI controller.