I worked at a pizza buffet when I was in high school. The ranch dressing, made in 5 gallon buckets, called for multiple gallons for mayo and buttermilk. I too got far too skilled at getting it all out in one go.

Native Americans…

Whatever your and my feelings are regarding national vs federal governments aside, I feel it’s important to point out that the expressed purpose of the electoral college is to guarantee that the states and not the people elect the president. It’s a specifically federal institution doing exactly what it was designed to do.

I think a big part of the problem is that as states have become less democratic people have turned to the federal government expecting it to act like a national one when it isn’t wholly. All of this attention on DC has taken attention away from things like gerrymandering which happen at a state level. This coup started at the bottom not the top.

It worries me that they think we will need them soon.

That Xbox would become Microsoft’s Steam has been the prevailing prediction for the better part of 10 years. I am immediately dubious of anybody who’s opinion is that a more capable than the Xbox device (as far as availability of games) has no reason to be purchased.

Obergefell v. Hodges was decided based on the Equal Protection Clause. This is the second ruling in the last few days that seems to go directly against that idea. I am honestly worried they are going to use these rulings as an argument that you don’t have to treat people the same in every state and overturn equal marriage among other things.

Similar terrible rulings regarding slaves and where they were legal and not legal were part of what led to the US civil war.

From what I can tell it isn’t actually possible to do that unless you are at least rich enough to afford a PHD.

My wife and I have been trying to move out of the states for a decade.

The police in my city clearly feel that the traffic laws do not apply to them. I would not be surprised to find out that this is the case in most major metropolitan areas.

There is something off about your second map. I don’t remember that much of Oklahoma being part of Texas for instance.

I mean yeah, but somebody else had to let it get that bad first…

Modern cars (in the US) are required to have an OBD-II Port for On-Board Diagnostics. I always assumed most cars these days were just sending some or all of the real-time OBD data to the manufacturer. GM definitely has been.

The both sides thing is hard to get around sometimes and people who believe in the more traditionally classic form of democracy like Biden make it that much harder. While republicans will get elected with a 0.5% margin and call it a mandate to change everything, people like Biden tend to approach the situation with more of an idea that the people voted for Trump and changing what Trump did would be going against what the people voted for, sometimes to a fault.

Yes, I mean it never hit its rated speed. Also that many modern sites didn’t work any better than they did on the dialup anyway.

My grandparents lived in rural OK and had dial-up until 2018 when they finally were able to get a 2mbps DSL line. It really wasn’t much faster than the dial-up.

Nokia didn’t suddenly go all in on Windows Phone, they were bought by Microsoft.

There were only ever like 2 phones that used MeeGo. Nokia primarily used an OS called Symbian before they were bought out.

Remind me, who is it that gets laid off first when the line starts going down…

I can’t believe people go into debt for that experience. I would be livid.

You can ask questions in auditorium classes.

I am going to be honest; I don’t believe you. I genuinely don’t believe that in a class with more people than minutes in the session that a person could legitimately have time to interact with the professor.

The 60 person class I referred to was a required lecture portion freshman science class with a smaller lab portion. That we could ask questions in the lab was the only reason 60 people was okay in the lecture and even then the professor said he felt it was too many people.

WTF? 300? There were barely 350 people in my graduating class of high school and that isn’t a small class for where I am from. The largest class size at my college was maybe 60. No wonder people use LLMs. Like, that’s just called an auditorium at that point, how could you even ask a question? Self-guided isn’t supposed to mean “solo”.

I guess what I don’t understand is what changed? Is everything homework now? When I was in school, even college, a significant percentage of learning was in class work, pop quizzes, and weekly closed book tests. How are these kids using LLMs so much for class if a large portion of the work is still in the classroom? Or is that just not the case anymore? It’s not like ChatGPT can handwrite an essay in pencil or give an in person presentation (yet).