Too bad our government, state and national, are ineffectual when it comes most housing problems. This is mostly due to the profit motive of our home/apartment builders. They want to build high profit margin homes, which are not usually anything one would consider affordable housing. The city of Houston, TX overbuilt "luxury" apartments 10 or so years ago and could not fill them, so the developers just sat on the vacant apartments until the market was back in a place to make their margins.

Houston Chronicle (paywalled)
https://www.houstonchronicle.c...

"Not in my backyard" is also much of the problem. Additionally, too many new, single family homes are built across large tracts of land that are heavily deed restricted by legal entities tied to the individual properties that require additional yearly fees.

Let's not add to it. And, yes, we should decrease road noise. Build more and better public transport; and let your precious, snowflake children walk to school or take the bus.

If they have these troubles getting it repaired during "peace time", imagine the problems if the equipment is actually in a theater or war.

AI to tell them how to make drinks and fix equipment... What did they get trained to do as an employee? It doesn't sound like AI is the right fix.

Clay Shirky interview about AI in university. When is it enhancing student work and learning vs. "cheating"?

https://think.kera.org/2025/05...

He also says if you massage the AI enough and use 2 different ones, it's nearly impossible to tell AI was used, assuming the student's base language skills are decent.

Clay Shirky interview about AI in university. When is it enhancing student work and learning vs. "cheating"?

https://think.kera.org/2025/05...

By "educational apps" I mean some application that instructs you or provides knowledge that is well established and doesn't need "updates". Take the knot tying app I have. How to tie those knots doesn't change and I don't need the app the phone home or "engage" with me. Is that kind of app going to go away if the maintainer feels it's mature and complete?

Yeah, until they try to monetize a feature that is currently free, or they get bought by some other company mucks with the UI simply for re-branding, or start to serve ads etc.

If is ask a question that somehow the AI interprets as PhD level, software dev etc. will it refuse to answer until I cough up $20K?

Are high quality, detailed answers for knowledge gain going to be relegated to the domain of the wealthy again?

Because so many business will not switch off of Excel and Exchange/Outlook, Microsoft has "conveniently" bundled more software along with it, at a price other software vendors cannot compete; Microsoft is abusing their economy of scale/market dominance. The original 90's Office bundle was what many players in the market were offering, namely WordPerfect, and there was competition, sot of. Fast forward 20 years and when an "office productivity app" concept comes along, like Slack, Zoom or Dropbox, Microsoft simply bundled their own version with EXISTING LICENSES at a price point below what Slack, Zoom etc. were offering. The people in charge of money at businesses made a nearly entirely financial savings decision to use whatever Microsoft bundles, because piecemealing possibly better apps together is more expensive, since Excel and Exchange/Outlook are must have applications.

The "tolerant" should be allowed to marginalize those who's agenda is to install an authoritarian government and/or harm or injure others. We already do this with boundaries on free speech, product safety, personal injury, fraud etc. Tolerance is not inexhaustible nor is it hypocritical to draw a line to silence and/or remove the aforementioned intolerant people and groups.

The point that all intolerance can/should be removed misses the mark.

Tolerance should be allowed space to prevent genuinely, harmful intolerance from from creating any version of society that functionally oppresses descent or opposing points of view to implement or maintain their harmful agenda.

Read up on the "paradox of tolerance".

In the end, we learn that we do not have to tolerate the intolerant, potentially losing a liberal, western democracy and civilized society.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

An example of people in positions of power unwilling to stand against a tyrannical, petulant, transactional, vain and ephemeral cult of personality.

It's really probably all about money.