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No need to go crazy with the first one. That first step from laptop keyboard or membrane pack-in is the biggest jump you’ll ever make in typing experience. a brown-switch gamer board with the RBG turned off and some cheap Amazon “CSA” style keycaps might be all you’d ever need. Of course, even that type of thinking can lead to certain… rabbit holes.

I never truly learned to type, though I had a few weeks instruction in school, and did a few levels of Mario Teaches Typing when I was a kid. None of it really stuck, and typing remains an exercise in hand-eye coordination for me. I topped out at around 70-80 WPM if I’m composing rather than copying, but that’s been good enough for a lifetime of office jobs, and certainly for writing school essays. There is definitely a lower ceiling if you don’t get proper instruction, but simple practice is still helpful.

Drawing an imaginary factory- and they wanted kids to do this before teaching them the parts of the cell- isn’t going to help you learn what mitochondria are.

That sounds like it’s an exercise meant to get the kids thinking about a multi-faceted system existing inside a single structure, with parts that are interconnected but distinct, and will lead into a common metaphor teachers use to teach about biological cells. Not being graded means they’re not judging the kids on what they know or don’t, but want to evaluate where they are with this sort of thinking and figure out what they will focus on. Also, your kid may be smart and already know where they’re going with this, but others in the class may not. If she does, she could probably knock that out in fifteen minutes. Even if you decide that she doesn’t need to do it, I don’t think it’s stupid busy work, at least not necessarily.

Some teachers are dumb; we need too many of them and pay them too little for each and every one to be a superstar. The ones coming up with curricula and lesson plans usually aren’t, though.

Abiword is okay for now, I guess, but it’s basically a zombie, waiting for dependencies to break:
https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=412196

I still keep reddit as a read-only resource, and yes, plenty of people still use it. There are niche communities that I sure do wish could hit a critical mass on the threadiverse, and the archive of advice and (mostly) human reviews of stuff are helpful.

That said, either it’s reddit or it’s me, but any community that’s even slightly large seems to have a lost a little thoughtfulness and vibrancy. The takes are more boring, the jokes more repetitive, and I run across others’ “goodbye overwrites” a lot more often than I thought I would, and generally in places where it seems like the original posts were genuine attempts to be helpful. Reddit is not gone, but it is reduced, and must eventually fade into the west.

Yes, the United States Army, noted reservoir of bleeding heart liberalism.

Maybe, just maybe, it has more to do with the military always needing to draw from people with few other options, and despite howls of “reverse racism” from asses like Gosar, white Americans are doing absolutely fucking fine at the demographic/statistical level.

I’ve had a fairly decent one with a Canon small-office B&W laser. It needs to be reset every so often, and it doesn’t seem to like my wife (though no printer ever does), but its apps and drivers are mostly business related, so while they are more than happy to help you buy supplies, they don’t force the issue, and the printer doesn’t care what brand of toner you shove in it. 99% of the time it’s just sitting there quietly on its LAN address, ready to print something successfully.

She just got an HP multi-function from work, and dear god that thing is annoying. It kept claiming that its own demo ink was counterfeit. Also fairly mediocre color prints.

I was assured by Ted Lasso that this will turn out okay.

That’s his preferred coffee taste and that’s what he demands the company makes.

I’m sure it’s also completely coincidental that burnt coffee tastes mostly same no matter where and when the beans came from. :-)

I normally use that same coffee in an Ikea French Press and while I won’t say it’s gourmet, it meets my needs for “not particularly bitter caffeine juice”. Honestly, I slowed it down the next time I did a single cup pourover and that took most of the battery acid notes out of it.

I don’t have a particularly sophisticated palate and still want some sugar and milk in there; I just don’t like Starbucks very much and hate paying a premium for a product that I like less than my homemade half-assery. :-)

If you need drinkable brewed coffee from SB, you have to order the blonde roast. They scorch the everliving fuck out of their regular stuff to ensure consistency regardless of source, so even if you normally don’t, if you want “black” coffee from SB, you’ll be better off with the blonde. If you’re brewing by volume of grounds, lighter roast will have more caffeine anyway (they’re the same if you brew by weight).

So it’s not a lawsuit (yet), it’s a complaint to the state attorney general of Washington accusing Starbucks of unfriendly consumer practices related to their gift cards, in part because they can recognize unspent gift cards as revenue, and also because it’s instant cashflow for them even if the accounting revenue lags behind. The need to come up with a calculation for how much deferred revenue to recognize can be abused by execs to nudge the revenue higher (and with no additional costs associated with it, profit as well) and thereby improve stock price and trigger bonuses and whatnot.

The actual complaint reads as a bit of pearl-clutching (“involuntary subscription” because customers don’t want to leave a balance OR talk to a real human at their local Starbucks!) , but on a the “death by a thousand cuts” model, yeah, I suppose Starbucks is being kinda dickish. The app doesn’t give you as many rewards if you pay with CC, buries the other payment options a couple of layers deep in a menu, doesn’t let you reload gift cards in increments equal to a purchase, doesn’t let you split payment methods, and sets a high default reload so (on iOS at least) it isn’t immediately visible that you even could scroll up to reload in smaller amounts.

It’s sort of garden variety asshole app design meant to soft-lock customers in, but it’s not really fraud in any meaningful way if someone is motivated. You add money, you get bitter overpriced coffee that your partner really likes for some reason. I prefer CHEAP, ACIDIC coffee because I did the pourover too fast on mediocre store-bought grounds that are too fine, LOL. Still, maybe worth a public scolding or some fines to get them to modify it so people can save a few bucks without diving into the finer nuances of their coffee app.

For now, it’s still a very good way to find reviews and rundowns that were (probably) written by real humans, and for the more niche communities it’s often still the only community with a critical mass of people participating. Its content is a resource that was created by the users, and I’m not going to cut off my nose to spite my face.

Now that said, I never post anything there anymore, and I never browse without adblock, and I refuse to download their garbage app. It’s a read-only resource for me now, and I’ll survive just fine if it locks itself down completely.

You can only apply to jobs in European countries.

Sorry, I don’t make the rules.

Maybe I’m a little pollyannaish, but I tend to think that the generations growing up with this stuff will grow around it and configure their social expectations and will settle into rhythms that work as well for them as older generations’ environments did for them. It will look weird to olds, but I always wonder if we’re looking back at the “good ol’ days,” and projecting our own reactions to the changes onto the generations that will take them in stride and make sarcastic wanking gestures at us when we complain.

Pamphlets/Newpapers/Films/Radio/TV/Video Games/Internet/Social Media will all rot your brain and subject you to misinformation and leave you depressed at how you must interact with the world, depending on when you were born and when you are speaking. Not to say there are not unique challenges to each in turn, or that some periods don’t end up worse than others, but I just don’t think our kids are going to treat the world and each other THAT much worse than all their ancestors have, and if they do I’m not sure it is uniquely social media’s fault. There are many things worth knowing about the social impact of new tech, and perspectives that the experienced can offer, especially in transitional eras while it’s new. I just don’t think think doomer handwringing or trying to put genies back into bottles is a good use of anyone’s collective time.

Having read some software developers’ attempts at writing, or, god help me, contract drafting, I agree completely.

Doctors are the worst about this though, and everybody WebMD’ing themselves before coming in is simply collective karma.

As a defender of Tex-Mex as a legitimate fusion cuisine, can confirm that the Europeans do terrible things to Tex-Mex. You may think you’re over margaritas, chili powder, refried beans, yellow cheese, and salsa roja, but you will change your tune when confronted with odd vodka concoctions, paprika (and precious little of that), crunchy half raw white beans, mozzarella, and water-thinned ketchup.

$4.50 more and a smaller piece of dessert and they could have got a meal for 8 with probably a better veggie patty. Could have saved $1.50 to go with the cheapo buns, but the Sara Lee, while equally processed (I am not judging… they look pretty good), are a small investment to improve the dinner.

https://www.kroger.com/p/beyond-meat-cookout-classic-plant-based-burger-patties/0081005729013?searchType=default_search

everything except the bootlegging is still true

Oh, I don’t know. In-demand mind-altering substances banned due to unrealistic policy goals inflamed by small-minded moral panic, leading customers to seek out a high-risk/high-margin black market that attracts violent criminals and results in adulterated product. Which year is it again?

Jesus. The details are damning. This is not white Gen-Z’ers thinking they’re post-racial so they can repeat the stuff they hear from black content creators (and of course, they’re not and they shouldn’t). This is pretty much old-school racism.

Also apparently not the first issue, or the second.

What (or who?) could create a corporate culture where racists would feel empowered to say anything they want without fear of repercussion?