And most of my discomfort with AI is the feeling that it is currently being priced/promoted as a loss-leader for reasons are not entirely clear but seem likely to be related to tech companies positioning themselves for monopoly power.

It seems to me that AI obviously has its uses, but if it's being used to make spiffy illustrations for presentations, it is under-priced compared to its true cost in terms of resource usage. 1/

It's fake.

Growing up, it was turkey for both Thanksgiving and Christmas (my father was a big fan of turkey). I married into a prime rib family, and quite happily adopted that. But we're now at the "what do you when Xmas is just 4 people" stage and haven't quite figured that out...

And the whole argument is circular. He bases "needs" on average spending, and then finds that you need to make an average income to spend like the average American.

Yes -- nearly as much on "other" as on housing seems... odd. The housing number seems low for a family of 4 so maybe other includes utilities, property tax, insurance...

So if this assumes two earners, is a combined income of $118K, which isn't far off the median family income.

I ask people to be tall... This semester it has included asking students to reach the too-short cord on the classroom projector screen for me.

I was a 1st grader in 1962 and there seemed to be a well-established curriculum around Thanksgiving and the Pilgrims, so if JFK was the first to mention Plymouth we was still building off well-established lore...

I wouldn't go so far as to say it's rampant, but petition fraud is much more common than voting fraud. One reason why filing fees are a better option, and easier to administer than ballot access petitions. Paid petitions are just a filing fee with at best wasteful, at worst fraudulent middlemen.

It's the capitalism thing... Anything that's profitable is bad.