Gaming and streaming? No idea. I’ve been on a 5G hotspot for two years at this point, and it acquits itself well enough. Generally 150-450mbps. At no point have I thought “this cheaper thing simply isn’t serving my needs.”

But I can’t hit the broadside of a barn in a shooting game. Seriously, while still on a landline, my college roommate bought me Red Dead Redemption 2, and the first task was to shoot the broadside of a barn, which I could not do.

Thankfully, he views that story as being recompense for his financial outlay. I mean, I’d never played a shooting game.

Thought textbooks were too expensive decades ago? Hang on, we can still make things worse.

Show me the historical data saying “functional” adult literacy (as defined by at least sixth grade) has never been higher than 25% in the U.S., and I’ll reconsider. Absent that, you’re just upset your unfounded belief got challenged with facts, and I’m not going off on a longitudinal excursion for you.

The most literate? What are the stats these days?

• On average, 79% of U.S. adults nationwide are literate in 2024.

• 21% of adults in the US are illiterate in 2024.

• 54% of adults have a literacy below a 6th-grade level (20% are below 5th-grade level).

This from the … yes, the National Literacy Institute isn’t aware that the “I” in “NLI” already means “Institute.” PIN numbers aside, let’s look at just those three figures.

More than a fifth of the population being illiterate isn’t a promising start, but add the 54% below sixth-grade comprehension, and 75% can’t understand materials that are supposed to be mastered at 11 or 12 depending what time of the year you were born.

Given that only 79% are literate, and there’s no reference to subsets here, it’s understood that N is the same for all three statistics. That leaves 25% of adults at or above the sixth-grade level.

If one-quarter if the population being literate above the elementary level is a high-water mark historically, it’s a wonder we got as far as we did in science and technology and literally every form of progress over the decades.

It might feel good to think things are the best they’re ever been; the data don’t bear that out.

(Also, if you run a literacy org, maybe at least run your copy by an editor to avoid redundant embarrassments such as “U.S. adults nationwide.”)

With any other species, surviving longer didn’t mean more ways to destroy their own future. Man is special, but that’s not always a good thing. They basically had to worry about weather in a stable climate and asteroids.

Having been in Texas for a decade, I’m aware!

Sort of the reverse of Groucho having no interest in any organization that would have him as a member.

So far as I’m aware, magnetic fields. But that’s for the best … uncontrolled fusion doesn’t sound like a good path forward.

Pull My Finger

Makes for a good double feature with April the Fifteenth.

Learning is just a woke mindvirus.

I’ve not been in Texas according to my IP for years. Not even for porn, but because I don’t need my ISP making anything off me other than what I pay them each month. That’s worth $5 a month to me.

Someone has to show DeSantis up!

“Hello, fellow students …”

Totally offtopic, but I misread the title on first glance and wondered who in their right mind would enjoy Spellcheckers Chronicles with friends.

As education and expectations of humans decline, it may be the case that LLMs are an “improvement” over human drones in the future not because the tech is getting better.

This is going to be an interesting clusterfuck that should make for some interesting bedfellows (not often that a law is so bad that you’ll find Google and Apple joined by the EFF and ACLU).

I mean, I’ve only very recently realized that I’m on the spectrum. Not diagnosed, but several online tests coalesced around an 87% chance. It would explain a lot.

Also makes you a really kickass editor.

I mean, you train entire generations to just have things spoonfed to them from the almighty algorithm, and this is one net result.

Music discovery used to be a process, and it was a social endeavour. Friends would suggest something or force you to listen to it, and – in my case – it was almost always wrong. But there was still the social experience.

As someone who rarely listens to music with lyrics, I want to draw my own conclusions and emotions, not some slop that I could have written in sixth grade as a terrible English student.

Huh. They were still around in the age of streaming?