I had a great time at UR in the early 90’s because they had the most computing hardware per interested student in the country. I was able to relatively quickly work my way up to access to pretty much any system the school owned that I wanted, including the Cray at the LLE.
My son just finished his first year in college, and had no trouble getting decent grades without using AI while many of the kids around him were using it. At least in his humanities track, class participation is a lot of his grade, and he said the "AI kids" tended to suck at participation because they hadn't actually thought about the material, and couldn't dynamically work with it in class. He also said their AI assisted writing that he'd read was dull and unoriginal, and all sounded the same, which he thought likely helped his essays stand out. His English composition teacher said he was "probably too advanced for this class" when he told her he didn't use AI to write his essays, which made him roll his eyes, as he has clinically diagnosed dysgraphia (learning disability in writing).
Makes sense the ones who can't tell that AI does a piss poor job at writing get bad grades. In a humanities track I can certainly see how going basically completely no AI should be an advantage. Even in a other tracks it should be better, especially if professors think out assignments well. Group assignments are my biggest worry as in some classes they can really make/break a grade, working with those believing in AI would certainly be a disadvantage.
> the framers of the Constitution believed the American people would never elect someone so criminal and unfit
The framers of the Constitution were looking at a different world, where there was not the instant communication and sense of one "America" that we have. They figured that, while attempts at corruption were inevitable, the different states would protect themselves by not allowing representatives from another state to succeed at any self-serving corruption. But the rise of national party instead of state as primary political identity (which Washington warned about), and the huge propaganda pipe that is the internet, have destroyed the (supposed) protection of many individual state identities.
Huh, different than my experience. In the early 90's when I was in college, I was flying back and forth between Rochester and Boston several times a year because it was only slightly more expensive than driving the six hours.
I was in rural Northeast Spain one time and a French lady tried to get me to help her communicate with a Spanish storekeeper. Given that I only speak bits of Spanish and basically no French, and I seemed to have to the most bilingual skill of the three of us, we had a pretty hard time communicating. I'm still not exactly sure what the French lady wanted, and my vague understanding of what the Spanish person said was, "I can't be bothered with this."
The easiest place in France I've traveled as an English speaker was Nice. They all speak English well and don't seem to care if you don't speak French.
Real estate tax is also somewhat unpredictable year to year (except that it rarely goes down), and can be a large part of your monthly payment. We got hit with a 21% increase in taxes this year because the town voted to rebuild the high school and the main road.
Luckily, at least, we don't have an HOA. Well, actually, we technically do, because we have a shared driveway with three houses on it, and legally here shared driveways are required to have an HOA. But all three of us despise HOAs, so it doesn't have any money, rules, meetings, or do anything. It's just on paper only. We have informal meetings to sort it out when the driveway needs maintenance. After just a couple meetings we figured out that meeting first, alcohol second is the correct order.
> This Ferrari will be colossally better in terms of build quality
Will it? I've owned a few Ferraris and I've driven quite a few others. They're lots of fun, but I would never describe Ferrari as a company with high build quality standards.
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