I’ve occasionally been part of training hourly workers on software new to them. Having really, really detailed work instructions and walking through all the steps with themthe first time has helped me win over people who were initially really opposed to the products.

My experience with salaried workers has been they are more likely to try new software on their own, but if they don’t have much flexible time they usually choose to keep doing the established less efficient routine over investing one-time learning curve and setup time to start a new more efficient routine. Myself included - I have for many years been aware of software my employer provides that would reduce the time spent on regular tasks, but I know the learning curve and setup is in the dozens of hours, and I haven’t carved out time to do that.

So to answer the question, neither. The problem may be neither the software nor the users, but something else about the work environment.

The skills of both writing useful minutes and prioritizing actually sending them out are frustratingly rare. An average meeting with five or six people has even odds of not including someone with both of those skills. I can see where reliably having a mediocre AI summary might be an advantage over sometimes having superb human-written minutes and sometimes having nothing.

Insurance might not pay if the person doesn’t meet CDC guidelines. The $140 cost will probably prevent a lot more vaccinations than the extra pharmacy hoops.

Given that kids sometimes play outside, or take some time to get loaded into or out of cars in a driveway, and I am also sometimes outside or driving to or from my house, I feel like I have a decent handle of what kids live where in a one block radius of my house. I may not know the parents, but I would know which door to knock on to meet them.

The vice signaling at the Fed level such as the “alligator” compound, and the “encampments bother my snowflake sensibility, just move them” shit being done in D.C. is not a carbon copy of whatever California is doing. Success at their self-stated goals is TBD, but the California government is putting actual resources to attempt to provide appealing options to those being displaced.

From the linked article, bolding mine:

Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday announced the creation of a statewide task force aimed at dismantling homeless encampments on state property and expanding access to shelter and services.

The State Action for Facilitation on Encampments, or SAFE Task Force, will coordinate efforts across multiple state agencies, including the California Highway Patrol, Caltrans, and the state’s health and housing departments.

The governor’s office stated that the task force will prioritize sites deemed unsafe and collaborate with local governments to connect individuals with shelter, health care and substance use services.

I think you are conflating chronic homeless (less than 25% of all homeless) with people who are homeless for the first time, or have gone in and out of homelessness one or two times. The transiently homeless are absolutely driven there by lack of housing. Chronically homeless tend to have multiple issues that make serving them a challenge, but targeted support programs have been shown to make significant inroads even there.

This page has a lot of detailed breakdowns: https://endhomelessness.org/state-of-homelessness/

Yes, specifically focusing on birds. That is the focus I usually see when cat hunting comes up online.

It makes sense small animals that can’t fly would be easier prey - and therefore more likely to be impacted by predation - but I guess only birds are cute or something.

Cats kill huge numbers of birds. Most small bird species have high reproduction rates, and crowding results in higher death rates from increased disease and parasite spread, competition for food, and all the good shelter from predators being taken. Higher death rates from one cause (say, cats) results in less death rates from crowding-related causes. I haven’t seen any evidence that, in general, cat hunting ends up actually impacting bird populations.

Specific species of birds in certain locations have been harmed by cats: the Wikipedia page list several examples in Australia (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_predation_on_wildlife). So it’s good to have local awareness if there’s a particular vulnerable population. But in general, keeping cats inside is only for their own safety and won’t impact bird population one way or another.

It may not be abstractly good for cats to be allowed outdoors (my family growing up had a cat eaten by the neighbors dogs, a cat get hit by a car, multiple cats get serious injuries from fights with neighborhood cats, etc.) But having been in a household with a series of cats that only went out when they asked to be let out: they ask to be let out every day. It is completely inconsistent with my experience that a cat would “never want to go outside again”.

I see so much argument around UBI with the assumption it has to be enough to live off or it’s worthless. But Alaska’s system makes a real difference to reducing the number of people living below poverty level, even being just a small fraction of what is required to live there for a year. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/pop4.398

Although not designed as a social program to redistribute income, the Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend (PFD) has been reducing poverty by providing equal annual payments to nearly all state residents for over 40 years. …the PFD reduced the number of Alaskans with incomes below the US poverty threshold by 20%–40%… The effect of the PFD has been even larger for vulnerable populations. The PFD has reduced poverty rates of rural Indigenous Alaskans from 28% to less than 22%, and has played an important role in alleviating poverty among seniors and children… up to 50% more Alaska children—15% instead of 10%—would be living in poor families without PFD income. The poverty-ameliorating effects of the PFD have lessened somewhat since 2000, as dividend amounts adjusted for inflation have been declining.

The cost is a big turn off for most people. At grocery stores near me, the Impossible and Beyond products are more than double the price of the meat products they are imitating. In part because livestock feed is hugely subsidized by the government.

If the plant-based meat alternatives could gain efficiency through scale and experience to lower the cost below animal meat, we would see way more people trying them and finding what dishes they work best in, which would feed back into scaled market demand. But I don’t see that kind of explosive growth potential at current price levels.

Growing meat cells in a lab and selling them as food is illegal in the states you reference.

What Beyond does in processing plant material into something that resembles some meat products is still legal everywhere.

It’s a war of attrition at this point, with Ukraine providing almost all the people to become casualties but highly dependent on foreign aid for weapons, ammunition, intelligence, and continued sanctions enforcement on Russia. If either the foreign support or the domestic supply of soldiers falls short before the Russian economy collapses, Russia gets to keep the occupied land. If the first break is the ruble tanks to the point desperate poor foreigners stop signing up en masse to be cannon fodder in the Russian army, Ukraine could realistically take back the territory they lost.

Arguably Bernie got as many primary votes as he did (a good showing but a legitimate loss) because inside politics had cleared the field of more compelling challengers to Clinton. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/11/14/16640082/donna-brazile-warren-bernie-sanders-democratic-primary-rigged

Eliminating benefit cliffs, and taking the onus off applicants (the government has all our taxes!) to prevent qualified people from being cut off due to missing some paperwork box or deadline, would go a long way. Given how great our government has been at making programs that sound like they would help people, but then creating bureaucracy to ensure very few actually get help (not as a money saving thing - the bureaucracy costs a lot - but just because they believe people don’t deserve help), I have a lot of skepticism for any new program.

Their belief in MAGA is filling some deep psychological need. Logical reasoning around the belief is irrelevant because logic can’t activate whatever social buttons are being satisfied by their engagement with the MAGA movement.

Research trying to figure out what makes humans susceptible to this kind of stuff and how to protect each other was a hot topic, but then Congressional Republicans launched harassing investigations into everyone in the field and the institutions that supported their work, and of course the current executive branch has entrenched that fear. Gotta keep the victims coming to the grifter trough.

Different people and relationships can have different solutions that work for them. That’s OK!

https://clerk.house.gov/Members/ViewVacancies

Gerald Connolly and Raúl M. Grijalva, apparently. Both were Democrats. No, there are no alternates. Each State determines its own process for filling vacancies: often the governor appoints someone but special elections are also common.