My 76 y/o spouse loves Linux Mint. The 2017-bought desktop was deemed insufficient for Windows 11 and now runs Mint.

This appeared this week on our home Windows 10 machine as well for the one account that does not use a Microsoft account. It’s a new behavior.

This is very upsetting to me–more as a point of principle than in fact–but I appreciate that it doesn’t bother younger generations at all.

I am in a support group with over 100 senior citizens in it. Getting a file with a *.rtf extension used to be a thing, but it hasn’t been a thing in years. I do get *.doc and *.docx files so they’re probably getting lured into Office like you said even before Wordpad is removed.

ET-2800 does have a USB connection and linux drivers

I have the ET-2720 which I like but appears to have been discontinued.

I’ve had one for a year. I print a lot, in color, and I’m impressed.

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All the Williams titles are pretty terrific. Pinball FX (Zen) has done a good job with these.

We (76 and 60) shop with our plastic (credit, never debit). Next cash if it is hand-to-hand, or we can get a receipt. Otherwise check, but we don’t carry a checkbook. I may do PayPal, Venmo, or Zelle, but only if I know you personally – if you’re dealing with my spouse, you’d better take a check or plastic or wait for me.

to the detriment of literally everyone else.

How so? It’s an option. The other option may be “no sale.” We grew up on these and we understand them. All the high-tech ways are ever-changing, and we’re never sure where we stand with them.

Suddenly? Nothing sudden about it been going around for years.

From the article:

[In 2022], banks issued about 680,000 reports of check fraud, nearly double what they reported in 2021. And one expert predicted total check fraud will hit $24 billion in losses this year, roughly twice what it was just five years ago.

This video has 7.6M views and was posted 2 years ago

This really has very little to do with consumers and everything to do with a tug of war between processors, banks and businesses.

Sounds right. It’s not like there is some lobby of consumers out there writing legislation like this. And the last ones to ever write legislation are legislators.

A lot of the comments so far are trying to stay with the negative connotation to exploitation. You exploit your comfortable shoes to walk further each day. You exploit the microwave oven’s ability to more quickly warm your coffee than the stove.

This is the same with discrimination. You choose the raspberry danish over the cheese danish. This is you practicing discrimination, and it’s fine.

Any evil in it comes from abuse or impact to yourself with respect to others, that second definition of exploitation in the OP.

according to what Congress decides

That’s the rub. We have checks-and-balance and – from the 10,000 foot level – the current president is the enforcer/executor and, as such, has discretion with how to prioritize his efforts among existing and new laws.

When Congress makes an agency and tucks it into the Executive Branch, the president is the top of that org chart. Project 2025, in a nutshell, says that assignment gives the president the right to decide how much to do that business – including abstaining to prioritize it. This view is consistent with how other government administration works, who may decide that due to a recession we don’t focus on enforcement on fishing boats this year – for example.

It may even be the case that no reason has to be given to abstain from giving a duty attention or funding. “Because they elected me and I say so,” for example.

This would provide a check-and-balance against Congress making disagreeable laws.

Now Congress should still make those laws if they’re sure they’re right, because doing so would say how a thing is to be done and limit a president’s power to do it differently, but the president seems to me to have the power to say whether and if a thing shall be done when it is placed within the Executive Branch (therefore, within presidential purview).

We have a judiciary that has been pulled rightward, and we shouldn’t be surprised if we see more decisions aligned with Project 2025 from here on out.

Even if Project 2025 is right on the law, we have not being doing business that way for decades – especially with federal agencies we consider independent by tradition or expectation. If we want to keep doing business the way that we are, we need to make sure our laws and any new constitutional amendments that need to be written are made. Even if we get an upright and generally good person as president, the points made in Project 2025 should be addressed.

In 2023? 😞

I don’t know that I fit any of those label, neatly, but I’ve always been skeptical of the idea that the president is not in charge of everything under the Executive Branch.

Keep in mind I’m not in charge of anything and I’m not right about anything! I’m nobody here.

If Congress wants an independent agency, they need to create it and put it under themselves, not under the executive branch (so it seems to me). So even if Trump does not get into office (and let’s make sure that he doesn’t) Project 2025 is still going to be out there and it may be legally right in some important respects. Not paying attention to this reality is how we lost something like Roe v Wade … What the Supreme Court can give, it can take away. There is no such thing as “never going to happen”.

Please defeat Trump and Trumpism, but take this concept of Project 2025 seriously beyond Trump.

While that is an opinion piece, it had a lot of great information in it that I did not know about the special district.

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and it’s generally directly supported by rider fares instead of petitioning for government tax money.

Fares alone do not pay the bills. Buses are always subsidized (which is totally fine IMO. Every fine metro area has a good transit system, and it should be affordable to all who would want to use it.)

trains and busses that actually work and get people where they need to go with minimal hassle and a reasonable cost

Trains predate cars and busses have always been with us since the car. People have voted – with their cars.

The Interstate Highway System started in the 1950s. Population has more than doubled since then. Of course, we have more traffic, we have more people!