I don't see how this is in any way preferable to having an ordinary default constructor that does the same thing:

    // There are a few ways to let API callers bring their own 
    // memory, as they would in a no-malloc environment and this
    // stack-friendly c'tor is a stand-in for that. 
    static Birthdate epoch() { return Birthdate(1900, 1, 1); }

Some readers will expect Birthdate() to be equivalent to Birthdate(0, 0, 0), and naming it Birthdate::epoch() makes it clear that it is not that. I don't think it's worth it, but there is an upside.

Is he important enough to get a presidential pardon? That's how you know whether he's a "little guy".

To be fair, that bar is quite a bit lower these days, but still..

What's the going rate for pardons these days?

During the first Trump term, Giuliani said that the cost was $2,000,000 per pardon. Many went through him.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/giuliani-accu...

> And because local property taxes are a major funding source for schools, those are also the schools I'd expect to spend more because they have more.

It depends on the state. In Texas, property taxes from wealthier districts are redirected to poorer districts to ensure more equitable funding (search for "texas robin hood").

The result is that most public schools are funded about the same regardless of where they're located.

Agree about lowercase t. I was surprised the lowercase l didn't look more like

    xx
     x
     x
     x
     xx

> insurance doesn’t cover over the counter medications

It depends on the insurance. I have pretty crap insurance and didn't expect them to cover a prescription for Omeprazole (aka Prilosec) since it's available OTC, but to my surprise they did.

If you are an owner of rental houses, I would think that it's in your interest to be able to build ADUs on those properties. Even if everyone does it and prices go down a bit you're still making a lot more per property than you were before, assuming reasonable building costs (and if building costs are not reasonable then not many owners will be building ADUs and prices won't go down).

Do you have a source for the claim that the population of Austin has decreased recently?

I've had the same phone for over 6 years now (iPhone 11). It's a bit slower now, but I suspect that's more to do with software changes than anything else. In particular the battery is still in pretty good shape.

Sort of a funny example since "batterygate" centered on degraded iPhone batteries in which Apple argued the best possible move is to throttle phones so they don't shutdown unexpectedly.

Most people would argue the best outcome is spending <100$ and 1 min of your time to have your phone restored to like-new speed.

Right out of college, one of my first job offers was to work on the compiler for the computer for the Space Shuttle. Apparently because I had once taken a compiler course. Even young, naive, optimistic me thought to question the wisdom of that offer.

I ended up not taking it because the pay wasn’t great (and at the time it wasn’t really what I wanted to do), but part of me is still curious about what that would have been like.

If you want to prosecute someone who has previously been pardoned, then you'll have to figure out how to get the courts (that is, the people who would be doing the actual prosecuting) to ignore some of the highest rules by which they operate.

I'm not saying that that could never happen, but a) it sure sounds like an uphill battle and b) it's not the same thing as the president (one person) doing whatever they feel like regardless of the law.