* Very time-consuming, especially for edits/corrections

* Lacks functionality (where is undo? the right/left arrow keys?) and other functionality is very poor (mouse/pointer control)

* Frustrating!

* Consumes attention: I can type on a full keyboard while looking elsewhere - including talking to someone else, though of course all actions suffer. On full keyboards I can type while reading something, to transcribe it, or I can just watch the output. Or just imagine using keyboard-based commands (e.g., Vim) on a smartphone.

I've tried alternative screen keyboards and they are a bit better, but it still sucks a lot.

The fact that neither you or I are part of the global elite isn't entirely due to a lack of merit, but a lack of luck and, quite possibly, a lack of psychopathy.

Just the other day, or so I assume, one of them ran out of toilet paper and awkwardly shuffled towards a solution. We're all just apes.

As auto-correct has become seemingly worse, I think a lot of people have just given up fighting it all the time.

but maybe the elite use it differently

It is funny that spelling and grammar matter more when writing to an admissions officer than to a potential business partner. But it’s also funny to imagine a world where you could send in an essay with a bunch of typos and grammar mistakes and expect it not to influence your application.

Spelling and grammar matter in the sense that they are a signal that you know a complicated and somewhat arbitrary set of rules and have agreed to follow them.

For most of us, grammar is a proxy for competence. We proofread because a mistake could cost us a grade, client, or a job. But the ultra-rich are basically operating post-economically. They aren’t trying to advance; they started rich and they’ll end rich, so they have absolutely no one to impress (and certainly not you).

When you grow up in an environment where friction is historically outsourced—where papers are bought, tutors do the heavy lifting, or SATs are taken by proxies—you never really get held to the same operational standards. You just learn to slop it across the finish line because the consequences for failure are zero.

So who are they trying to impress with their grammar? Nobody. It actually becomes a display of asymmetric leverage. Taking the time to craft a perfect, well-punctuated email screams, "I spent my valuable time optimizing this for you." A typo-ridden, lowercase, one-sentence reply sends the exact opposite message. It establishes a power dynamic where their two seconds of raw attention is the most valuable commodity in the exchange. Following spelling conventions is just middle-class anxiety; sloppiness is the flex. All conventions are for the plebs anyway.

Plus, low-fidelity communication gives them incredible optionality. A garbled, ambiguous text provides perpetual wiggle room. They weren't late or wrong, it was just a typo. It allows them to remain completely non-committal—just another way to maintain high status while shedding any actual accountability.

I don't think Larry Summers was fired for hanging out with Epstein and talking terribly about women with him; I'm sure plenty of people knew that he was an Epstein-type and hung in Epstein-type circles, and he publicly said horrible things about women's capacities, to people he barely knew.

I think he was fired for sounding like a subnormal reddit dweller. Simply seeming like a mediocre dumb guy. The idea that he was teaching their precious children was simply repellent to Harvard alums. It makes it even more of an obscenity that he was in charge of the government response to the housing bubble, and for running up the stock market in the late 90s. It's so much worse when you confirm the awful acts were done by an actually dumb guy.

You want to fool yourself into thinking that these monsters were trapped by some bad premise within some elaborately reasoned theory or at least unfortunately tripped up by a sign error or a transposed digit buried somewhere. Nope, just a guy whose job is to sit in a chair with a bunch of qualifying paper around his name, and do the things that his backers pay him to do. An elite robosigner. They're not even charming or handsome.

The beast of two fingers reigns supreme.

The model M's will clack no more.

FWIW I don't have a problem with it at all. As the article mentioned there's an aspect of power politics (I'm important enough not to have to worry about formatting). But to me instead of <I wish elites weren't so callous with text> I feel <everyone should feel empowered to write like that> (again, maybe not quite to the level of Epstein, but e.g. capitalisation is just unimportant. Signing off emails with "best wishes" is not a good use of anyone's 500 milliseconds).

[1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mRfl5YHv0h4&t=97s

I didn't bother to even read the article (it's behind a paywall, I don't read articles with nonsense headlines).

There is this need to separate the behavior of wealthy/powerful people vs those who are poorer/hold less powerful positions.

The behavior's the same when it comes to writing and sending messages. I've dealt with both consistently and constantly over several decades.

but even then, as the man once said, "there are things that can only be expressed with an inflatable giraffe filled with whipped cream"

While you sit in homeostasis ruminating on the consequences of a misplaced comma someone else snatched up your deal

being a non-native english speaker, removing capitalization from my writing removed a ton of anxiety when writing text and didn't change at all the landing of my messages or my ideas.