Here's the thing: as a parent you had a high amount of control over what your children consume. Yes, there is peer pressure, but you can just decide to make your kid uncool or weird or quirky. My child basically doesn't see ads. She travels with her own tablet and hotspot with ad-free services and ad-free mobile games. Tiktok and YouTube shorts is almost totally banned in my house, but she may watch a few videos specifically on my devices under my supervision if she wants to see something her friends send her. I don't really have a problem with tiktok per se, more how it zombifies kids with constant dopemine hits. Youtube is a whitelist since don't trust that algorithm at all.

You get the picture. I won't say that my kid is watching things wholly appropriate for her at all times, but my mission as it stands is to keep her attention span solid and teach her moderation, so some games get banned before she ever get to play them (roblox), some get banned after me seeing the impact on her cousin (fortnite) and some get banned for impact on her (mobile games are evil). The fall out can be severe, but in this respect I'm an authoritatian parent. My word is law. Your feelings don't matter. You'll thank me later. Or not. You have a long adulthood play videogames.

Do we though? Alcohol the most commonly used addictive drugs is allowed for adults and even children in many states as long as the adults approve and do it in in private residences.

Parents need to be better about paying attention to games. I remember telling my aunt about a game my 10 year old cousin wanted. She was horrified and said absolutely not. She bought it for him when he asked when they were in the store because she doesn't take any time to pay attention to game They're for kids. Even though games are clearly marked with any objectionable material. She "blindsided" by what was in the game when her son booted it up dispite the game be rated as mature, marking objectionable things and me giving her a play by play.

There are a lot of additive things that we expect parents to use their judgment on. Sugar for example. Until someone is talking to me about how we need a bad on soda and BS like that because parents can't be expected to parent their kids about it, I don't really care about the most optional of activities that is games. Children have extremely limited access if their parents don't allow it. Theu buy the phones/tables/game consoles and robust parental controls have existed for a while.

Kids can be addicted to all sorts of things and it's still on the parents. Because it's technology we for some reason stop believing parents can do a thing. Oh however would the person who controls the internet ans the devices control their child's access to social media (another one I see whining about) and video games. As a parent myself, I'm just under the impression that at least watching in my circle, the parents who don't aren't paying attention or don't actually care that much, they just don't like the outcome judgment.

That's because someone can easily track your address via a phone number. This is why I have a burner VoIP number to give out until I trust people.

What is a "pointless pursuit"? History and any marginalized population by the list. So apparently when the government makes a plan for how to invigorate an area, they don't need to know anything about it's culture and history? We don't need people who understand things like that. Every citizen is the same obviously any thing the government demands is correct and will work out for all populations.

Also why does the state even fund PhDs? PhDs don't enter industry and spin that economy baby, so that worthless. Doctors and lawyers can just take out more loans. It's fine. Looking at that why fund programs for most master's degrees? What companies require one anyway?

I'm being flippang here because even as a STEM major, I've gotten so much mileage out of the "useless" part of my degree. Being exposed to those "pointless pursuits" allowed me to build things that people actually needed and avoid the pitfalls before we exposed people to them.

When I was in school, I wondered why the state was forcing me to take these stupid humanities classes at an engineering university at that, but I see it now. Mine was a school where humanities students had to learn to code a bit, and engineers had to learn do media analysis and probably take more history than they wanted, but getting out into the world, I've found that the engineers who got that exposure are just better because they know there is a whole class of problem involving people and they know when it's time to ask for help or when it's time to do research.

Has the state been funding schools though? Because state funding has been falling across the board and if the state has an interest in being lean then they should focus on out of prop salaries of administration and sports spending. After all what interest does the state have in sports? By this line of reasons colleges should have to fund that themselves.

This is of course setting aside that humanities does help society and is in the vested interest of the state. I'm saying this as someone who was a STEM major. Giving context to the world and giving people a greater understanding is useful for every major. It allows them to understand their world and make better decisions from their station in life.

To take the stance that the state has an interest in funding "useful" degrees then no one should be allowed to do anything outside their education, which is aburd. People with different points of view and knowledge enhance professions, not destroy them. That's what happens when a profession only has one allowable perspective to deal with infinite possibilities of the world.

Unless you are actively for killing people once they hit a certain age, demographic collapse is a real problem. You cannot care for the elderly with nothing but robots. Elders need healthcare. They need people in general and unlike young people they don't move from dead rotting towns. In demographic collapse they don't even have anyone to make them because they don't have kids.

See Japan for how demographic collapse is working out. Young people are being crushed by the weight of what it takes to care for too many old people. And the cycle is only getting worse because of course young people don't have kids when very stressed. Japan has whole towns going to rot. They're economy is experiencing negative effects from not having the expected amount of workers for what they need.

You really want a gradually declining population. You want your birth rate to be about 2. 2.1 is the replacement rate. Currently the US is the only developed country doing this and mostly by accident due to immigration. The US is experiencing a much less pronounced pension crisis than other developed nations. Instead we can focus exclusively on our fascist regime bid for power. That's our of population decline as well, but we get to fight against it since the US is fairly balanced in demographics (for now. It remains to be seen how the millennial generation will handle being dominant generation in a decade or so)

Public school? You mean that place that children are mandated to be? Also you forgot government. It was a whole thing. So if you're a Muslim and you want to be a part of the French government, then I hope you don't have any attachment to those head scarves. There are other religions ornamentation, but the head scarves one was the last one I saw. And whether school or a DMV clerk, it's dumb.

Also noticed I used two different labels for France rather than China. I think China is fascist with what they're doing. France is xenophobic with what they're doing.

Honestly, I feel the same about both: it's absurd. With France I get the "freedom from religion" spiel from some Frenchman, but it's veiled xenophobia to me. When you ban a kind of clothing but only for one group of people, that's basically the definition. Here, it's just fascism. At least the Chinese people are speaking out.

Damn, if only there was some sort of established and regulated type of business where you could rent lodging by the night in New York City. I bet they could make a whole lot of money building big buildings full of rooms you can rent like that.

As someone who has a big ass family, hotels fucking suck for families. When I compare my childhood vacations in hotel to what we do now in airBNB, we do airBNB every single time.

Do you make a habit of charging your friends and family that come visit you?

I have in the past when I was hard up for money because food costs for extra people can be great.

I read it in the summary, but I guess I made a mistake. I still think it's ridiculous. Like why have a limit at all on who people want to host in their house?

I was with them until they banned more than 1 guests at a time. Are you a couple needed somewhere quick to stay before going to an airport or something? Go die in a fire. New York only wants solo couch surfers. People who want a friend along. A single person with a child. A family in a money crunch, anyone really can just pound sand.

That is a super bizarre and IMO indefensible position. If someone wants to host more than one person in their home for a short span why is does they city even care?

I'm also worried about how this could be abused. What if you legitimately take someone (or even two someones) in for a week, kick them out and then they report you for being "an unregistered short term rental". This is going to be a shitshow.

Edit: alright I misread this morning. It's 2. Still bullshit. Why have a limit at all with the other stuff. My same complaints apply now with one more person. It's not like 3 people groups (aka 2 parents an a single child or one parent and 2 children, etc) are uncommon.

IMO hotels just don't fill the niche of needing a cheap single night or needing to have a bunch of people for a long time. Traveling with my family got so much better when airBNB became a thing.

I just felt like replying.

1. Children probably need to be in school basically year round, but for less time. They need reinforcement, but can't focus for long. The whole day could probably work if the 2nd half of the day was unstructured. This is basically how I've seen (successful) college students work. They tend to have a 3-4 hour block of classes and then between that they work on stuff at their own pace including studying, getting help, etc. This is how my kid's grade school works and honestly, I was shocked all the kids score the same as the public school, so apparently no loss. It is a year round school and the kids are in school more days of the year, so I don't know if it's technically more or less effective.
2. Accurate. Anyone who says differently is lying to themselves. Schools are also a monitoring service for abuse and a safe place for kids to escape hope abuse and maybe even report it.
3. Before we had more grandparents involvement. I have a lot of memories of my grandparents doing things my parents now refuse to do and I have to do. Families with grandparent involvement are just less stressed.

As for the 4 day thing, I'm interested to see how it works out. In Texas it has resulted in poorer outcomes for children on the whole mostly due to the safe place service schools provide.

The maybe rheu shouldn't advance and be failed? Like to me if you're bad at a subject, you should be required to take it until you pass it, not push along to the next harder version of it. Kids don't get left back or failed now. That is the problem. If you're not ready fine, but you can't take algebra until you pass pre-algebra.

I'm speaking as someone who didn't learn to read until 3 grade and still graduated on time and went to a good college. Failing classes is fine as long as you can also catch up if you rapidly learn the material as well.

I'm 100% in agreement. I think that our school system fails deeply in expressing the point. What I liked about college was what even if it was tedious, etc my professors took the time to explain why I needed to do it this way first and what the dangerous of not having some of these skills were. Did I always believe them? No, but now that I'm out in the world working I definitely know they were always right and I'm glad I did it anyway even if I didn't always believe them.

Grade school is a different beast and I spent so much time frustrated and bored and not knowing what the point was. If it wasn't for the fact that I just really wanted to be a roboticist and there was only one school in my state I could so that at, I probably would have done the least effort thing all the time.

I did appreciate my calculus teacher who gave us word problems. It really helped me understand the point of calculus. Those words problems showed me there were scenarios where algebra was not gonna cut it. I wish more of my grade school classes explained the point of it all after it became less obvious from middle school onwards.

I say history is for analysis because honestly anything that would let you truly understand today isn't taught. Yes you will learn about segregation, but my history classes barely touched my grandparent's time, so it's hard to connect that middle missing period to today. Sure. I'm the mind of person to go fill in that middle period, but many people aren't.

What was useful to me was the analysis part. Seeing how bias was in sources. Seeing how different people had the same sources, but different conclusions. Yes, seeing how a past event caused a future event.

But, I don't think many people in the US connect US history with why we have many things going on today. Grade school history isn't going to give that. My college history lessons did though. I had a whole ass history class on nothing by lobbying and I really gained an appreciation for why lobby should exist, how Americans are ridiculous, and how writing laws to keep the good of something, but not the bad is really hard. But no, I cannot tell you anything about the history of lobbying to day I spent 3 months studying and debating about it.

Back to math for a bit. I think that the logic part of math needs to be brought more into focus again. I think that programming is only going to become more and more important and it's a shame we're not teaching any of the fundamentals to allow people to even do things by make fancy excel formulas.

Oral would suck for the transition students. It's a completely different style and skill set of answering questions and no kid would have training or the mental framework on how to do it. It's great if you're the kind of person who can write a mostly perfect draft essay from start to finish no skipping around or back tracking, but if that's not you, it's gonna be a rough learning curve. This is before we ask questions like how does a deaf person take this exam? A mute person? Someone with verbal paraphasia?

This is fine and all and you have a point, but in the current system many times the subject isn't about the subject it's about the auxiliary skills you pick up along the way. My history classes in high schopl weren't really about history. I mean if I retained those facts, fantastic, they were more about analyzing given evidence and multiple references to make a point. I'm an engineer and I use that skill all the time. Facts about the Civil War not so much.

Even in college I had classes like that. It's why just programming the answer wasn't always allowed although literally everyone in the university took a programming class freshmen year. That wasn't always the point.

To always allow AI is like never taking the time to teach kids how to do arithmetic by hand. I mean, sure, we could do that, but learning arithmetic is not really about memorizing times tables and more about understanding the concept of a number and internalizing counting and so much stuff people don't realize they use all the time the existence of a calculator or not.

I think there is some value in not allowing AI usage sometimes. Before you use a calculator you should learn how to do it by hand so you can have a sense of when you've keyed something in wrong. AI has entered my workplace and it's so annoying. People who never knew how to write the things they ask AI to do can't vet the AI output and the result is somehow worse to me than if they'd bumbled something by hand. That's kind of what I'm afraid of in the future. I don't think that AI is ever going to be perfect and kids have to know what output they're looking for before they're taking this shortcut.

Let's just be simple about this: pensions and oth3r old age support. Who pays for those? Young people. If young people have to support a lot of old people, you're gonna have a bad time. Everyone. The young people have have larger amounts taken out of their pay and old people who get less support because there are just literally not enough resources. And because old people outnumber young people young are pressured more and more under democracy to give more to older people.

That is only one terrible thing from demographic collapse.

You are correct. That's why I didn't assume maintenence guy, but instead rapist.

Nope. He had a key, I guess he used it? IDK I just heard my fucking door open. He was there to fix something or other that was causing issues with the apartment below Mr. It was like 2PM which I guess is why he didn't announce himself, but yeah he almost died.

Because I've lived in shitty areas with actual drug dealers and BS like that. Less people have guns than you might imagine. Maybe it's different in nowhere USA, but in urban shithole, USA and Middle class suburbia that's about what I've found. People have like 3+ guns or none at all. I guess it's possible all my friends are just hiding this from me for some reason and in my hometown I just happen to know all the people who shoot guns, but honestly it's been rare that I've seen people with just one gun. It's not that I've never seen it. My cousin's husband owns exactly one gun.

I don't think there's any way to get stats, but I think that the US has more guns than people lends some credibility to this idea.

Honestly, if everyone woman only had 2 children that would still reduce the population without causing demographic collapse which is what Japan is undergoing. A rapid decline in population creates misery for everyone. You really what a birth rate that hovers around 2 for gentle population decline.

This is such an annoying answer. I've had a strange man enter my home unannounced. I remember standing just behind a wall with intent to stab him with the knife I had because if someone breaks into your house you don't assume a good time. Even without guns strangers are dangerous. That maintenance guy was seriously lucky I happen to recognize him in that split sec and stopped before stabbing him in the chest.

I'm American and I've never worried about guns. They aren't as common as people think in a lot of areas. Mostly we have a few yahoo's with a shitton of guns and most people with zero. I've still been in several situations where I felt unsafe without guns even being a consideration. If this dude was doing all that at my house, I'd call the police and then wait with a knife like I did with that stupid maintenance guy I almost stabbed who should have known better.

It's not that I disagree, it's just that I can never see a scenario where both sides don't have the same power. If you can quit at any time, then rhe employer can fire at any time. If you the employer has you give notice, so do you. I've never hear any stories online in different countries of the notice period not being both ways. And despite what one dude said to me sometimes weeks long, not a week. That would be actual hell.

That's kind of my point? That some workplaces are toxic or you otherwise need to abandon your job because of external reasons. Maybe it's just because I'm older (mid-30s), but I don't know a single person who hasn't run into a fuck this job moment for whatever reason. Either because it was deteriorating their mental health, or they prioritized their personal life. My life fell into a coma and I literally got on a plane thr moment I knew. I told my boss I wouldn't be in and he could fire me or not, I don't care. My brother had no one in that moment. I was lucky my bosses allowed me to keep my job while I acted as his advocate to get him care until the rest of my family could get there, but what if I wasn't allowed because of some BS notice contract? Which at will I can just quit fuck it. With no at-will there would definitely be some punishment. This scenario may not overcome the good of getting ride of at will, but I think people should consider it. Consider what it would be like to trapped in a place you hate with a hostile work environment.

I obviously don't know for sure, but I do see stories from people from those nations talking about how they have to say for whatever amount of time for a notice period. This is the thing where I have questions about abuse. I'm not saying at will is great, but I also don't think it's 100% awful and I think people should consider what it would be like to not be able to leave a job when you want to.

The question I have about people who are against at will is the flip side, which is being locked into a hellish job for some set period. I have had jobs that deteriorated my mental health. With at will I can just walk out the door whenever I want. Not so if both employer and employee are bound by some cool down counter clause.

Even without abuse there is opportunity cost to staying at your company. I've seen family members on the spot quit to care for people they cared about, but not people anyone would consider close enough to be covered by anything like FMLA, like your best friend's child. I quit jobs that interfered with my college education.

It sucks to be let go, but I don't think people consider if it might make more suffering yo be forced to stay. I can't see a situation where companies have to give notice, but employees don't. Sure I guess employees can sabotage their workplaces to be sent home with pay, but what a fantastic way to catch a charge and screw yourself over forever.

It's food for thought.

I hear you, but I'm just saying that he probably won't have any regrets about his kid's childhood or literally everyone would. He's spending a typical amount of time with his kids.

Could he spent more? Yeah. Will he have regrets around his life? Yes. That man will die of a heart attack or exhaustion, but his children will know him. And worse still, they'll know that compared to most super rich parents, their dad paid them more mind than others in their peer group. Wealthy parents tend to offload their children onto others.

I get it. I have a kid and kids really eat into living your life even if you love them.

Except some problems don't happen because you don't have money, they happen because of your demographics. Every 20 years they do a study on hiring and time and time again employers would rather hire a white felon over an educated black person. It literally doesn't matter if the black person had a degree from Harvard and has millionaire parents. If hiring managers can identify that they're black, all of that is immediately negated.

on his deathbed will regret only spending 2 hours a day with his family. That's really sad.

I don't know if you work and have kids, but honestly 2 hours of focused quality time with your kids is honestly amazing. I get 5 hours with my kid in the afternoon and that's because I'm privileged and I can pick her up exactly when she gets out of school. I still don't get to really hang out and just play with her those whole 5 hours because I still have to do things like cook and clean.

Sure on the weekends I manage more, but honestly 2 hours of just nothing but you and kid time is pretty normal for a working parent that isn't working insane hours. That guy will regret not going to recitals and stuff, but he won't be disconnected from his kids. I sure didn't get 2 hours a day during the week from my exhausted parents.

To me, the biggest wins is that interest cannot overcome your payment. So many people have loans that are more than they started with. Holding steady isn't great, but it's still a massive step forward. The forgiveness rules do mean that effectively some people have to pay until death. There's no upper limit for forgiveness. More loans means longer payments. I was hoping for a cap help cool the cost of college because lenders would think twice with the interest cap and a known end of life.

I imagine it's her age. She wasn't even legally an adult, not that that excuses it. Losing all her 20s and most of her 30s basically means if she does get out at exactly 15 years she's probably much screwed her whole life even setting aside the felony on her record. Her life will look nothing like she imagined.

Sure and we can edit it we just haven't in a good long time. That's the problem

Football? American Football has no restrictions on gender, it's just that no woman can compete after puberty truly sets in. What that guys says is true about physical sports. Women can't compete and never could. I can't think of a single sport where a woman could outcompete a man in a physical sense. Even something like gymnastics, I think men still overcome the natural female advantage that comes from being small.

Chess from what I recall created a woman's division because of the systematic biases and pressures girls faced. However, if I'm recalling correctly, it's not particularly weird for a woman to complete in the open division. It's just not a welcoming place for woman, so beginners often start in the women's division. With that in mind I don't see why transpeople shouldn't be allowed. They wouldn't be welcome much either in the open division, but also I'm not sure they'd be welcome in the women's division either, so it's kind of a wash.

I'm pretty sure zoning laws are outside of the Fed reach. They can carrot and stick via funding requirements, but mediated expansion has shown that states can be very petty if they don't want to comply. I wouldn't want the feds to set the tempo for zoning anyway. They just can't be aware of every area's needs. It's not a one size fits all situation. I've seen housing go up fast and the result is just a shitshow because the infrastructure doesn't keep up with the growth. I've seen dead cities where nothing wad built and only the people who got there first could afford a place to live, so effectively you had to leave town for everything because no retail workers could afford to live nearby. There's a middle ground between the two and no way will the feds know how to rate limit how housing gets built anywhere. Housing to me is a local election problem because people don't vote in local elections and then when the problem gets too bad, only nimbys cam live and vote there. Those places always collapse eventually (unless the population is very well off, see: SF), but when people get a chance to move back in they gotta remember to vote for local people who align their values.

I looked at that source and most of thr US's dings seem to he security. But note that the source says that basically no one gets arrested or killed by the government for being a journalist. Thus, I'm gonna say that it's mostly our crazy populous, which with the climate after Trunp makes sense.

The original point that the US has strong protections (by the government) for the the press stands. We just can't do anything aboutnpur citizens.

I don't know anything about Singapore besides what a friend who grew up there said. She came here to the US as an adult. Tried very hard to stay and worked very hard to bring her parents over to the US. Very confusing given that she had nothing but great things to say about the place and got very mad if I said that the US might be better in any small way. She had a lot of complaints about the US and many I found unfair even if many were totally fair.

So then I asked her: do you think that I a black woman could do what you did here in the US in Singapore. And she skipped over my question and continued her rant about how great Singapore is. That's all I personally need to know. Singapore probably is great, but only if you're the right kind of person, the acceptable person. I get the feeling that she and her family weren't those kinds of people and that's why she left and she's pulling her family here to the US.

In a lot of areas voting isn't easy. It's something you have to work to do. Why stand in the freezing November air worried you're gonna be late for work and lose your job if you're not excited? Why do it in the morning? Because maybe you're me in your 20s and don't have a car and you can actually make it to when the polls open in the morning but not the evening with how the schedules run.

Why go up to the election office and force them to take your mail in ballet after it was rejected twice because your signature "didn't match" if you're not excited?

Why finagle a time in your day when you can stand in the cold for an hour without your baby if you're not excited?

Why stand until you want to literally because the line was way longer than you thought it was and you didn't bring a chair this time if you're not excited?

All this happened to me over the course of me voting in my adult life. This doesn't count how voting locations constantly move on me for reasons unknown. It's not that the voting location moved. For some reason I was just assigned a different location. The times where I've been given the run around about where I should vote. The times where I tried to vote, but whoops all the machines are broken and I decided that I didn't want to wait for a repair which could take hours.

Voting is hard. It can be a breezy affair, but I've never experienced that in presidential elections or midterms, only really in special state elections or pure local elections. The system is definitely rigged against you and you have to ask yourself if it's worth fighting. Is denying my kid's time with me worth this? Is enduring this strain on my body worth this? Is the mental energy when I'm tired from work worth this? I get what you'd say no even if I always say yes