• 16 Posts
  • 305 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • When my kid started out using the internet, it was over-the-shoulder supervision to start out, then slowly dropping to in-the-room supervision (the PC in the living room), and progressively less over time, with the clearly stated proviso that I would occasionally be glancing over history just to make sure he wasn’t getting caught up in anything horrible, but that I wouldn’t be going into any kind of detail. At 13, he got his own PC in his room, and I left him to it.

    I’m a very firm believer that you don’t attempt technical solutions to administrative problems. Privacy is important and monitoring is shit. You equip your kid with the tools and the supervised-experience to make good decisions, and once they can balance by themselves you let go of the bike.

    Teach them to do dangerous things safely, that’s parenting in a nutshell.

    (actually to clear up a misconception: to teach a kid to ride a bike, you hold the shoulders, not the bicycle. With the extra feedback they can actually compensate and learn to balance; if you hold the bike itself it just weirdly fights them and their cerebellum never gets it)





  • That’s not the question.

    The question should be what choice does Harris have, except to stop Israel?

    If (as I strongly agree) trump is the worst human on the planet who will cause irreparable damage to :gestures wildly: fucking everything, then why doesn’t his opponent have the responsibility to do whatever the hell it takes, within the law to keep him out of power?

    Especially as in this instance his opponent is currently sworn to be responsible for the ongoing welfare of the nation.

    Imagine being so fucking intent on enabling genocide half a planet away that you’d rather let your own country fall into the hands of Camacho Harkonnen rather than attract progressive voters.















  • As for helping - I think that once they get far enough down the path, there’s probably not much you can do for them. But compassion is always a good thing no matter who you spend it on.

    As is sparing a thought for the poorly-socialised, and for the lack of opportunities people have to just hang out in any kind of casual social setting, if you’re not already part of a friend group.

    Someone works a shit job in a dingy office with three people they hate and no general public flowing through, they’re exhausted at the end of the day and even if they had a place to go they just want to go home. Weekends are for laundry and chores and recovering from the week - and besides, what are they going to do, head to some bar and spend all their money drinking alone, just getting aloner?

    Most of the opportunities out there rely on having either a pre-existing set of people to hang out with, or enough acquired charisma that they wouldn’t be in that situation in the first place.

    Our society really needs to lower the barrier to entry for this stuff, but I have no idea how you’d go about that.