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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • If the whole point of dumping Biden is that he couldn’t win,

    That was certainly a part of it, but think about why everyone was saying that. He really is old and it is abundantly clear he is struggling every day to remember and carry out basic tasks. Additionally, think about this: What would happen if Biden had gotten sick from the flu or something a few weeks before the election and died (which isn’t that far-fetched)? We’d have no time to mount another candidate and get them the national coverage needed to sway those swing voters. Biden stepping down is a good thing, both for his own health and to significantly reduce the risk of a freak incident occurring the closer we get to election day.

    I get it, Kamala isn’t an excellent choice, but she already has national name recognition and is already experienced at that level. Most polls conducted in June and early July had her on almost even footing with Biden’s numbers, with a couple giving her an edge and some showing her slightly behind. However, those polls were conducted before a media blitz and country touring kicks off. I can easily see those numbers only increasing as her campaign’s momentum builds. Biden was already predicted to win the electoral college, and I suspect the same will occur with Kamala. I hope I’m right.

    And lastly, I agree, we desperately need to get rid of First-past-the-post voting and move to Ranked Choice Voting. The current status quo of the two-party system has crippled our government for far, far too long. Luckily, more and more states have looked to switching to that system (with some already adopting it). Hopefully, that trend continues into the future.




  • Makes sense, its user base is extremely small and the tech still has a ways to go before it’s more accessible and practical. In other words, the headset needs to much lighter, smaller, and more comfortable in addition to being much cheaper. I think their target for their next iterations should at $1500 or less. In order to do all of those things, tech needs to progress further and batteries need to improve, which who knows how long that’ll be before we get something better than lithium ion in terms of power density.














  • I don’t disagree. My comment was saying a healthier balance is what I would prefer when my kids are a bit older. That article fails to be well-rounded and only focuses on proving their hypothesis versus presenting data in an objective manner. For example:

    The answer lies in expectations. Parents today receive constant messaging that in order to be “good parents”, they must always keep their children safe. And it is widely believed that the world is no longer a safe place for children to play in. Yet statistics show that it has never been a safer time to be a child. Injury-related deaths are at an all-time low in most Western nations. In the US, deaths from unintentional injuries fell by 73% for boys and 85% for girls between 1973 and 2010. This misperception of risk creates the parental paradox.

    Yet just a bit earlier in the article, she mentions this:

    Every successive generation of children since the 1970s has seen their outdoor play and freedom shrink. Time use data show that children’s leisure time has gone down, particularly time spent in unstructured outdoor play, while time spent in academic and screen-based activities has increased. Between 1975 and 2015, outdoor play among UK children decreased by 29.4%, while screen-based activities increased by 22.4%. In the U.S., only 16% of children in 1997 played outdoors every day. By 2003—just six years later—that dropped even further to 10%.

    So how can they rule out that it’s safer now because the amount of kids engaging in unsupervised, dangerous/risky activities is the lowest it’s ever been? (As a side note: In the US, I think she also ignores the very real financial problems with serious injuries. A medical bill for a broken bone or other serious injury can cost some families tens of thousands of dollars without insurance. Back in the 60s/70s and earlier, medical bills were way, way more affordable than now.)

    There are other problems, as well. She seems to only focus on “intensive parenting” and showing that structured activities are a negative thing. Whereas articles like this, https://parenthetical.wisc.edu/2017/01/23/acing-afterschool-making-extracurricular-activities-work-for-your-teen/ , argue that structured activities can be beneficial, too. Later near the end she does discuss simply prioritizing it versus going all in, but the way it’s presented throughout the rest of the article makes it seem like structured activities are entirely a negative thing and unsupervised, unstructured activities is the best way for kids to thrive.

    Anyway, I’m an advocate for simply striking a healthy balance between the two: Don’t overburden your kids with supervised, structured activities, and don’t let them become feral by completely going hands-off with their free time. In other words, gently guide, mentor, and support them. :)


  • Haha, same here, but ours were packed dirt trails with dirt and wood ramps in the woods (our neighborhood had a large forested area nearby). Fun stuff, and definitely some very fond memories.

    But, I was definitely one of the kids that broke their leg (my femur) and had to get 4 steel pins that stuck out of my skin to set the bone while it healed for about 3 months before getting a regular cast for the rest of the healing. It was pure agony, the entire healing and physical rehab recovery process took almost a year (my school even sent an in-home tutor to my house for a couple of hours a day since I had to stay at home for several months). I’d never want anyone to go through that, particularly my kids.

    That being said, I do think it’s important for kids to have a degree of privacy and autonomy, I just don’t think I’d be kosher with the amount of unsupervised freedom that I had as a kid (my kids are still <5, so I have some time before they’re semi-free range animals).