Badly behaved kids I am more understanding of now (at least the younger ones). But there are defintely easy ways out of problems some parents take that are not good for children.
Yeah, with a kid I still judge. I'd rather see kids running around and playing and being kids in public than on a tablet. Even grocery shopping I see toddlers on tablets sitting in the cart.
My son has been actively involved with meal planning since he as a a year and a half old. "What type of bread today? What type of fruit in your yogurt tomorrow?"
I won't judge kid's behavior, so long as they are acting like kids. Sometimes that means they act out, that is normal.
But, damnit, let them live in the real world and not just try to distract them with shiny things all the time.
I remember going to restaurants in the 90s and early 2000s and kids would be running around playing with each other between tables. That is kids being kids, and it is perfectly acceptable (heck desirable!)
The only thing I'll add is that you never know what people are going through. Both of my children have pretty intense ADHD, and when I went through my divorce I definitely leaned into too much screen time for a while. It wasn't permanent though, and I managed to get back closer to the ideal you speak of (but as a single parent, it took a lot of processing of guilt to find a balance that worked).
I've decided it's safer to just never judge, that parent you see pushing the toddler around in the cart might indeed be a terrible parent, or they might be going through grief and at their breaking point.
> I've decided it's safer to just never judge, that parent you see pushing the toddler around in the cart might indeed be a terrible parent, or they might be going through grief and at their breaking point.
Agreed, I should have clarified that I'm speaking more about friends and family, people's whose situation can be spoken to directly.
I have friends with neurotypical kids who still hand the kids tablets at restaurants instead of actually teaching the kid how to take turns in a conversation, or how to actually go through a menu and order!
Like I get it, it is tiring, but we all signed for the work when we chose to have kids. (At least in my social circle where kids are very well planned for in advance).
Thanks for the clarification, I see where you are coming from and definitely agree it's a real problem.
I'm proud to say for myself that devices never leave the home now (and mine stays in my pocket except for explicit communication needs), and we are able to fully connect on road trips, dinners, and other outings. It's freeing, and I always tell the kids, that being device free means we will actually remember these moments.
I've been detained by police under suspicion of "kidnapping" for taking my kid to the park (my kid is a different "race" as me so it was "suspicious"). On another occasion my kid was interrogated because they were walking home from school on our own property, and someone wondered "why they were alone."
On the other hand, no one has ever called the police on me for handing the kid a tablet and melting their brain inside.
When I was a kid either of those people would be practically thrown in a loony bin for saying anything, let alone taken serious by the authorities. Now the CPS investigates almost every accusation and is legally barred from even telling you who made it, so these anonymous shitstains can exercise their cowardice behind a curtain as much as they like with no risk to themselves but every risk to you.
It's difficult to let them live in the real world not because some evil guy with a white van is waiting to offer "free candy" but that the evil person in a white van is actually the Karen who sees a kid on the street or the park as an inconvenience for her or an unacceptable risk and they can be the coward they are and make an anonymous complaint and cause weeks of harassments by CPS with the cell phone they have next to them at the ready wherever they might see a child.
> I've been detained by police under suspicion of "kidnapping" for taking my kid to the park (my kid is a different "race" as me so it was "suspicious"). On another occasion my kid was interrogated because they were walking home from school on our own property, and someone wondered "why they were alone."
And this is why I pay an arm and a leg to live in Seattle.
Kids here are running around outside playing soccer in the streets with parents watching guard for cars at the ends of the block.
Mixed race is not even noteworthy here.
Kids walk to/from school (up to a mile) all the time. Huge groups of kids walk together every day.
The reason isn't because it is more difficult or people enjoy having kids less (like the parent). Its because children used to be a way to provide security for your family and community. More hands to help or sent off to earn money younger for example.
Now with smaller family units and less community interaction they represent a risk to security, mainly financially.
Children still provide security for the family and community, it's just that it's done in a way where the people creating the benefit and the people realizing it are almost entirely different. This is due to the way social security works. Creating a tragedy of the commons where everyone wants more kids but no one wants to be the sucker that has them (from the financial viewpoint, obviously not from others). Obviously this sort of communism where society takes the profits in form of social security but provides almost nil (except some pittances in property taxes for school) for the investment creates a collapsing system.
Having children for yourself provides more security for all the other families but barely anymore for your own. Meanwhile you bear most the costs and everyone else bears very little. So the incentives are totally reversed, and even worse the coupling between investment in children and payoff is cut which means the people in the best position to help their kids be successful are the least incentivized to do so.
Well, as long as you bomb countries on the other side of the world. Someone else (the long suffering US allies) can deal with all the displaced peoples then.
That being said, I was apparently also under the impression of outdated or just plain wrong information.
While the report I listed mentions the sudden loss of decentralized generation as starting point of the blackout, and also specifically mentions small-scale rooftop PV, it says that the cause for that sudden synchronized drop-off is actually unknown.
You can't get an "informed opinion" by reading crap like that report.
The Spanish systems have systematic design failures for stability and electricity market design. Working out the political failures that led to the design failures is much harder.
Only those working closely in that profession have any knowledge of the underlying causes.
Most everyone else (including this comment) is different levels of ignorance and cluelessness.
Edit E.g. Crap quote from the report "but no significant oscillations with
amplitudes above 20 mHz". The rest of it is about that level from what I could tell.
> Only those working closely in that profession have any knowledge of the underlying causes.
This report is literally from the ENTSO-E which is the main regulatory body for the grid in Europe.
> Crap quote from the report "but no significant oscillations with amplitudes above 20 mHz".
What is the "crap" about that?
An amplitude can still be measured in Hz, if you are looking at oscillating frequency deviations, if that is what you mean.
Microsoft are in a tough spot (as far as Xbox hardware goes at least). PlayStation is selling much better on the console side, and Valve with the Steam install base has a good shot at making a non-Windows OS a serious platform for gaming.
Their hand was forced in the end. They have to consolidate PC and Xbox users to compete.
The idea of a machine with a locked down mode that can boot legacy Xbox titles and probably run competitive games with very little chance for cheating is interesting. But given Microsoft's track record with consumer devices I await to be convinced.
Valve should be worried if they do turn out something good, maybe this will mean the Steam machines are pushed more aggressively price wise. We can hope...
I thought Vance was the actual isolationist America first guy? Not Trump kind who's opinion changes based which authoritarian he last had a phone call with.
In this specific case maybe Vance is least worst option.
Preventing new human generated text from being used by AI firms (without consent) seems like a valid strategy.
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