Mom: “Honey, try reading a book or something for once. You’re almost about to graduate from high school and you’ve literally never read a book to completion in your entire life. Actually, I’m going to say only 1 hour of cell phone time a night until you finish a book of your choosing.”
I’m 30+ and, granted, I haven’t given my daughter a cellphone, and I think well of parents who are careful about how their children use technology.
It’s a meme. It’s not super clear, but it’s memorable.
One belief I’m trying to express with this meme is that most laws created “to protect the children” are not really about protecting children. I know that’s a hot take (/s). For example, my state has recently said “to protect the children, let’s require all adults to upload their government ID before posting on any website”, and the skeptical part of me thinks that’s not really about the kids.
I think the issue here encompasses several factors: 1) you seem to be conflating the kind of moral panic driven legislation which has historically always existed with a silencing tactic aimed at dismissing youth-driven cultural criticism and 2) this meme screams low hanging fruit, appealing to the emotions of young people for whom having their phone taken away is like torture while also engaging in the, at the moment, very popular denigration of older Americans as being out of touch and dismissive of continuously worsening societal issues. Point 1 is understandable, as criticizing new things as being a corrupting influence on young people is as old as dirt, as is the propensity for the powers that be to dismiss cultural and material criticisms of the worsening state of peoples’ lives in hard times. And while they may exist as a part of a shared rhetorical and ideological ecosystem, their relationship is too complex to be purely causal, as your meme seems to be suggesting.
Just to give you a bit of a morale boost: every generation thinks they’re the last ans that everything is about to go to shit. In the end that never really happens.
Yes, a lot of right wing politicians have beek elected, also all previous ones have failed and got kicked out. For the Netherlands I predict the government will fall within a year as it typically tends to do when the leaders fuck up and this guy will likely fuck up soon enough.
Basically, this too shall pass.
Climate change is indeed a big cloud mainly because it will take centuries to fix even if we’re going to fully dedicate ourselves to fixing it, which right now we are not. On the other end I finally hear about actual progress with fusion which, if true, may be the key to solving climate change within a century, solving it to acceptable levels within decades, if the will is there.
Point is: things look bleak, but they always do. Back during the cold war it literally was same shit, different day. Yet, the world moved forward and things slowly improved.
Thanks, I guess part of being an adult is just being more and more indifferent to the gradual decline of the world so that the crippling dread does not consume you.
Explains why my parents are still asking for grandkids.
with age comes the perspective of distance. Everything is in cycles but has a backlash to center and beyond. It’s not that bad
children are the hope for the future. They’re the reason we act to improve things. They’re the ones who will both benefit from a better world as well as help create it in ways we can’t imagine. Children today are better off in so many ways, and future children will be even more so.
Your take on climate change makes me more worried. Sure, I will probably be fine, but how many innocent people around the world will die until we’ve done enough to see the climate improving?
How horrible is the world going to be to inhabit if the Gulf Stream collapses? Or other major climate disruptions occur?
I don’t doubt the human race will survive, but why do we have to experience the pain before committing to fixing the problem?
Things often get a whole lot worse before they get better. People thought things were on the brink of turning to shit in the 1930s, and then we had a world war for 6 years. Tens of millions of people died, countless more were displaced, cities were leveled, and history was lost.
I admire your optimism, but I can’t ignore that the world and even my country specifically look more and more like a powder keg with every passing day. I’m terrified that we can’t get to “fine” again without first suffering through an extremely dangerous period of time, and there’s no guarantee that any of us will be “fine” during that time.
No things wont be fine. At least for me and many others anyway.
I’m sorry you can’t see that yet.
There is an underclass of angry, often white, men who are frustrated at their life and instead of directing their rage at the capitalist system, which is responsible for the position they are in, they’ve been told immigrants, socialism, feminism, LGBTQIA+ and brown people are the problem.
They are now organising to make their fictional narrative reality and I will be crushed when this happens along with millions of others, like you, who thought this could never happen again.
The tragedy is that those same men who think they’ll be empowered by fascists will be swept aside the moment they are no longer useful. They are victims to an extent too, just that they will have enacted violence and terror while being wrong.
If Modi, Trump, La Pen, Orban aren’t elected/reelected perhaps I’d change my view but I don’t have good reasons for thinking those things won’t happen.
If you believe that if those people are elected and it won’t lead to more fascism then I’m not sure what to say.
If they ever secure power my fate is basically sealed. I’ve accepted that. It’s not slippery slope to be clear eyed about reality.
Well, I’m not sure which out-group you’re a part of to conclude this. I don’t think things are that bleak. For most of the out-groups being targeted, a coalition exists in the urban areas where they’ll at least be tolerated. A bastion of progressives or people with common identities to rally around. It’s hard to imagine places like NYC, LA, etc. otherwise.
But this is why I hate politics. Everyone who organizes, screws around with power. I don’t believe there’s any “side” that will stand with me in a time of need, or any group to rally around. The only people who will stand for my interests is myself and the few people I can persuade. If you’re this alone, the only thing you can really do is try not draw attention. Don’t even bother voting.
every generation thinks they’re the last ans that everything is about to go to shit. In the end that never really happens
About 3.76% of the worlds population died due to WWII, or about 300MM people if scaled to today. For those people, the end really did happen.
With NATO being threatened by a malicious US presidential candidate, along with Putin getting express approval to go ape by the same, I’m actually quite worried WWIII is more possible than ever in my adult life (I was only a child during the cold war).
Nuclear war is no closer now than it was during the cold war. Everything then was on a hair trigger. Now it’ll just take a psychopath in charge, and no one willing to ignore the order in the command structure
Half of the “artisan” burger chains in my city are marginally better than a fast-food chain. One, maybe two of them make burgers so good that they’re worth the occasional splurge.
If you want to stay truly legit, buy used physical releases. They cost less money and you could support your local record store. Movies and music on a home NAS + Plex Server are god tier.
That’s like saying Huckleberry Finn doesn’t exist. Just because it’s made-up doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. It exists as a concept which billions of people understand.
The Sun’s position on the ecliptic at the vernal equinox is not a “concept”, it’s a physical reality, recognised by the International Astronomical Union.
And the astrology signs exist as a concept as recognized by thousands of years of human history dating back to Babylonia 2 BCE. Yes we understand that they’re likely completely bogus, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t exist.
Disagree on the semantics. Physical realities are concepts as well. “Energy”, despite being an extremely useful physical measurement, is an abstract concept. “Physical realities” and “concepts” are not mutually exclusive nor antonymous words.
In this case, the Aries/vernal point is a concept used to define coordinate systems using physical measures from Earth.
I think it is pretty clear in the context of the joke that they weren’t saying the concept doesn’t exist they were saying the attributes of the concept doesn’t exist.
Greenland has little to no economy because it has a population less than 60 000. And they still have to fly the ice to the middle east from Greenland which is hardly climate friendly.
Cause vs correlation, and untrue. There is no economy because there is only fish. The population dwindles because of immigration. As for flying the ice, that does not happen. Read the link.
Greenland’s per capita GDP is 13th in the world. They’re doing fine. Greenland has also always had a small population. It’s hardly fair to call it dwindling, when it’s about double today what it was in the 60s. Also a large part of the emigration is because the choices for higher education are very limited. Not because of a lack of industry or employment. As there is more than enough mining, fishing and tourism to sustain a population of 57000.
As for shipping the ice, I’m sure you aren’t going to try to tell me that keeping ice refrigerated from nuuk to Dubai as well as the extra fuel used to transport (ships displace more water when they have cargo) have less of a carbon footprint than simply freezing water in Dubai.
Hey are you a cigarette? cuz baby you’re subsidized as fuck and heavily marketed to children and you make me hack up a fuckin lung every time I smell you
Only do it if it’s supposed to be part of the wedding. Otherwise, don’t do it. It would be very disruptive and distracting and could make an otherwise beautiful moment very awkward. And it’d be something the bride and groom would have to remember for the rest of their lives every time they put on their rings.
Weddings have too much going on for anyone to keep track. It’s not a concert. No one is checking for tickets. After the wedding, receptions have assigned seating. But by then, you’d be long gone and planning the next Tolkiened wedding.
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