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  • 26 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: October 18th, 2023

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  • its up to a parent to deal with it

    What a nice cherry on top of the hypocrisy pie. The party of “personal responsibility” and “small government” is perfectly happy when government is used to regulate sexuality and help out the irresponsible parents that don’t want to spend time monitoring their children’s Internet usage. Now young teens are going to learn how to use VPNs or just find the shadier sites that don’t give a shit about U.S. state laws.

    Both of which would be adequately addressed by parents learning how to use the tools that are probably already built into their router.


  • I don’t think that’s quite accurate.

    The “understand it well enough to explain it to a professor” clause is carrying a lot of weight here - if that part is fulfilled, then yeah, you’re actually learning something.

    Unless of course, all of the professors are awful at their jobs too. Most of mine were pretty good at asking very pointed questions to figure out what you actually know, and could easily unmask a bullshit artist with a short conversation.





  • I think it’s because people think giving pure cash is thoughtless and basic.

    This idea needs to die. I’d rather have $10 cash that I can stash away to save up for something that I actually want than a $25 gift card that locks me in to a single store.

    I’m at a stage in my life where I can generally buy little things when I want to. But my wife and I don’t make enough to regularly drop hundreds or thousands of dollars on non-essentials, and my other family members can’t do more than $25 or maybe $50 for birthdays or Christmas.

    It took me years to convince my parents and wife to just give me cash. When I finally did, it enabled me to save up for a $1k guitar over several years.

    I’d much rather have one awesome gift every 5 years than a steady stream of $35 gift certificates to various stores and restaurants.

    Not giving someone what they’re actually asking for is far less thoughtful than cash.



  • Cognitively and logically, I understand.

    But emotionally, it’s just another one of those little reminders of the passage of time that hits unexpectedly hard.

    I think it’s because my only memories of it are from when I was young. Quake 3 Arena was released almost a year before the PS2, but I’ve never really stopped playing it, and still sometimes get in-person LAN parties together to play it. It feels just as old as I am, and I associate it with good memories from every age.

    But I haven’t touched or even thought about a PS2 in decades. So when it suddenly jumps to the front of my mind, only old memories come with it. Then you start to think about the friends you played it with, and everything that’s happened to you all between them and now. Kids, marriages, divorces, houses, bankruptcies, jobs earned and lost, deaths, etc… Some are doing great, some not so great, but most you just don’t know because you’ve lost contact.

    So yeah, it seems silly on its face, but sometimes random thing just pull you into the past unexpectedly, putting the present and the path between them both in stark contrast. This just happened to be one for me this time.