It’s also the death of even the pretense of the American dream. Think about it. All pricing goes algorithmic, for all goods and services. Every company figures out the absolute maximum you can pay and charges accordingly.

What does this do in aggregate? It means that every raise you will ever get during your career is now immediately consumed by rising prices. This produces an economy where there is literally no point at all to advancing your career, gaining new skills, or bettering yourself. Why go to college or trade school, if the extra money you earn is just going to be consumed by companies charging your more for the same products? Why should anyone do anything but simply find the most tolerable minimum wage job they can, and simply work it until they die of old age? If all pricing is algorithmic, anything you do to improve your personal financial situation will be immediately hoovered up by the big conglomerates.

Most malls ban unaccompanied minors. And most places where kids used to hang out similarly discourage their presence. The death of third places is a well-documented phenomenon, one that goes back decades before anyone dreamed of social media. And while kids have been forming their own communities since the dawn of time, kids haven’t been raised in suburban hellscapes since the dawn of time. If you can’t drive. If there’s no way to your neighorhood except a giant highway that’s impossible to bike on, how in the hell are kids supposed to meet up with each other in person? Digital technologies are really the only way kids have to socialize nowadays. We’ve taken everything else from them.

These laws are written deliberately broad to enable mass censorship. They don’t just ban sexual material, but use vague statements like “objectionable material.” Actual real-world news is being censored and kept from the eyes of teenagers. Pretty much anything on the Gaza war is considered objectionable material and inappropriate for children to learn about.

Nah. It’s not an age issue. It’s a social media issue. This stuff is bad for everyone. If you want to protect kids from the dangers of social media, start regulating how social media works for everyone. Why is it ok to start poisoning someone’s mind the minute they turn 18?

Yes. The societal level solution is the parents of the society choosing to do their jobs.

And the suicide rate of queer and other marginalized kids will skyrocket. What’s a few thousand dead kids in the name of protecting the children, right?

No you ass. What do you want, for the parents to hover over their kids 24/7? There’s is no realistic way even the most well-intentioned parent could ever keep their kids off this stuff.

My parents had a two hour per day limit on using the computer. The one exception was if we were using it to do homework.

You’re just not very imaginative.

Where are children supposed to meet and socialize? We already took away all their in-person spaces.

Exactly. The whole point of a ghost gun is that it’s untraceable. You made it yourself; they can’t track it so some purchase record. The way you use a ghost gun is you make it, use it, and then just leave it at the crime scene. You make sure you never touch the thing with bare hands, so there are no prints on it. If you made one ghost gun, you can make another. They’re easily replaceable. No need to keep it with you after the crime.

It’s important to keep in mind that Luigi is exactly the type of person that the police would try to pin this on. It’s so easy to see how it could happen. The NYPD had a high profile murder of a wealthy CEO to deal with. The NYPD leaders had politicians and corporate leaders breathing down their necks, demanding this case be solved immediately. And at the same time, the suspect seemingly made a perfectly planned getaway and had disappeared. This kind of thing has happened countless times in history. Have a high profile case that simply must be solved? Find some undesirable to pin it on. Ideally this is someone who is already dead, maybe someone who recently killed themselves. You don’t have to prove guilty beyond a reasonable doubt if you blame the crime on a corpse. But if a suitable dead person isn’t available, then a living person can do in a pinch.

If you want to pin a crime on someone, you find someone who resembles the suspect and also isn’t someone with a lot of social respect or clout. Homeless people are classic targets. And Luigi was a queer kid, out of contact with his family for months, living in a youth hostel. He is the exact type of person the NYPD would choose if they were looking for someone to pin this on. I’m sure they would try to pin it on a black person if they could, but the person they chose had to at least have some visual resemblance to the person on the security footage.

Truthfully, to ensure I receive better treatment.

Assuming you’re a man, I think we should make you take a pregnancy test every time you go to the doctor. After all, for all the doc knows, you could be a trans guy. So if it’s all about just covering all your basis, pay up for your pregnancy test sir!

Then why don’t they ask this question for all men? Why don’t they ask every man that walks in if they’re pregnant? If the justification is, “we must ask because the risk is always there, no matter how small,” then why would you dismiss the risk that the man that walks in is actually a trans man that happens to be pregnant?

If this was only about trying to cover all of your bases, everyone would be asked if they are pregnant, regardless of gender.

The walking stick was an afternoon project. Just carve, sand, and stain. The staff was a lot harder, specifically the tines that wind around the crystal. I made the staff off and on for several months. I built the tines up by cutting out thin strips of wood. Then I glued them together, laminating the tines up one layer at a time. Once they’re built up, I carved them into a smooth shape and filled in cracks in the epoxy. The amethyst is affixed into the socket I carved with epoxy as well.

I could have made the staff faster if I was really pushing it out. But just the time to glue it up would still require about 2 week to make.

Nah, that’s bogus. It’s a private company, they can do what they want. They could have absolutely given OP the 5/5 rating, and just had them sign something saying that they were content with the bonus appropriate to a 4/5 rating. No one would have had to receive a penny less.

Thanks! Here’s an example. That’s me on the left, my husband on the right.

I made both that walking stick and wizard staff from old Christmas trees. And a close up view of the staff:

Exactly. I tell people, “you can ignore politics, but politics won’t ignore you.”

When I can, I get a real tree. After Christmas, I trim all the leaves and branches off the trunk and put those in the municipal compost bin. I then put the trunk in storage and let it dry out for a year or two. Once dry, I’ll carve them into things like walking sticks, wizard staffs, etc.

One fun version of this. I once read a fanfiction that included a character with an interesting trait. They were cursed to be completely, hopelessly, comically lost. They get lost going to the bathroom in their own home. They end up hundreds or thousands of miles from where they intend to be.

But the tradeoff is, if there is ever somewhere they actually really need to be, they will be there every time. A loved one about to get hit by a bus? By random chance, the character would just happen to be wandering at the right place and time to intervene. Their kid has an important school play they need to attend? They’ll by dumb luck find their way to the auditorium. They live a life completely unable to get to where they want to go, but in turn they will always be where they need to be.