memfree

Humans are social animals, so while you might cut the 30 minutes down to 10 (depending on work environment), questions will continue. Questions are attempts to be friendly and general conversation will rarely end after just 2 minutes per day.

Perhaps you can think of those interactions as personality development training exercises. You’d be learning a new skill. Learn to smile and nod. Take a moment to weigh if a question truly is intrusive or just a conversation opener. Example: “So, did you grow up around here? Where are your folks from?” Conversational. Perhaps you have a deep trauma about escaping an abusive dad, but they didn’t ask that and aren’t ready to hear about it.

If a person has any interest in dating/marriage/pair-bonding, they should consider what they can offer a potential partner, and being able to socialize is one of the first things that will be on display.

Let this be a reminder to all called to jury duty (grand or otherwise) that you do not have to convict.

Reid was arrested in July for allegedly resisting attempts to restrain her after she refused to back away from ICE officers who were conducting arrests outside the D.C. Jail. In the process, they said, an FBI agent received scrapes to the back of her hand.

and:

Reid’s attorneys, assistant federal public defenders Tezira Abe and Eugene Ohm, say she was arrested by officers who didn’t want to be filmed. Video evidence presented during a preliminary hearing captured an ICE officer telling Reid during her arrest, “You should have just stayed home and minded your business.”

Lady is trying to film. Legal. An agent gets scrapes while trying to stop her. Lady is charged with “an enhanced felony version of an assault charge that requires inflicting bodily injury on a federal officer and carries up to eight years in prison.”

Say NO.

I’d forgotten that Bugsy Malone was fictional version of Bugs Moran (and Al Capone and all).

We used to lock up the mentally ill and disabled in state run institutions. They were generally horrible (see One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest). Reagan shut them down and homelessness on the streets surged. His government also cut federal assistance to local governments by 60%. The country never tried to find solutions and the issues never got better.

The police in D.C. are not there to fix homelessness or crime. They are there because fascists need brute troops to intimidate the populace and keep people from ‘disorderly conduct’ like protesting or demanding their rights.

You hit some of the first that came to mind. I’d also include Terms of Endearment, I’ll Cry Tomorrow, Postcards From the Edge… do Snow White and Cinderella count?

We didn’t ‘go’ places. We just wandered around. Not quite this long ago, but like this (source):

This is equivalent to your parents saying "you may only talk to people at school

You’ve got my point backwards. I’m saying kids would be better prepared for life if they talked to people, and particularly if they talked to people they don’t particularly care about rather than only swapping phone memes with kids they already know. Also, no one is saying there should be a complete ban on phones. The article simply suggests keeping the bedroom screen-free (better for sleep, studying, etc.). I went further to point out that as we’ve become more ‘social’ on phones we’re less social in society.

First bit: Why do we as a country (speaking from the U.S.) allow police to assualt the citizenry? Why aren’t we all in our town halls demanding the removal of any cops who handcuff kids, tackle people who don’t speak English, or fire guns at anyone who isn’t at that moment attacking someone? The police should be under our control by our consent. We elect their bosses if not the sheriffs themselves. Why aren’t we showing up in numbers in person to demand better?

Second bit: I know there are still some communities where kids can ride their bikes without fear because the parents still know everyone on the block. They might not like all the neighbors, but they know them and aren’t calling the cops on them. The bad part of that is a distrust of outsiders and unwillingness to accept anything different. Humans fall into us/them thinking too easily. As far as I have heard/read/seen, the best way to mitigate that is first-hand exposure to the ‘other’ because people tend to be better than whatever sterotype someone worries about. Reminiscing here: I remember visiting my grandparents and having them walk me into various houses on the block to chat with neighbors. It never occurred to me as a bored child that this was socially incorporating me into an insular community that might have been sucpsious of a strange kid biking around the same streets over and over if they didn’t know I belonged there.

That said, I don’t understand how the kids like me who grew up running wild wherever we wanted became parents who didn’t allow any roaming, and who’s kids then became adults that will call the cops before asking the neighbors. Maybe we move too often. Maybe we fear litigation. Mostly, I suspect, we work too many hours for not enough money such that adults don’t have the energy to form old-style communities where people banded together (both for good and bad), and instead everyone only bitches online just as I am doing right now.

I understand that it is harder to bond to someone who isn’t immediately digitally available. I understand that "kids these days! " do their social stuff online, but at the same time, they seem to have largely lost all skill at interacting with real humans of slight or no aquaintence.

It is easy to make sarcastic comments on your phone about how stupid this or that is. The sterotypical basement dweller can snark all day. What takes social skill is actively engaging with people you don’t care about and finding common ground.

Yes, digital people track some of this on facebook and such, but in real life: in which community groups do they participate? Do they know what their neighbors do and what they like beyond snapshots of events? That is: yeah, they saw that pic of that cookout, but did they know that he volunteer teaches English as a second language Tuesday and Thursday at the library? When was the last time they went into a neighbor’s home (or had one visit theirs) to share a cup of coffee and complain about that road that needs fixing and who to push about it?

Edited to replace ‘you’ with ‘they’ so there’d be no confusion that I mean multiple ‘you’ readers rather than a single person.

As an old fart who witnessed social gatherings for decades, it looks like social stunting comes from smartphones rather than their absence.

Somewhere in there, Ars should have noted that this does not mean literally ALL grants, but all federal grants as defined in 2 CFR 200.1 (which isn’t to say they won’t change that definition).

This you?

you vote with your money in a more efficient way than any election

If you look, I was the person explaining that per Doctorow collective action is good. You’re replying to a post where I said, “…or even vote Z, then together the difference will matter.” Maybe you meant to reply to someon else, or maybe you’re a sock puppet that forgot to change accounts.

If I may chime in, like Sundray, I am used to the author’s style, which preempts critics by acknowledging the difficulty before getting to the positive. He’s had enough people tell him ‘recycling plastic is a joke!’ to now start by saying, yes, I know, BUT you should still do it and then he’ll get to the positive. He’s not suggesting people are foolish for doing it, he’s simply letting the reader know that it ought to work better than it does and the failure is NOT on the citizenry, but on the deep pockets trying to escape blame. He wants you to know how they profit off the backs of the working class and he wants us to fight back together (and to keep recycling).

Boycotts work because boycotts are collective . That’s his point. If you get enough of society together to boycott X, or to call their government out on Y, or even vote Z, then together the difference will matter. What doesn’t matter is a bunch of people buying an item, while you are making your own private ‘boycott’. Personally, I ‘boycott’ youtube. Guess what? They don’t care. They have enough eyeballs that they don’t miss me at all.

P.S. I was happy that Paramount+ asks “why?” you cancel your subscription because I got to explain it was due to the 60 minutes settlement and firing Colbert… but I doubt they care that 1 person stopped giving them money over that.

This is correct. Web dev is told to make sure ads load before content. They don’t want users that don’t generate profits.

They used to limit the number of stations/outlets anyone could own. That limit ensured a multitude of ‘voices’ could be heard. That went away under Clinton. Before that they’d also enforced the more questionable Fairness Doctrine, but that died under Reagan.

Gomez further criticized the FCC for overstepping its authority in “intervening in employment matters reserved for other government entities with proper jurisdiction on these issues” by requiring Skydance commitments to not establish any DEI programs, which Carr derided as “invidious.” But Gomez countered that “this agency is undermining legitimate efforts to combat discrimination and expand opportunity” by meddling in private companies’ employment decisions.

That’s Fascism!

You can argue that requiring equal opportunity programs were also government overreach, but even a cursory look at the history of those programs shows they were done to combat a deep history of racism combined with the statistics and figures proving discrepencies. Equal opportunity programs were publicly debated and approved to solve a problem. This is being done without review or evidence at the whim of the administration.

I guess I just can’t hear “literacy gains” as anything but a postivie regardless of source; even (if not especially) if it is an ‘enemy’ population.

I am not confident I or most other Americans can always tell what is misinformation. A recent bout of AI generated ‘Am I the A-hole?’ post on reddit recently got a bunch of people angry (Meta would say, ‘highly engaged’) because enough of them though the stories might be true.

When the Fukishima power plant got hit by a tidal wave, I foolishly believed an ‘expert’ on TV that day who said the plant was designed so that lead shielding hoods would automatically cover the rods in the event of power loss. Well THAT didn’t happen. I no longer remember who the ‘expert’ was, so he could fool me again. Maybe he has.

I, too, know the trend of criminal U.S. administrations to tell the other side to tone it down and just go with the President. The current administration makes me more outraged than post-9/11 when we knew the hijackers were Saudis, we knew bin Laden was around Afghanistan/Pakistan, and we had a team of Nuclear inspectors WITHIN Iraq saying they’d found no evidence of such weapons, yet a few days before their official report was finished, Bush declares war on Iraq? With no exit strategy? When Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11?

Rather than suggesting we all calm down, or that true patriots back the President, I’m simply seeing the article’s point in asking people to stop following the top, say, 2% most divisive voices. It is a sad truth that the worst liars will get their followers to disbelieve Dr. Fauci such that he becomes divisive through no fault of his own, but he won’t hit the critical ‘worst’ list because he’s not spouting vitriol of his own.

As far as Bernie goes, there were a good number of Bernie backers at Trump rallies, so I honestly doubt that anyone but moneyed think tanks have much bad to say about him.