That 10k he is paying is on top of taxes for Medicare and Medicaid.

We are already paying taxes to cover the old and the sickest, plus paying for our own care and the profits of the for-profit system.

Kids seem so much nicer than when I was a kid. My kids' friends would sit and talk to me, when I went to get them from school I would get random kids saying stuff like "you are x's mom? They are so cool!" "Your outfit is pretty!" I would never, ever have said that to a mom at school.

I don't just think they are not worse, I think they are better than we were.

My friend says - if you don't like unsweetened baker's chocolate you don't like chocolate.

I'm not sure about this when it comes to heroin. I've tried it and it was meh, but others try it feel like they have never before felt ok. And pot too I can't find the high at all, it feels yucky but so many people love it and feel high on it, so in some ways there are "two kinds of people in the world" situations.

I do agree that anyone can become an addict if they try hard enough, though. Coffee for me, caffeine.

I don't get that - if a mod gets mad about downvotes they can hide them. They did that on the old NSFW, maybe it has to be instance-wide?

It's not something that would ever have occurred to me. I suppose if the Cocktails was being brigaded by abolitionists, or Hair getting brigaded by salty bald guys or something I'd be touchy, but overall I've found Lemmy to be pretty chill, so it hasn't come up.

Charitably, maybe she just couldn't read it?

Oh nevermind, she had to put her foot right in her mouth. What about "what have you done for the least of these?" is unclear?

Dude (ma'am?) I had kids in the 90s and 2000s and was never a helicopter parent and though I do agree with your damned if you do, damned if you don't, the world is judgemental as fuck, that over-involved parenting style is not harmless either. My kids were in a group of kids at school and even in HIGHSCHOOL some of those parents tracked their kids everywhere they went. It's a level of surveillance I cannot imagine imposing. But it wasn't all the kids ever. The surveilled kids did not do well adjusting to freedom, and didn't trust their parents much. I don't think it hurts little kids as much as long as you have a plan to build their independence before high school, which these parents did not.

It is true here that elementary school won't let kids be walkers now without an adult or teenage sibling to walk with them at dismissal. You can arrange a walk-pooling group but it has to have a grownup. From the bus they don't though, can just walk home.

The kids across the street from us still run in the yard by themselves and run up the street to visit their friends, there are I'd say 8 year olds riding bikes alone & in groups, we do not live in an HOA or gated anything just in a neighborhood in the city. Though I obviously don't know if the bike kids are air-tagged or something, they look like when I was little just fewer of them now.

I do have kids, and was a kid, and agree, and the world is so much safer than when I was running around. My mom taught us water safety and made us do swimming lessons younger than that kid, let us walk down the block or up to the corner store past the apartments, made us walk to school through the neighborhood a couple miles, and again, all this in a more dangerous city than it is now.

I was a little more involved, didn't let mine walk to the shop when little as it involved crossing a bigger road, and also didn't leave them unsupervised around a pool or the beach. And bodies of freshwater here have alligators so that's a no for all kids. But some kids can swim and do know how to be safe around water, and aren't idiots.

My husband moved around a lot growing up, and talks about wandering for miles in Indonesia when he was 6. Seeing the water buffalo, the farmers, eventually making it to the town.

And my kids, when they went to college, said they ended up glad I was, by their standards, lasseiz-faire, because they saw what happened to sheltered kids who were suddenly free.

Hopefully she isn't in trouble, kids haven't changed that much. It's good for them to explore.

Bistek in Spanish for Beefsteak here always makes me laugh.

Oh but Fontaines DC, Leon Bridges, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, Waxahatchee and Big Thief and Idles and Wunderhorse and Doechii, Charley Crockett, Jason Isbell, Steve Lacey, there is such an abundance of very good music, we go to concerts and see live bands and really, there is so much great music being made. And I'm older than 50, lol. AI 'art' of any sort can rot in hell, yeah.

Yeah that will improve but really, for now, one of you should get up early and one sleep in, wake the other one up as you are leaving for work, in the evening morning person go to bed & let evening person them handle putting the baby down to sleep. Even one more hour of sleep helps so much.

Also I never spooned food into any of them, nursed a couple years but didn't give baby food just things they could eat themselves, pieces of food, until they were just eating food no nursing. Baths I often just took them in the shower with me when very small. Rolled up whole outfits, underwear, socks, everything and let them take one & dress themselves pretty early on. Streamline where you can, it doesn't hurt them at all. If you can always include them when you cook and clean, they become helpful faster, I was not good at that. But remember they WANT to grow up, let him do as much as he can for himself. It won't be much yet but just get in the habit.

Dogs have a much different idea of what a good smell is. We have caught our dog trying to eat cat poop straight from the litter box. My husband had a dog who would roll in poop. They apparently think shit a delightful and delicious smell.