Smart Kids

If I had kids, I’d not allow them to have social media until 16 and a smartphone till either 14 or 16. Sure, they’d try to sneak around it but there’s still a lot you can do without going full authoritarian.

Smartphones and social media (including TikTok) are just too obviously harmful. This is just the same as that I’d attempt to keep my kids from developing a raging meth habit. There’s about the same level of potential harm there, so you must do what you can.

By the way, again, that Nature anti-Haidt piece is just such utter shit. It commits more argumentative and factual errors than Trump speaking off the cuff. There is so much money involved of course Facebook, Apple, et al. will be spewing propaganda from any outlet that will allow it. And Nature hasn’t been worth a damn in many years.

Office Friends

Before the pandemic and then the predictable RTO push, I don’t think I really understood just how much of many people’s social needs were being met by work and office contact and activities.

I did not realize this because zero percent of my social needs are met in an office and never have been. Nearly none of my friends come from any workplace of mine and I actively attempt not to make friends where I work (with a few rare exceptions). Because why would you do that?

Put simply, I had no idea just how important shitty workplace interactions and friendships were to otherwise-deprived people. And it makes me sad that now I do know this.

Powage

I know this person is joking, but in terms of the left’s fucking insane power discourse, this is more actual power over someone than others they talk about incessantly (age, wealth, male/female, etc.).

Root

Horror movies where the villain is so sympathetic that you root for them.

Lilly/Mr. Wriggles* in Late Night With the Devil. You just want her/it to lay waste to all those clowns exploiting her. And you’re not disappointed. Ingrid Torelli as Lilly is utterly terrifying in that film. Best performance in a horror I’ve seen since Toni Collette in Hereditary.

*From the context clues in the film. I believe that Lilly/Mr. Wriggles is now a single entity, so there is no longer a practical difference between them.