As someone who’s 23 and grew up with smartphones and all of that as they were starting to become popular I feel like I have some takes on a lot of the opinions I’ve seen on the different sides of issues like this. I lean in general towards giving your kid a phone once they’re old enough to want to be able to talk with friends and do things on their own afterschool but having some non-intrusive ways to keep an eye on what they’re doing with it until sometime when they’re a teenager. That just seems like the best way to not ostracize them from other kids while still making sure they’re being safe online. Even though in general things worked out fine for me with my parents letting me have my own laptop and iPod touch and eventually iPhone from a pretty young age without really watching what I did on them I definitely see a lot of times that I could have ended up being taken advantage of online if things had been slightly different. And the reason I say non-intrusive ways to keep track of what your kid is doing is because I knew kids who did have like parental restrictions on their phones and all of them knew ways to bypass them and do what they wanted to do anyways. So the only way you’re gonna successfully keep an eye on them is if they don’t know you are and you only interfere if it’s a genuine safety problem, and even then you make sure to not punish them for it as that will make them start hiding things from you actively, you treat it as a learning moment and help them understand why what they were doing wasn’t safe. I’m still very much figuring out what my exact views on this are but I think leaning too far in either direction of not letting them have social media or a smartphone at all even when they’re starting to reach middle school or letting them have unrestricted access to social media and a phone both have their problems and you have to find a good balance in the middle.

As someone who uses USPS to deliver mail or packages whenever I need to do that it definitely isn’t universally agreed on. It has reasonable prices compared to the other ones and I’ve never had issues with packages taking too long or getting lost.

I mean the problem with your argument is then that there’s nothing we can do, as there isn’t really any pathway towards impeachment right now. As Republicans hold both houses and have pretty clearly shown their loyalty to Trump even with the fact that they’re getting so much backlash they won’t hold town halls anymore. So at this point these kinds of protests are one of the few ways to try and hurt the people in power, as well as to start building community that is needed for any kind of more direct action. It also gives Trump and Elon the opportunity to overreact against protests (like if they decide to follow through on the domestic terrorism thing) which will further galvanize people into action.

I mean with the recent stuff going on with them trying to deport someone for the pro-palestine protests I’m just reminded of the quote “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”

You’re right there after looking into it, he didn’t endorse either but he did speak at the RNC which for a lot of people looked like an endorsement but is a little different. The quote of we can win with or without you was from a meeting the teamster’s president had with Kamala. Even if it was in response to him speaking at the RNC or showing some support to Trump that’s definitely not how you get someone to back you and in my opinion shows the attitude the Dems had to a lot of people this cycle. This idea of either you vote for us or we’ll win without you cause you have no other good choice. That attitude is not one that makes people excited to go out and stand in a 3 hour line to vote for you in a swing state. And if they keep relying on this you either vote for us or you get stuck with the bad option of Trump they’re only gonna win whenever Trump is in office and actively doing really really bad things.

Yeah that would be nice but the only way I see that happening is if a Bernie like politician manages to win the primary and the election and reshapes the party like what Trump did. But reshaping it in that way is gonna face a lot more pushback from donors than compared to what Trump did. So there’s always a chance but it feels pretty unlikely without changes to election and campaign finance laws.

I mean I can understand him not wanting to endorse Kamala when she directly told him we can win with or without you. That doesn’t exactly sound like the kind of person you would want to endorse if they don’t even seem to really care about you or the people you represent. But yeah endorsing Trump was a stupid move, he really should have just not endorsed either of them.