memfree

1st take: "Makes carefree kid? 2nd take: “care free of what?” “From what?” … ohhhh, I’m an idiot.

Anyway, here’s another source that makes the NM politics sound like a nightmare: https://www.kob.com/news/top-news/new-mexico-governor-announces-launch-of-universal-free-child-care-program/

Statement from New Mexico Senate Republican Leader Bill Sharer, R-Farmington

“We appreciate any opportunity to provide real solutions for New Mexicans. Just as we did during last year’s failed public safety special session…

Democrats in the legislature have opposed our common-sense proposals to improve public safety, including needed changes to juvenile justice laws and an end to the revolving-door release of repeat violent offenders. Democrats have also refused …

Statement from Democratic Party of New Mexico Chair Sara Attleson

“The Democratic Party of New Mexico is excited about the Governor’s announcement that New Mexico will expand free early childcare to even more families! …

It’s critical we make this accessible to more families during difficult economic times due to rising prices and increasing inflation caused by national GOP policies. New Mexico is already the first state in the country to constitutionally guarantee every child’s right to care, and this will expand on that progress.”

Edit. Format, lost line.

Just heard a piece today about AI that tangentially mentioned historic lows for “student engagement” – where kids are interested in learning rather than just sitting through their classes and waiting to leave. The main point was that using AI is not as simple as using calculators because students don’t learn to think when AI does all the work. AI removes the necessary pain of learning to put things together before a deadline.

Oh, and they were talking about some plan to replace teachers with AI instructors where adults would still be present, but not in charge of the learning. I guess the adults will just be there to mete out discipline?

Doctorow doesn’t allow DRM on his works (both print and audio) so he can;t distribute through sites lilke Amazon that require it. Instead he runs a kickstarter to pay actual talent to do the audio and distributes through smaller channels.

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.

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.

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.

You are correct, but I mow kinda high and my lawn has lots of low flowering weeds and flowering shrubs. In the spring, there is patch of … probably purslane? and daffodils on the border. Then the comfrey has its first bloom, then the clover and dandelions. Right now there’s more dandelions and comfrey’s second bloom. Next comes the invasive morning glorys and rose of sharon. There are a bunch of other things that flower, like wild strawberries, wild violets, and yarrow that is stanted by getting chopped down every week or two – but there’s more and I don’t know all their names.

We also have some type of carpenter/bumble bee trying hard to destroy the edge of the porch overhang. I’m just letting them do their thing and plan on repairing it if/when it becomes a structural issue.

While I tend to agree, I want to point out that it’s a very modern view point.

American pet stores these days are pet supply stores. Way back when (1970s and before), they were stocked with all kinds of creatures; some that were probably illegally imported as well as a mix of cats, dogs, rabbits, mice, canaries, and the like that were partially from people whose pets gave birth. You fancy canaries and some of hatch chicks? A nice side hustle was to sell the excess offspring back to the store. Same for mice. Stores were offered enough rabbits, guinea pigs, and kittens that they’d be overstocked if they took them all – especially kittens.

Spaying/Neutering was not common. Cats and dogs roamed off-leash and got pregnant. When you went to the grocery store, there was a fair chance someone was out front with a box of “Free Puppies!” filled with mongrels that pet stores did not want because they weren’t pure. The same was true for “Free Kittens!” but that, again, was because no store wanted as many kittens as the supply. That’s also why there were so many kill shelters: supply far exceeded demand.

I like it better now that most pets are NOT allowed to uncontrollably breed, but I do miss the chance to find some adorable mutt that isn’t half pit bull.

My lawn isn’t totally natural because I mow it, but I don’t use any chemicals. Despite some trees and shrubs, my yard doesn’t have ticks. We have grubs, mice, shrews, squirrels, birds, and occasional poison ivy that we pull up, but no ticks. They are in the park (with forest) a couple blocks away, but not in the trimmed lawns in my chunk of suburbia.

from Wikipedia:

Ticks like shady, moist leaf litter with an overstory of trees or shrubs and, in the spring, they deposit their eggs into such places allowing larvae to emerge in the fall and crawl into low-lying vegetation. The 3 meter boundary closest to the lawn’s edge are a tick migration zone, where 82% of tick nymphs in lawns are found.

I agree wirth you, but since I’m not a hydrologist nor any other type of expert, I included that contrary piece as an opposing view on whether better planning could have helped. Since we now know that there’s been a plan to have warning sirens in the works for years, I think it obvious that the area is a known flood risk and at least that much COULD have been done.

Kerrville is too small to get cited as an example in a big national report on Texas flood issues, so my citations are meant to show this is a problem for the whole state rather than a particular town. If you go to USGS, you’ll see they don’t even have a flow gauge upstream of Camp Mystic. The closest is downstream at gauge:hntt2(click dot on map to see readings). Simple link without map: https://water.noaa.gov/gauges/HNTT2