Factory? Hell nah, we home brew in this household

High school aged children definitely can understand the concept. I would argue middle school aged children can as well.

High school aged children are well known to be complete and utter dumbasses, especially when it comes to making mistakes who’s consequences are abstract and long-term in nature. Punishment by social superiors is oftentimes the only thing preventing them from doing idiotic things, because their brains are not developed enough to think very far into the future. And even then, proper impulse control is one of the last things a developing brain develops, so they might understand the issues but be psychologically incapable of the self-control needed for it. Not to mention, social media apps are designed by psychology experts in Silicon Valley to be as addictive and distracting as possible, since that’s how you get people to use your app. Having those in your pocket, when you’re too young and dumb to understand the consequences of overusing it, and can’t even exercise self control when they’re pointed out to you? It would be irresponsible for us adults to continue allowing it.

Again, if the parents are worried the kids are spending too long on their phones they can do something about it, not the gov.

Parents aren’t worried about this, and that’s the root of the problem. If the school system does nothing about it, then the kids will just end up addicted to TikTok and completely unprepared for the world on account of being distracted in class. Their parents aren’t going to do anything about it until it’s too late.

The thing about adopting the “live and let live” philosophy with children is that children are psychologically incapable of understanding the consequences of their actions, or exercising proper impulse control. If their parents have failed them then it is the moral obligation of the rest of society to make up for it.

I believe that something resembling religion will reappear in society (American society, I mean) in the future, maybe even the near future. Political substitutes for religion have given meaning to people’s lives, i.e made them feel apart of something greater, but they have not provided them with physical community, a path toward self-improvement, a guide for how to manage interpersonal relations (Apart from “don’t offend people”, in the case of progressivism, I guess?), or any compelling reason not to be afraid of death.

Traditional religion’s staying power came not from oppressive power structures or whatever people think these days, but because of all of that. Just having an oppressive power structure and none of the other stuff has generally led to religions/philosophies dying out within a few generations, like Nazism or communism. Both of those had their time to shine, completely ruined the societies they took over, and are now viewed as jokes by most people today. Meanwhile Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, etc, which offer way more than ideology ever has, have been around for millennia and are on track to stay around for millennia more.

Homo Evolutis

I think using a political philosophy or a common enemy to unite a society is more harmful than it is good, since those things will inevitably be held sacred, and it becomes impossible to think rationally about them. Religious people are able to disagree on things like economics because the things that they hold sacred are supernatural sky gods, instead of things which are of this world (Americans are an exception due to the polarization of the two-party system and the compelling force of American Civil Religion, which makes freedom, democracy, and the Constitution into sacred things), but people who hold a political ideology like Marxism or Liberalism to be sacred (Tons of people, many of them on this very website) cannot tolerate disagreement and will ignore facts that might disprove their ideology. This is manageable when it involves nothing more than a sky god, but when it involves the very basics of how society should operate, it gets bad, quickly, which is how you get thousands of dead dissenters and a permanently stagnant society. Using a common enemy is even worse since it leads to an irrational hatred of said enemy that drives people to do horrible things to eachother, with the most infamous example being the Holocaust. The Nazis also held their political ideals to be more sacred than their religious beliefs, coincidentally.

keyboard warriors when someone talks about how their lives were threatened by organized crime

The people he’s snitching on and being ostracized by are a bunch of degenerates anyway. I understand why he’s scared but I think the right thing to do would be for him to come forward with it. Why worry about the opinions of methheads? Of course, I’m not gonna hold it against him if he keeps quiet. It takes an abnormal amount of courage to stand up to the masses, and I don’t think most people in this comment section would have that courage in his situation.

I was a high schooler last year and by this standard, every single one of my classmates’ parents are complete failures, including mine. Not that I disagree, but clearly we can’t trust the parents to do anything about this.

Some dude thinking his pet snail is dead, only to throw it in the trash and forget about it, and then wake up to a snailpocalypse a week later is pretty funny to think about

“Then who’s vice-president, Jerry Lewis?”

For the record, I’d be down to eat both cats and dogs if given the opportunity, I just wouldn’t eat my own pets.

I’m in and out and I always say thank you when I’m done, since I personally like it when customers get out of my store as soon as possible.

“Sir, we must burn down the world’s forests and destroy everyone’s economic assets.”

“Are you sure that this is the way to go about solving inflation?”

“Inflation?”

If I’m being real, my only knowledge of trans fats comes from that one American Dad episode where Stan tries to smuggle them across state lines to make his food taste good again after they’re banned. Would you mind educating me on what the commotion was about them?

I’m not at the point in life where I can really avoid plastic, but I aspire to get there eventually.

I like excessive sweetness in all of my beverages since I’ve been drinking excessively sweet beverages all my life. I got the taste buds of a toddler. Still, give me aspartame over sugar, even on the off chance that the meager amount I consume gives me cancer some day that’s probably better than what too much sugar would do to me.

Microplastics are the new lead, and screens are the new tobacco, in my opinion. Overuse of sugar in processed foods is the new version of how they’d cut food with inedible stuff like sawdust back in the day.

While this dude didn’t earn his money I am jealous that I didn’t think of this first.

Abusing service / customer-facing staff fits in to this as well and is at once particularly revealing and particularly damning.

Whenever a customer is rude to me I just remember that they’re probably compensating for how terrible their own lives are. If it was actually an issue on my part then one of my coworkers would’ve told me by now. Makes it way easier to move on with my day.