I loved the labels. Testtomcels.

I used to think “good” kids had “good” parents and vice versa but I learned this isn’t always the case. I should have realized, I was only such a “good” (quiet) kid because my parents scared me. I didn’t feel safe. But some good parents raise genuinely respectful yet also self-respecting kids.

I keep hearing this and I wonder about how they do this. I mean how to they keep records of every shoplifter? Do the employees recognize the people every time they come in? How many shoplifters can they keep track of? Are they like “ah yeah it’s shoplifter 687, put this video in his file”? Do they bother with people stealing an occasional item like basic clothing or food? Are they watching a single shoplifter over years, like what if they only steal once in a while and it’s low value? I’m curious about this, I’ve never actually heard from anyone who was watched over a period of time and then prosecuted.

What? Why? I can’t walk anywhere in my city and I certainly love the self checkout.

Not only that, but babies can’t / shouldn’t be using it all day everyday. So it really should be the cat’s at least 90% of the time.

Is Plex not it anymore? I’m not really privy to details but my wife runs a Plex server that we can access from anywhere. It’s free and we each have our own profiles. Even my parents have a profile.

It’s good to keep in mind, but I mean do you sit there through 1-3 minute ads not skipping forward? I don’t watch much television, I mostly watch YouTube. So I watch a lot of it. What good is watching an ad going to do if I’m never going to buy anything from them? Once or twice, I’ve needed or wanted a product or service I thought might be promoted on YouTube, I went and looked for a creator to get a link/code from. But I think I did that two times in the past 9 years of being an avid YouTube watcher, and those times I was not buying the product due to ads, just thought I’d support a creator since I was going to make a purchase. I don’t have sponsor block (I use NewPipe and I don’t feel like learning a new app), but I just skip all the ads by tapping the skip button a bunch. They’re often 2 full minutes.

To my knowledge it doesn’t have that, but the suggested videos are pretty good. Like if I’m watching a science video, it will suggest other science videos. Otherwise I’m just subscribed to a few hundred channels and I mostly use the latest releases tab (not sure what it’s officially called but it shows everything put out by your subscriptions every time you refresh it).

Newpipe is still working great, I haven’t used an official interface in like 3 years.

Even if we kept the car way of life (not saying we should) doesn’t it seem like there are way too many cars being produced? Like how many new cars do we really need every year? I honestly do not know the numbers, I’m just saying it sure seems like this many brand new cars don’t need to exist.

I would literally kill myself if I ever had to live in apartments again. I have severe social anxiety and agoraphobia and general anxiety. I started hallucinating when I lived in apartments (but never before or since). I became paranoid of people. There was never any solitude. Plus right now there’s no way to get around apartments without landlords (though I understand ideally there might be ways around this, it’s not likely to happen any time soon). When I lived in an apartment I considered just being homeless and hiding in the woods (and stupidly, isn’t legal).

We sure could stand to make more stores and businesses into high rises though. I live near Detroit (but not IN Detroit) and going down our streets it’s just a ridiculous waste of space. How many tire shops do we even need? Why does every business need its own lot with so much space around it? Everything being more “mall” style would waste less space.

I got them a lot in the beginning, and less now 6.5 years later. I’m not a fully lucid dreamer but I have some awareness. I’m always so relieved when I see my dad again. In the beginning it was both happy and stressful, especially before we knew his cause of death (took months and months to get the report) and I felt like I had to warn him about everything. I hope to be aware enough of a dream to interact with him more deliberately one time.

It seems like the implication was “due to language barrier…”

Dang, you already feel bad so I’m not going to try to make you feel worse. We all make parenting mistakes. I would like to say I think the reason some people believe in stuff is because they need to. My kid seems to believe in ghosts. He had like a legitimate mental breakdown when he was 5 and really realized that humans die and it’s inevitable (not only those who are sick or in an accident). He still has obsessive thoughts and existential anxiety. From the beginning I told him people believe different things. Personally, I don’t have any beliefs about life or death, but great grandma believes in heaven, aunty believes in ghosts, people believe you come back as babies, etc. I was very clear that we have no proof of any of this and that anyone who ever says their answer is the one and only true answer, is full of it. The truth is we only know what we can prove.

He’s a good critical thinker for his age. I think he knows ghosts aren’t real, but it helps him. It would honestly be cruel to take it away. He knows some religions teach bigotry and that some religions are cults and many others are cult-like (he’s quite interested in cults haha). There’s a difference between beliefs and religions. Kids are smarter than we think. They will be okay. I do not think kids raised by critically thinking atheist parents are going to grow to to join harmful religions for the most part. We don’t have to be like many of our religious parents were. They treated us that way because they were scared we would grow up and not believe like they do. But we need to teach our kids more how to think than what to think (although sharing some opinions is important too). I don’t think you need to worry because a kid thinks something is haunted. It’s either just for fun or being used as a way to get through life until they’re mature enough to actually handle final death. It’s a huge thing for many people to accept.