1 hour ago, marceline said:

This is the real issue. I understand why some people would prefer we stick with Standard time rather than Daylight. That's a perfectly legitimate debate to have. But the "children going to school in the dark" argument falls apart under even the most basic pushback. All day I've been watching this debate on Twitter and it always comes down to some assertion that kids will get run down by cars en masse. Which leads to my followup questions...

Does your neighborhood not have streetlights, traffic lights, school zones, crosswalks, or crossing guards?

If your children walk to school then you have to live fairly close, what mechanisms have already been put in place to ensure the safety of children? (This is an excellent chance to remind people about the existence of school zones.)

Does your school system have a program for teaching kids about safety? (Cleveland schools have one. I don't know how common this kind of thing is though.)

As we've seen over the last few years people love to use children as rhetorical human shields. Masks become "child abuse." Teaching accurate history is "indoctrination." But the truth is that children handle this stuff much better than many of the adults in their lives. Kids were fine with masks. It was their parents who couldn't handle it. Kids learning about slavery and the Holocaust doesn't harm them. It gives them context and teaches empathy but it's the parents who don't want little Dakota and Heavenleigh to learn that their ancestors enslaved people.

Sorry, I'm on a bit of a tear. I just really need the generation growing up now to be stronger than the one before them.

🤣 That name.

I've never been sure at what age the Holocaust should be brought up. Industrialized murder on that scale is just so grim. I think it can cause a lot of existential angst. With my children I don't get a choice. Their Hebrew school just digs right into it from kindergarten on. One thing I've noticed is that children's minds tend to only absorb what they can process. Nate understands his teacher's grandparents were killed, but he doesn't seem to understand that millions are people were killed because they were Jews. The older they get the deeper the understanding becomes.

As for slavery, I think kids can understand that starting around 2nd grade. I don't see any point in hiding the facts and reality from them. I don't understand why parents want to hide what their ancestors did from kids. Hell, I don't even know the names of my great grand parents. I don't feel the least need to protect their reputations.

I would like us to commit to a year long time zone, but I'm old and think Standard time is the way to go. 

2 hours ago, marceline said:

As we've seen over the last few years people love to use children as rhetorical human shields. Masks become "child abuse." Teaching accurate history is "indoctrination." But the truth is that children handle this stuff much better than many of the adults in their lives. Kids were fine with masks. It was their parents who couldn't handle it. Kids learning about slavery and the Holocaust doesn't harm them. It gives them context and teaches empathy but it's the parents who don't want little Dakota and Heavenleigh to learn that their ancestors enslaved people.

I remember when I was still a teenager in the '90's and I would hear all the what-about-the-children jive coming from certain quarters.  Even THEN, I knew what these so-called concerned folks were REALLY saying.

1 hour ago, marceline said:

History is filled with how populations have been taken down by diseases they had no immunity to. I feel like millennials and Gen-Z don't have any immunity to propaganda/disinformation.

Again, ladies and gentlemen, let's hear it for us Gen-X'ers, the only generation who knows horse manure when they hear it!

I didn't realize it was this bad. Damn.

 

Maybe because I have nieces and nephews, I have empathy for those kids, to a certain point. I have had conversations with them about critical thinking and discernment, but mostly I have taken them to the library very early on in their lives encouraged them to read books, the way I was encouraged to read books. It's odd to hear of parents wanting to censor and ban books because I always read whatever I wanted. JMO but many of the parents of the millennial and Z generations are at the root of the problem. Different times, I guess?

Reading the paper and watching the news with a critical eye was a must in my household but today even the New York Times has a markedly lower standard than what it once had been, so in a sense , I can see how some people might get caught in the wrong lane of the information superhighway when there is a vacuum.

 

7 minutes ago, DramatistDreamer said:

JMO but many of the parents of the millennial and Z generations are at the root of the problem. Different times, I guess?

At the risk of overgeneralizing, I think most millennials and Gen-Z'ers have this tendency to be not even remotely interested in anything that occurred before their time.  In their minds, the world is [!@#$%^&*], and it's all our faults, so anything the rest of us have to say about anything is not worth paying attention to.  At all.

Edited March 17, 20223 yr by Khan

3 minutes ago, Juliajms said:

I didn't realize it was this bad. Damn.

 

It's been very bad. I have talked to a few close friends and at least two have expressed self-consciousness being out in public during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, actually before it was declared a pandemic. And one has expressed fear for her parents. 

Interwoven with all these, there have been attacks on homeless men and each time it has been a formerly homeless man. Another tragic issue getting entirely too little attention. It's weird how homelessness has just become a peripheral issue when it once absorbed quite a bit of the national attention, at least once annually on HBO.

2 minutes ago, Khan said:

At the risk of overgeneralizing, I think most millennials and Gen-Z'ers have this tendency to be not even remotely interested in anything that occurred before their time.  In their minds, the world is [!@#$%^&*], and it's all our faults, so anything the rest of us have to say about anything is not worth paying attention to.  At all.

I wonder where that tendency comes from? Is it something they were taught by helicopter parents or were they socialized to think this way over time?

When I went to college, I met kids who lacked the ability to even wake themselves up in the morning I was shocked. As a latch-key kid who was traveling by bus to take myself to music lessons by age 11, I couldn't fathom not being able to get myself where I needed to b, especially when money and time were involved. And some of those students that I attended college with (the ones who who would wail if reprimanded by a professor, usually after they said something ignorant) became parents and raised some of these Gen Z kids, lol.

32 minutes ago, DramatistDreamer said:

I wonder where that tendency comes from? Is it something they were taught by helicopter parents or were they socialized to think this way over time?

I tend to think it's the former.  People joke all the time about "participation trophies," but they're real, and who do you think "earned" them?  It certainly wasn't the Gen-X'ers!  We were conditioned to live in a society that didn't give a [!@#$%^&*] about us, lol!

The amoral  Franklin Graham is over there too, which also concerns me.

 

^^Oh Lord, so now add the spectre of child exploitation and human trafficking to the list of perils in Ukraine.

On the Russian side of things, or the Russian people side of things, this is a thoughtful Op-ed piece despite it appearing in the NYT.

"For those who opposed the regime, in ways big and small, the responsibility is also ours to bear. How did it happen? What did we do wrong? How do we prevent this from happening again? These are the questions we’re facing," writes @ikrasil https://t.co/ypn1GkpeMd

— max seddon (@maxseddon) March 16, 2022

For anyone wondering about the status of WNBA star Brittney Griner's detention in Russia, this has to be somewhat discouraging news. Perhaps the one less distressing aspect is that, at the very least, physically, she looks unharmed. Mentally, may be something else entirely.

WNBA center Brittney Griner appeared in a Moscow court today, where she reportedly pleaded not guilty (to drug charges). The court extended her detention for another two months, according to @mash_breaking pic.twitter.com/Lm0TPzNYH0

— Mike Eckel (@Mike_Eckel) March 17, 2022

One can only hope that she can maintain her well-being for another two months while her release is secured. 

 

On 3/16/2022 at 8:32 AM, DramatistDreamer said:

 

They need to decide on one way to stop messing with people's circadian rhythms and seasonal mental health issues.

 

 

Agreed. I'm for Daylight Savings year-round. I wouldn't mind the sun coming out late in the morning during the dead of wintertime, and I'd much prefer coming home from work while there's still a bit of daylight left.