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Penny Arcade - Comic - Father Of The Year
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Registered User, Administrator, Vanilla Staff admin
Registered User, Administrator, Vanilla Staff admin
Penny Arcade - Comic - Father Of The Year
Videogaming-related online strip by Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins. Includes news and commentary.
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-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Depressingly yes:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/16/health/covid-kids-tech-use.html?action=click&module=RelatedLinks&pgtype=Article
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
-someone who had a meltdown over not being able to go to bars or high school football games
There's a class of person who is absolutely attacked by the idea that someone likes other stuff than them. And if that other person is someone they think owes them parental "respect", oh boy...
It's 2021. I'm a man. But I have no f'n clue how to change the oil in my car. But you know what? It doesn't f'n matter cause I can pay someone to do it for me. I don't need to personally know that skill, because someone else does. So don't judge me. Don't judge me because I enjoy video games and you enjoy playing with spreadsheets and imaginary sports numbers.
I'm a woman. I DO know how to change the oil in my car. But it's a fucking annoying job and I also pay someone to do it for me.
The NY Times article is so tone deaf it sounds like it came from another decade (specifically the 90s). I was particularly amused about them considering what other hobby junior might get into, like knitting. Because knitting and a lot of other DIY hobbies can be learned on Youtube. But we can't have that since screen time is evil. I guess junior should just stare at the walls instead of getting any sort of enrichment in his life because SCREEN TIME. Ugh.
Oh, Tycho, did you already forget that 40% of American adults demand the right to do that very thing? Adults who will resist change even if it kills themselves and half a million of their neighbors? Of course you *shouldn't* fail your kids by making the same mistakes your parents did, but you absolutely *can* and a portion of the country will do it with zeal.
This is the course of history when people ascribe to a philosophy of "change is bad"
Twitch: KoopahTroopah - Steam: Koopah
I didn't need this new information to lose respect for the NYT though. That happened a long time ago.
EDIT: Ah, I see the newspost even mentions D&D. Ha. I swear I didn't know that when I wrote that comment.
-Tycho Brahe
It's amazing how some humans manage to actually *evolve* in a photocopier-style educational environment, where you receive the instructions to the world from someone who didn't pay attention when they were explained to them.
They can't; junior is using it to play videogames. Why do you think the parents are upset?
Half the shops in the small town where I live are still shuttered nearly a year later. Many of them will never open again. I think it does them a great disservice to be told they are "not essential", made to sit at home and watch the businesses their parents and grandparents built collapse in front of them, while our town starts to wither despite that whopping $600 we all got (and nowhere to spend it), and to be told now that they just "don't like change".
Especially now that administrations have changed and suddenly everyone's all gung-ho about getting the country opened up and suddenly studies are coming out saying oh, the lockdowns didn't really help that much.
While turnover is fresh in my mind:
The last guy to sit in the big chair made a number of actions currently empowered to the executive branch, and half the country lost their minds over it, sometimes just because he's the one who did it. A new guy sits in the chair, and the first thing he does is sign a bunch more orders for the sake of un-ordering what was previously ordered. In more than a few cases, they're long-standing policy orders that have been flipped on and off like a light switch depending on whose turn it is in the chair.
All of this to say, I think the last group of people that should have a say in determining parental competence is a regulatory body. People already get Children's Services weaponized against them as it is. I don't relish the day when whether we can or cannot have a family is managed by a body whose orders are going to change every four years and who are showing more than a little penchant for political reprisals.
My 9 y.o. son has ADHD and is on the spectrum (which always sounds like a wireless technology to me). So we've grappled with how much we should let him sit in front of a screen. There are very real repercussions for him with activities that are mostly sedentary. But... what are you going to do? His favorite hobbies are coding in Scratch/python/Lego Boost, legos, building circuits (soldering chips mostly now, though he use to wire stuff up a lot with breadboards before), and playing video games with me and his little sister.
I don't want to say "sorry, son, but that's too much programming for the day." As a programmer myself, I know that he's getting a big head start on his skillset. He wants to go play outside about as much as *I* did as a kid (hint: not much). Plus we're in Minnesota so it's a frozen hellscape for at least another couple of months. And he loves playing games with me (we're having a blast with Luigi's mansion) and his sister. In fact, given some of his spectrum-related triggers, it's one of the ways he can interact with his sister the best.
That doesn't mean we have no limits. He can't sit on the couch playing video games for an hour. But we try to rotate activities so at least he has to move from one side of the room to the other. That's good parenting, right?
As funny as that may be, I'm pretty sure we're in a screen-rich environment these days. Plus a big part of what they were complaining about was using his phone all the time.
Sure we still do stuff like ABA and speech/occupational therapy, but going with our gut was probably the best decision we've made so far.
I know I don't have much right to talk, since I don't have any kids, but the way I see it, not worrying that something they're overindulging it might have negative consequences counts more as "failing as a parent" than just ignoring it.
It's a complicated discussion because some people say it's just a rehash of the old paranoia, and in some aspects it might be, but I think circunstances, right now, are a bit extreme.
As a parent who has started having to worry about this, I've found the tools for limiting this kind of thing on a granular level to be kind of crap. And I say that as someone with a solid chunk of IT experience. Either they're useless or require a decent chunk of time to set up and administer on an ongoing basis. If anyone has a suggestion of one they actually love that doesn't require dedicating days to it, please feel free to send me a PM.
This always seems like a good idea until you remember that what you think should be on a parenting license and what Ted Cruz or Noah Hawley does are vastly different things and the government deciding who can have a child is a fucking terrifying thing even with the amount of bad parents in the world.
pleasepaypreacher.net
That's something Mike and/or Jerry have talked about in the past; this false equivalency that underlies 'screen time' limitations. Not all screen time is created equal. If a kid is doing something productive and learning then why should we limit it, beyond making sure they get a reasonable amount of physical activity each week?
It would be like setting a limit on book time.
My first thought was "magazine time". Because of those magazines. You know the ones.
(Yes, I mean the knitting ones.)
Indeed, Mike held a talk at his kid's school and talked about it here. The idea that some games were more enriching than other games was apparently mind-blowing to some parents. The idea that games are dumb was very prevalent.
http://newnations.bandcamp.com
You know what? After the last 5 years I am absolutely and 100% utterly fucking done with catering to the tender feelings of people who are stupid shit-heads and want to impose their stupid shittiness on others. Tone Deaf? Nope. Tone Don't Give Any More Fucks
Some "won't somebody think of the children " purl clutching going on here.
Also, the change of political power has very little to do with the latest talk of "opening up" the country and everything to do with there being a vaccine now. It's almost like you're not paying attention and just have an axe to grind about politics!
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
As an anti-natalist, I applaud this closing line. I fucking despise parents who don't fucking care about their fucking kids, who they owe fucking EVERYTHING to for forcing them into this hellish dying world.
Kids deserve compassion and acceptance, and that so many disgustingly selfish parents will never give them either is something that ignites every negative emotion I have. I wish I could believe that they eventually recognize how much their kids loathe and hate them, and beg for forgiveness, but parents who just mindlessly procreate for no other reason than pure selfishness will never find that level of self-awareness.
and the gengars who are guiding me" -- W.S. Merwin
Cool story. You might not have noticed, but there's a pandemic out there. Yeah.