My opinion: should have been way more. I mean, c’mon. It’s Britney, bitch.

2 paragraph comment?! TL;DR?

Food deserts are no joke

So, I tried looking for any sort for any write-up, journal, or article in which Horvath details his findings or data analysis. I haven’t found anything except articles referencing what he said in front of the Senate. Without that, it’s impossible to tell how he determined causality.

Without completely rejecting his correlation to screen time, here are some changes I noticed between my time as a middle schooler and the past decade that I’ve now worked in public education:

• More advanced topics: 6th graders are now learning about photovoltaics. Not just listing it as a renewable energy, but the actual functions of photons interacting with elections. This extends to many topics that were omitted or unheard of for millennials.
• Advanced academics: classes that I’d taken as electives or as part of an advanced placement program in high school have been moved down to, or are offered in, middle school.
• Frequency of testing: when I started in public education nearly 10 years ago, students were given more standardized tests per year than there were days in a school year. And this didn’t account for the district, department, or teacher-assigned tests and quizzes. The number of standardized tests have gone down a bit somewhat recently, but those dark times still affect the average standardized testing scores for the entire generation.
• Less informed teachers: remember that part about more advanced topics entering the lessons and more advanced classes being offered earlier? Well, while the lessons changed, many of the teachers didn’t. That meant that teachers with outdated knowledge and concepts were attempting to teach concepts beyond their own understanding. For a while there, while older teachers tended to have better classroom control, their students’ test scores were often crap compared to the younger teachers. And due to seniority and campus behavioral expectations, departmental meetings were often led by the older teachers, who emphasized control. The belief for a while was that if you could engage the students, their test scores would go up; not if you were engaging them with the wrong information, though!
• Increased stressors: younger and younger students were expected to interact with increasingly advanced technology. What went from my friends and me sharing games we programmed on our TI-83s turned into young students sending nudes from their borrowed laptops. Students were given power they weren’t yet able to comprehend, because horniness is a powerful driver to kids who are being denied sex education. This led to them stressing out over the uncontrollable nature of data transfer.
• Inability to escape the past: teachers used to have to go into an office, and search through files in folders within cabinets to learn about a student’s past behavior. A search like this was usually preempted by a student showing concerning behavior. Now, every incident is stored in a quickly accessible database. One that many teachers will look through to form opinions about their students before ever meeting them. This disadvantages students genuinely trying to reform their image, or escape biases based on long-since-passed choices.

Without an understanding of what Horvath was studying, I can only focus on the contributing factors that I saw. And based on those, we fucking failed those kids. All things considered, I’d say that Gen Z is performing pretty well considering how fucked they were from the start.

“Can you tell us the names of the people you won’t prosecute? If that risks collapsing the system, can you tell us which systems are at risk of collapsing? If you can’t specify systems, can you tell us if they’re American systems? If America is a nation under God, are these systems at the service of God? Is God in the Epstein files? Is it the official stance of the United States government that God is a pedophile?”

Imaginary scenario:

You’re at war, the enemies are closing in on the edges of your base. Everyone is using modern weapons, and each attack is precise and deliberate. You, watching your fellow soldiers fall in tandem with scores of the enemy, have decided that enough is enough. You’re gonna pull out the big guns and end this already!

So, you roll a cannon to the center of your base, and start firing chain balls while rotating a few degrees between shots. Sure, each volley from you is likely to do some crazy damage to the enemy. But you’re primarily ripping through your own forces and defenses with no concern for whoever stands between you and your enemy. If your fellow soldiers didn’t know any better, they’d think that your entire goal was to attack your own team.

Don’t use archaic insults that are guaranteed to hurt your friends. You have no clue if the subject of your attack is even paying attention (he’s not), and they’re going to get far more delight out of how offended your friends are by your words.

Hmmm good point that shows a couple of the numerous flaws in my analogy, so allow me to use mental gymnastics to support my analogy.

Germany continues teaching how it was used and the dangers of anyone using it. They’re not pretending like they never used it, they’re just hoping that by hiding it under a tarp and only showing the damages it caused will prevent anyone from peeking under the tarp and going, “you sure? It looks pretty cool, still.”

We’ve been trying to reach you about your car’s extended warranty.

The biggest shelters here in San Antonio use random lottery for euthanasia, and have very strict cutoff times. By making it random and Boolean, they’re saving their volunteers from the PTSD of putting down some other animal because a family showed interest in an at-risk pet, but didn’t come back the same day to pick it up.

It fucking sucks so much, on every single level. Sometimes, a system that puts down animals the day after they arrive is the less horrifying option.

I’m so so so so grateful for our two dogs that my spouse and I were able to get from the shelter, and feel like the luckiest person alive to see both of them come out of their shells as over-eager yet fearful little ladies who now wrestle and cuddle every single day. (Somewhat of a high note to end this comment on)

Howdy doodoos, collectable kids

Germans borrowed it from us, rode it hard, and then cleaned it off hoping that we wouldn’t remember that they still had it.

But then we saw it sitting in the corner and offered to help them fix it up. They said nah, let’s just forget about it. We said that we really wanted to fix it and that it would be a fun project to work on together. They told us to take our drunk asses home, so we got mad and dragged it back home.

But here we are! We’ve got it back and we finally fixed it! Now we’re practicing donuts while the tech crew is building the ramp. We keep talking about how we’re gonna do the biggest jump ever with a triple backflip, and everyone said that we’re gonna chicken out. The extra-concerning part is that we never bothered with a landing ramp.

Nah man, we’re gonna jump this thing straight into the stadium seats. We’re revving that engine and y’all better hope that we loosened the nuts enough for the wheels to fall off, or that the sugar people are putting in the gas tank works so that we crash out halfway.

Especially those idiots who paid extra for front row seats.

Also, downvotes are fun to collect! All of you’re grandmother’s r poopieheads!

My Jewish Jesus appreciates your dedication to the cause.

Fuck it, I’m gonna skirt the rules a little and say me: I’m alive past 25 years old.

Spock out in Central Park saving PNGs to birds

Sally Struthers?

By far, the best part of finding a loose needle in the wild is the tetanus.

That dog is sharp

That is the cutest, best dog* ever!

^*that I’m currently looking at^

I disagree. All dogs are the best dog ever; always being the best dog they can hope to be. Dogs have so much love and fascination for each other (ymmv) that, when someone else is sharing information about their dogs, the best way to honor your dog is to pay the utmost attention and show appreciation for the other dogs.

So put down your phone for a moment, and listen to stories about the other dog. When you get home, share select details of the story with your own dogs and ask them what they think of that. Playfully recreate parts of the story with them. “My friend says that their dog always barks when they’re about to get a treat! Isn’t that so silly? Do you want to try barking for a treat? Let’s practice ‘speak!’”

And for the love of all that is holey (usually plushies), if your dog obsesses over sniffing you when you’ve interacted with other animals, then pet every damn animal that you’re allowed to. Let your dog read the tapestry of your pant leg, and learn about your absolutely precious odyssey.