Yeah - I’ve noticed Big Lots (similar kind of store) hasn’t been that much better than Walmart or whichever store the items first came from.

Clearance sales also seem to getting worse across the board. My Walmart puts dented cans and packages with missing stuff out for maybe $1-2 off at most.

This kind of behavior mystifies me. I get that it can be frustrating to deal with lazy folks, but especially with how shit google/ddg are nowadays, when people are looking for help and are met with this kind of treatment it’s pretty discouraging! I’ve been an Arch user for about a decade, and sometimes I run into problems that should be googleable but aren’t.

It’s especially concerning, considering how tech illiterate the next generation is. They’re very used to walled gardens, and if they can barely manage a MacBook, they’re going to really struggle starting with things like the command line.

Lighting a candle leaves you with two lit candles. There’s no reason to gatekeep knowledge.

Isn’t it wonderful that google SEO algorithm updates essentially killed off independent forums and blogs? Half of my search results are Reddit and completely irrelevant AI spam.

For as long as it lasts. It’s clear they’re neglecting it - features like chat don’t work well. Not that the app isn’t a broken glitchy mess either.

Doesn’t Apple tend to be very anti-porn? Not allowed on the App Store, and they tend to have lots of restrictions on the content that apps can show. It seems like you’d have to jailbreak it, which Apple probably makes as difficult as possible.

All social media platforms are toxic platforms that rot your brain out, including this one. TikTok is not uniquely terrible, like every other platform, you have to curate a quality feed. My feed has a lot of language learning, history, and fiber arts. I prefer long form content, but sometimes I learn about California redwoods while praying on the porcelain throne.

I have concerns with children being on TikTok, but before it was TikTok it was iPad kids watching Elsa and Spider-Man pregnancy videos on YouTube. The problem is parental supervision.

Okay, let’s think about this for a minute - do chickens and human beings have genetics that are at all compatible with each other? (I’ll give you hint: chickens have a ZW chromosome sex determination system, humans XY). I’m not an expert on chickens, but I’m pretty sure the eggs are typically fertilized before the egg fully forms.

And then if we read the article:

In other words, it’s most likely the Russian guy was just entertaining everyone with his video. Whatever he did to make his “homunculus” appear alive worked on his target audience. It captured the overactive imagination of so many netizens. In this sense, his experiment succeeded.

Funny that it’s at the end, after a random bit about Paracelsus and a tangentially related real experimental process for making genetically modified chickens.

Let’s not take 2016 SEO clickbait garbage seriously :)

Except for the last several years it’s becoming harder to file for free. TurboTax’s free service developed some worse and worse dark patterns every year, where it was very easy to click the wrong thing and end up being charged. Iirc the fact that they provided a free service at all was to keep control of the market and prevent the IRS from stepping in with a service like this. ProPublica did some good investigations on this.

I understand the reference. It’s still a shitty joke.

Is it really that necessary to creep on someone without their consent? Porn exists, there are lots of women who are happy (at least consent) for you to look at them naked.

504s exist for kids who need them for medical purposes. (Had a diabetic kid - her mom made sure she knew the phone was only for monitoring) While there aren’t pay phones; there is a landline in the office at every school that students will be able to use.

The office workers are hourly and are already scheduled to stay for at least an hour after school. That’s part of their job.

The cell phones do not stay in the backpack. They don’t. Sorry, a fourteen year old does not have the capacity to ignore the absolute barrage of notifications they get.

Also - every class room I have ever taught in had a phone. The classroom next door has a phone. The lab cabinet has a phone. If it’s really that important that you have 24/7 access, get a dumb phone. They’re cheaper anyway.

That’s great that you work with kids, but a classroom Is an entirely separate context. I invite you to go substitute in a classroom to get a better understanding about how my job differs from your job.

Is your kid going to save the day with a cell phone? Do you think in that situation there is not going to be another adult who can call 911?

When you tell your child “just get in trouble and I’ll take care of the rest” you are telling the child that they don’t have to respect school rules. And having dealt with parents like you, your children turn out to be absolute terrors. (“Im texting my mom!” as you hear the fucking Rizzler song for the sixth time)

As part of my teaching training, I was in a program where I was not allowed to have my cell phone on me at all. 6 am to 9 pm, for almost two weeks. I survived.

This but unironically. In my neck of the woods, we are hemorrhaging kids to private or charter. That means losing money. Superintendents and administrators view parents as customers. They don’t want a parent to get pissed and move districts because the dollars follow the students. If education is babysitting - if a teacher allows students to do nothing but watch videos on their phone - parents hear nothing and assume everything is fine. If a teacher is calling home about behavioral issues, or a school has “high” discipline rates, then that becomes a visible issue.

I proposed a Faraday cage once 😂. But running a jammer would be a good way to get the FCC involved (hint: massively illegal). And if you think dealing with the FCC is fun, ask your local ham operator…

Also they all know how to find proxies or unblocked sites. I watched severely intellectually disabled children teach other out to install VPNs. The smarter ones could install shit like Dolphin and would be playing Pokémon in class.

There aren’t security cameras in classrooms, at least in the schools I’ve worked. They are in the hallways though. I wasn’t allowed to record my class (despite that being good practice - watching yourself teach!)

Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Larry Ellison (Oracle) were the biggest backers in the buy out deal. Saudi Arabia’s princes want to keep a tight control on information - remember how they butchered Khashoggi? With Qatar it was probably to prevent any slave labor deaths associated with FIFA from going viral. Larry Ellison probably just wanted all that juicy data, idk, he’s quiet but he gives a lot of money to right wing American causes.

His investors wanted this. Twitter was a huge threat to a few oil rich autocratic regimes.

In a school shooting situation, cell phones could make things much worse. During my active shooter training, we were told to ask students to turn them off if we were in a shooting. The noise is an obvious danger, but the lines need to be kept clear for communication with emergency response personnel. There would be structured ways that the school would want to communicate with you - they don’t want the chaos of parents showing up to an active scene. I think it would be better to rely on things like the Rave app.

In other situations, the front office is there. That is the function that they have served for generations. Give the office aides something to do.

There’s just little reason for students to have smart phones in school. They cannot control themselves. We are asking them to have more self restraint than most adults do. It is not developmentally appropriate and it is harmful.

You can’t take them, because the district is worried they’ll get sued if one breaks. Your option is to tell the parent, and the parent will 80% come up with some bullshit excuse or accuse you of targeting their child. I worked one district that had a form we could fill out - after getting caught three times they were supposed to turn the phone in. Never happened.

Please. Do. Not. Send. Your. Child. To. School. With. A. Smartphone. DONT.

They are addicted. We’ve given them tech that adults can’t even manage to responsibly use. They don’t know how to be bored or curious. The behavior is just strange - when I’ve been fuck it and just taken a phone - they regress. 15 year olds babbling and throwing tantrums like toddlers.