What do I do if adult tells me they want to play with hot wheels with me? I say yes.

Fuck yeah. Hot wheels are great.

I hate investing

Mutual Funds / Index funds are your best bet. (Look for descriptive words like “broad”, “mix” or “full market” in the description).

If you can, pick out one named “target retirement YYYY” with YYYY being within a few years of whatever year you will turn 67.

It will automatically follow investing best practices based on your current age - agrressive earlier, and very cautious later.

I’m not familiar with all the details of how it works

Perfect recipe to get ripped off. (Most people I know say that insurance/investment combined products suck. I’ve heard some disagreement whether they’re just a bad deal, or such a bad deal they ought to be a crime.)

I can’t prove anything, but:

• There’s evidence that billionaires are taking much more than they earn, and that we (everyone else) would be dramatically better off without them (whether we tax them away or… Come to some other compromise.)
• Billionaires own most media outlets and social media sites, even those these don’t actually make much money compared to everything else the billionaires own. This makes some people ask why they bother…
• There’s a noticable tendency in billionaire owned media to focus daily on divisive topics. The specific topic changes, but the divisiveness continues.
• There is history of powerful authoritarians investing heavily in divisive propaganda, primarily to break apart and distract groups of people who could overthrow them.

What I have laid out is not proof that today’s billionaires are directing their staff to verbally attack minorites at any opportunity.

But it certainly is something to think about next time a vicious rumor about a minority group comes along.

Edit: Yes. I do understand that neither men nor women are minorities. But there’s still enough differences to allow pushing a divisive narrative, which I suspect is enough reason for certain motivated people.

And to the “could just be a shitty set of incentives” argument. Fair enough. It could be. It’s highly suspicious, but it could be.

Would you accept “under-regulated capitalism” or “capitalism treated as an ideal rather than a tool” as a more specific root cause?

the need to constantly change jobs to move ahead financially also keeps people on unsteady ground with relationships.

That’s a great point.

Can I find a broken window and start sanding it with sandpaper, as an extreme example?

Yes, provided you have a way to polish it back to transparent again, after changing the shape.

Linux Mint is so nice.

I would turn off “Secure Boot” in BIOS before doing the upgrade.

It officially works, but can throw in unnecessary challenges - and Mom probably isn’t traveling with national secrets next week anyway.

I text my friends. I assume that everyone else just thinks I died.

The move between seeing “your brother in law took the kids to the zoo” to “your brother in law liked this trash article” was such a jarring transition.

It was awful.

“Oh, look. He’s a little bit racist. Now I get to know that. Thanks Facebook.”

Yes. Web apps existed before JavaScript.

Exactly. My phone is for texting and calling out. Receiving calls is an unfortunate bug.

Perfect score. Social obligations fulfilled: 100%. Words spoken: 0. Emotional energy cost: 40%.

If you want my advice, talk to them constantly as if you are the narrator, and smile and make eye contact at every opportunity.

This is great advice.

I’ve always done this, and my kids all started talking surprisingly early.

But my motive is just that it calms them.

Some baby fussiness comes from insecurity, and I find that a running narration makes them more relaxed about being set down and returned to - that kind of thing.

Basically they get the same comfort from my narration as I get from leaving the TV running when I’m alone in the house.

I don’t know (or worry about) if it really makes any serious long term difference - but it was occasionally convenient as heck when they could tell me what they wanted a bit earlier than I (or anyone) expected them to.

With my last kid, I felt more brave and also mixed in some singing, and think they are more musically inclined because of it.

You’ve shared the real life hack.

My kid was born with a love for the opening theme to “Star Trek: Enterprise”, because we were bringe watching it while the kid was in the womb.

Playing “Faith of the Heart” came in handy when the kid started teething.

a) I would not be driving a car with my child in it if I was so tired that I would forget I had a child. The fuck?

I hope you’re thankful for a lifestyle where you have that option. We should all strive to build a world where everyone does.

I’m sorry you went through that. I’m glad you got your trapper keeper, though. Your mom made the right call.

I felt the same, until I had my first lousy sleeper (child who had trouble sleeping due to minor health stuff). After a month of lost sleep, I couldn’t remember my own name sometimes. I read once that sleep deprivation is effectively brain damage, and after that experience, I believe it.

The left shoe trick - throwing my shoe in the car next to the kid - probably saved my kid’s life more than once.

One kind of parents who have these tragedies are tired ones. Which is most parents with small children.

Edit: not relevant in this case, but I’ll take any chance to advertise the shoe trick.

One of the first messages translated:

“Are the monkeys listening? Shit. How long have they been listening? I should provide some context for what I bubbled yesterday…”

It still is, it’s a standard for imaging devices.

Oh, thank you. I had forgotten that!

And also a nightmare.

Yes. Now that the memories are coming back, I do notice most of them aren’t very nice…