Well, a particularly jarring one is the USA’s refusal to ratify the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Everyone else, including Israel, has ratified it, except them.

Because they want child labour, and to be able to keep executing children, and bombing schools, apparently.

No. Get out.

I was at a shitty crustpunk bar once getting an after-work beer. One of those shitholes where the bartenders clearly hate you. So the bartender and I were ignoring one another when someone sits next to me and he immediately says, “no. get out.”

And the dude next to me says, “hey i’m not doing anything, i’m a paying customer.” and the bartender reaches under the counter for a bat or something and says, “out. now.” and the dude leaves, kind of yelling. And he was dressed in a punk uniform, I noticed

Anyway, I asked what that was about and the bartender was like, “you didn’t see his vest but it was all nazi shit. Iron crosses and stuff. You get to recognize them.”

And i was like, ohok and he continues.

"you have to nip it in the bud immediately. These guys come in and it’s always a nice, polite one. And you serve them because you don’t want to cause a scene. And then they become a regular and after awhile they bring a friend. And that dude is cool too.

And then THEY bring friends and the friends bring friends and they stop being cool and then you realize, oh shit, this is a Nazi bar now. And it’s too late because they’re entrenched and if you try to kick them out, they cause a PROBLEM. So you have to shut them down.

And i was like, ‘oh damn.’ and he said “yeah, you have to ignore their reasonable arguments because their end goal is to be terrible, awful people.”

And then he went back to ignoring me. But I haven’t forgotten that at all.

can we acknowledge that what happens on the internet today is harmful to children?

For 99% of what happens on the Internet? No. No, we can’t. That would be malicious fearmongering.

For the remaining 1% (or less)? Fine and impose sanctions on any companies that produce content intended to harm children (mostly Meta, and any company that makes games with lootboxes), and their CEOs and boards.

Educate parents so they can prevent their children from accessing that harmful 1%. Fine any that refuse, and take their children away as you would any other abusers’.

But this age tracking shit will do absolutely nothing to protect children, it will do absolutely nothing to educate parents, and worse of all will do absolutely nothing to stop the companies that intentionally harm children.

Its only purpose is to control access to the Internet, and to establish a foothold to justify a slippery slope of ever worsening spyware measures, that will harm not only children but the whole population.

This reminds me, I should get back to playing Esoteric Ebb.

I was enjoying it, but then Slay the Spire 2 came out and I got stuck playing that because it’s like crack or nicotine or something addictive and probably harmful for you like that.

*A far right ultraconservative party and a fascist (going on lunatic) party, let’s call a spade a spade.

There’s no such thing as a tree.

Or plenty of unrelated stuff is “trees” to the point that any random plant can evolve into one (and probably has, at some point). Same difference.

Let this thing be a tree if it wants to. It has as much of a right to it as any other so called “tree”.