More and more I want the option to automatically downweight or hide links from certain sources…

Source on positive headlines decreasing care and activism?

I see the opposite. Everyone believes systems can no longer solve any problems, and have checked out.

Though interesting they’ve been staving it off rather directly; you have millions of colonies die, but you can breed millions more per year to keep the population stable. It is more expensive, and a bit dark for the bees.

As with all economics, the answer is probably complicated. Death incentives aren’t great. Brands partially have value because they can be kept consistent, and some iconic characters have kept a relatively consistent identity across multiple authors. Allowing a free-for-all too early might make those kinds of characters harder to develop?

My favorite variation on this (which probably also has complicated consequences) is that government should, after say ~10 years, get the chance to buy any particular copyright/patent for a sum (based on its profitability, say), and should they choose to buy then the work enters the public domain early. No idea what horrors this hides.

Very similar for me. I suspect Overte will feel better for me when I setup hosting my own avatar, world, etc.

I’ll add that Overte VR is the FOSS competitor. It also runs quite well, though is not quite feature competitive afaik.

We should remember the stories with the records; each is unique and interesting and tells us one way a person did something incredible. But I don’t see the value of starring specifically the stories involving trans folks. I wouldn’t expect us to put an asterisk next to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanisława_Walasiewicz , and indeed we do not: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100_metres_at_the_Olympics#Women

I imagine you would indeed feel weird if you were to have transitioned into women’s swimming, especially if you are not a woman. It would certainly be a story; in fact, it would probably be the only story about you, crowding out any physical achievements. That’s a big part of why this isn’t really seen. Personally, it makes me think about why we want gender divided sports to begin with.

Seems like a good one to quibble about! I’d like to think through it more myself. I’m going off personal anecdote, so if you have data sources to add I am extremely interested.

I think the strongest ‘yes, and’ is to point out that TV and toys competing with blocks were both very much present in the 90s and 00s. In the childcare settings I see, Bluey and paw patrol are world’s better than Clifford, teletubbies, or Barney. Hilde and SheRa are both excellent television. (I do not wish to disparage Mr Roger’s or Sesame Street; note they are still available!)

For toys, I note the spread of ‘Discovery Boxes’ that make those physics lessons you highlight substantially more accessible. You don’t need a mentor whose well educated to steer you towards the cool (and at least directionally correct) properties of nature. I saw only a handful of these before 2010, but they seem much more common now. Compare with the figurines, cheesy electronic noise makers, and furbies.

3D printers are also becoming more accessible (if you don’t know someone who has one, your local library might provide! They’re reaching that price-point), which has allowed kids (and me) to play with interesting mechanical devices, precise shapes, and have some say in the exact toy you enjoy. I know of one little girl who got special printed ‘poop’ emojis, which she helped customize and size for her intended play.

We also have much better board games starting to reach this cohort. Candyland, snakes-and-ladders, and sometimes uno are what I remember seeing 20 years ago. While they still make an appearance, I am also seeing Project L, Sushi Go, and unstable unicorns in playrooms. Classrooms now have Hex in addition to chess or checkers.

We can move the range we’re looking at to earlier, so that we aren’t comparing with the 90s low point (TV still present, mass produced toys still common). However I think as we slide back further, we find substantially more abusive parenting practices, and I think these wash out the benefits of more creative toys. I suspect this is partially causal; parents can manage their children without snapping psychologically partially because we do have quality entertainment for the kids. It’s hard work being entertainment all day. Someone could argue (but I am not confident) that entertainment time is replacing pointless labor/waiting/punishment time, and kids are still spending similar hours running around, playing in dirt, and stacking blocks.

My second argument would be to challenge the premise a bit. I know people who are living partially (or even mostly) for the next big cool movie/book/game/show/toy in their life. Silksong has a release date and I certainly feel better about this next week. I think it’s an objective improvement that the film nerds get to enjoy quality shows from age 3, and I don’t think it would be fair to begrudge them the opportunity (or that so many people take the opportunity). This is a reason to be happy for the kids.

No. Only joy for the new parents and child. (Though I do put in work to shore up their finances, try to get them my next bonus.)

Several reasons: being a kid today is better than being a kid 20-50 years ago. Toys are cooler, parenting competence and training has broadly improved, minecraft exists, and there is some really good childrens TV.

Health risks are largely down, especially compared to 35 years ago. (Anecdotally about 10% of families around my cohort lost kids. Far fewer in the younger cohorts.)

While economic mobility is down, more people means a stronger voting block. Boomers run the world because their protests changed policy. I see indications that kids are a more competent politic than earlier generations (eg, climate and LGBTQ rights), we just need them to matter sooner.

For what it’s worth, the economy is not just bad, it’s breaking. If workers remain this exploited, there will soon be nobody to sell to. We are seeing large (usually stupid) interventions to try and address it, I put nontrivial odds on something sane eventually being tried.

War deaths are low and really don’t seem likely to increase dramatically (see here).

Edit: I forgot to add LGBTQ rights/acceptance! While there are definitely still places that are not safe, many of them were not safe before (and that was just the status quo), I believe the risks have decreased and will continue to do so, while the medical access has improved (and that hopefully will continue, though I’m personally expecting that to get worse before it gets better. I think kids today probably get good care in 10 years, some kids 6-12 are in for a bad time.)

Oh yeah that reminds me. It seems to have killed (possibly with the help of AI summary in search) stack exchange. Iirc you can see the visit rates plummet into oblivion.

I think we have sufficient data to say that social health is at least very different now. See the our-world-in-data topic page. In particular, one-person households have doubled.

4. Don’t remember why.

Some translation tasks. Some how-to stuff. I’m told folks like using it to generate say-nothing replies to say-nothing emails?

Humans emotionally bond pretty easily, no? Like, we have folks attached to roombas, spiders, TV shows, and stuffed animals. Having a hard time thinking of anything X that I don’t personally know a person Y with Y emotionally engaged with X. Maybe taxes and concrete?

shame we gutted social spaces.

It’s a pretty clear humble-brag, no? The launch was only botched because people loved the previous personality; it’s an estimate of how much people care about the product and how much price gouging they could do later.

No it wasn’t good for OpenAI. But I doubt it changed many investor minds.

Oh this I did not know! New with the DLC it seems?

I thought the weapons were samey until I saw some videos discussing it. The weapon combination system is crazy! Some of them genuinely feel unique, playable, and fresh (though I did not reason my way into any of these on my own).

I am so excited to return to it and enjoy the DLC. It was a very satisfying base game.

Linearity hurts it a little bit, but I love the setting and mechanics. Feels really good, and in a different way than many fromsoft titles (at least how I played them). Worldbuilding worked for me, I wanted to spend more time with lore videos than I could find.

I hope it does well and we can see more entries in the series/universe.

(Standard souls warning: I don’t think this is a good first-entry into the souls games. I’m currently recommending “another crabs treasure” for that, and please go right for the accessability menu without shame.)

If they are, we can extrapolate the cause: https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2025/06/largest-ever-survey-of-trans-people-reveals-the-real-reason-trans-people-detransition/

From my LGBTQ spaces (not all of which are particularly sheltered), I would extrapolate that the answer is no. There are, however, a lot more folks working hard to not be visible. It feels very risky to be trans in much of the world right now, and forecasts suggest it’ll be worse before it gets better (at least with respect to governments. Bigotry actually seems to have gone down, with right wing objections more narrow and violence, due to coming out, seems to be down, at least in my circles.)