> Bizarrely, voter turnout among younger people remains low
I understand why my age group has low turnout. It's a disgusting chore that I force myself to do.
In part, it might be a chicken and egg situation. My age cohort doesn't vote because candidates suck. Candidates suck because they pander to those who do vote.
Now to show my political biases:
In 2016 Sanders had a huge amount of support from young people but the DNC did everything it could to tilt favor away from him. He ran a hugely successful grassroots campaign taking small donations from individuals. Where did it get him? On stage with Biden - the anointed candidates with SuperPAC money. That is no small feat. His campaign ended only after the DNC guilted him into quitting as to "not steal votes". That's my perception at least. I temporarily changed my registration from unaffiliated to Democrat to vote for him in the primaries. Young people put in effort and showed up. It bought them exactly one legally rigged primary.
So every election I put on my clown makeup [0] and pretend like any of this is actually real democracy.
Not all too long ago I had someone port out my VOIP number. They had it for a few hours. This was after I had spent extensive effort attempting to secure my digital life. VOIP was SIM-swap resistant sure, but I totally missed that port out requests default to failing open.
Thankfully the VOIP operator alerted me and pulled the number back. Then I set a port out code.
Who knows how many other holes I have. I lost my sense of smugness that day.
I wish banks would get this memo. Not only is one of my banks enforcing a maximum password length of 6 NUMBERS (no letters/special characters allowed), but also that high-value transfers are only confirmed via SMS 2FA, even though their own banking app also have a separate 2FA thing that doesn't go through SMS, but it's only used for "low-value" actions...
This. My Turkish bank (Garanti BBVA) only works with SMS codes for new logins & payment confirmations, and the app password is 6 digits only, which it also wants (forces) you to change it every now and then because apparently that's a good security measure.
Crappy SMS 2FA or not. Losing your number is a huge pain. Because phone numbers are treated as identity, it also allows the person who took your number to impersonate you by calling into $X service. At least in America.
For a differing opinion, I was homeschooled for six years during and it was damaging. There is plenty I missed out on and I wish my childhood was just a bit more normal.
I'm sure a lot has to do with home life though.
---
There are legitimate reasons to homeschool, but the article itself is garbage.
> You're not qualified to teach your own children
> You know what does predict outcomes? Whether someone cares.
Fundamentally not true. Caring doesn't make you qualified. I care that my car runs well but that doesn't mean I can replace the transmission. My mom with a basic high school education had no business being a teacher. It's bad enough that standards for _real_ teachers have been lowered over the last few decades.
> outperform an indifferent professional
Some teachers (and professors) are mids. Others will change your life. Some care an incredible amount. It can also expose you to a variety worldviews. This could be due to malice (my kid won't learn about sex!) or simply because people are different. Getting a variety of inputs is so vital to receiving a solid education.
> What about socialization?
My last two years of high school were public after a long debate with my parents. The level of change in socialization was immense. Sure, only during lunch did we get to socialize without guidance. Inside the classroom it still happens though. Pretending like a classroom of 20 kids has no socialization going on is silly.
> Second assumption: homeschooled children can't socialize elsewhere. But of course they can. ...church groups...
In my experience, church is the absolute worst place to socialize. If the author thinks the classroom doesn't encourage socialization (I need another word) I'm not sure how they could possibly argue that church does, which behaves much more as a dictatorship than the classroom.
The author does list other activities that are solid imo. But those didn't happen for me. If I went to public school there would've at least been some baseline socialization going on.
> Now ask the opposite question: where are the studies on the system we already have? Those exist.
Fails to cite studies.
> You have no credentials.
And back to point 1.
True, American public schools are absolutely failing while spending more money per student than most other countries. The solution isn't to chuck out the whole thing, have your mom teach your kid with AI, and entertain them with church.
These days, I don't really have friends. And I never really had them growing up either. My entire life was in my parent's home. A good bit of that can be attributed to home-schooling.
The “killer app” would be to open up the system. Apple won’t do it. But I’m not strapping a MacBook to my face for a few grand just to have a locked down iPhone experience.
I somewhat begrudgingly switched to ControlD after years with NextDNS.
The NextDNS web UI is flippin fast and very simple. Feels more akin to HN. ControlD’s is slow and feels so heavy. Maybe more like new Reddit.
ControlD offers Hagezi’s TIF list and allows custom lists to be set. NextDNS’s built-in TIF is very opaque. This was really the deciding factor for me. Unfortunately.
Christianity loves going to war to “spread the word”. See the Crusades. See what’s going on in Israel. See Manifest Destiny. Or, I presume, those “don’t count” because they weren’t “real Christians”.
> and likely die or be enslaved in the next clan war
The Old Testament is full of slavery references and doesn’t indicate a problem with it. Yes, I know slaves must be set free after seven years. That doesn’t suddenly make it okay and it’s painful to watch people use that as a justification.
> technological achievements of the last centuries
Christians love to claim these advancements for themselves as long as it fits their story. Much of our mathematical advancements come from the Muslim world. And plenty of scientists that changed the world were under prosecution of Christianity.
But it is convenient that a doctor (who has spent years learning about the human body) can remove your bad gallbladder then attributing it to your god. Unless you’re a type of Christian that doesn’t believe in surgery, then it’s “of the devil”.
> without risk of being scalped alive?
Well, as long as you’re not a Palestinian trying to survive a genocide that is in part supported by fundamentalist Christians on the other side of the planet.
Frankly, your comment reeks of “white Jesus saved the world” or what many might refer to as racism. Your example of scalping really, really gives you away.
Really, christians are to blame for what’s going on today in Israel??
80th level of dumb, congrats! :)))
> Christians love to claim these advancements for themselves
If you play the game of putting hanging all the dead dogs to christianity, it’s only fair to also attribute all the good achievements to it.
Otherwise it doesn’t look fair or logical, isn’t it? Though I doubt you know what logic is :) you just want to spread hatred
Ps: crusades were pretty symmetrical and reasonable response to arabic expansion and aggression back then. Also it wasn’t in any way unique or more cruel than countless other conflicts and wars throughout the history, there is nothing uniquely “Christian” about it.
These judges are downright anti-American. I’m not particularly patriotic but this country wasn’t fought for and bled over so tyrants could abuse their power with loopholes.
> We all fall into this trap, thinking we can do better than others.
It took me a while to learn this lesson about complex systems.
First week at a new job? It’s easy to identify all the ways things are done wrong. Six months later you begin to understand why they were done “wrong”.
Or: you realise that it was the pet project of someone who is now in charge and no matter how wrong/broken/costly it is, there will never be political will to allow change until they're gone.
> First week at a new job? It’s easy to identify all the ways things are done wrong. Six months later you begin to understand why they were done “wrong”.
I understand why my age group has low turnout. It's a disgusting chore that I force myself to do.
In part, it might be a chicken and egg situation. My age cohort doesn't vote because candidates suck. Candidates suck because they pander to those who do vote.
Now to show my political biases:
In 2016 Sanders had a huge amount of support from young people but the DNC did everything it could to tilt favor away from him. He ran a hugely successful grassroots campaign taking small donations from individuals. Where did it get him? On stage with Biden - the anointed candidates with SuperPAC money. That is no small feat. His campaign ended only after the DNC guilted him into quitting as to "not steal votes". That's my perception at least. I temporarily changed my registration from unaffiliated to Democrat to vote for him in the primaries. Young people put in effort and showed up. It bought them exactly one legally rigged primary.
So every election I put on my clown makeup [0] and pretend like any of this is actually real democracy.
[0] https://rimgo.privacyredirect.com/ZUiVLyz