50 years ago, about 1 in 3 of the people around you were children. Now it's about 1 in 5. That makes a huge difference when it comes to the availability of infrastructure for kids, convenient playmates, family activities.

For a lot of young people, parenting just looks isolating

https://twitter.com/cremieuxrecueil/status/1983283987545194554

This is one of the underappreciated ways a population collapse accelerates: when fewer people have kids, fewer people in the age cohort behind them see what it's like having kids, and it just seems like a strange thing that removes you from public life and activities

I watched Parasite again and was struck by how intensely innocent the rich family is

The absolute worst thing they do is roleplay a drunk hookup in (what they believe to be) the privacy of their own home, and it's so unsexy it just underscores their childlikeness and naivete

https://twitter.com/inerati/status/1958758456678060201

Yeah, yeah, I guess the director is super left-wing, you can't project American class dynamics onto Korean art, etc.

But just objectively, come on. The poor people in this film are literally murdering everyone while the rich people are trying to throw a child's birthday party

It's scope sensitivity

The median taxpayer pays around $15k/year in federal income tax

That money is harder earned than most, and it's coming from people who could really use it

Head-math tells them that a single $1M vanity project wipes out their *lifetime* contributions

https://twitter.com/tszzl/status/1857891828357542361

tbc I don't think obscure basic or applied research is the place to try to trim fat either, but it's a powerful thing to show people what someone like themselves is buying for the federal government and it's a study about 'roided up hamsters or whatever

I'd also have had a hard time believing the "Venezuelan gangs are taking over apartment complexes" story if I hadn't had my own utterly insane experience with tenant protection bureaucracy

The police will not help you, period

https://twitter.com/politicalmath/status/1845655032496050523

Now that she's got these people out of her home, I can share more

One of the squatters grabbed her by the hair and tried to push her down her stairs — police took the report and did nothing

By the end she was carrying a loaded gun on her at all times in her own home

I think everyone will find something to dislike in my take on Dylan Mulvaney, which is that there is obviously a desperate cultural thirst for someone, anyone, to just wholeheartedly enjoy being a girl in a way that is politically acceptable — and this is probably a good thing! I do find it reductive and a little bit embarrassing, but man, the culture we have has got to start somewhere. The idea that there is *anything* good about femininity has been MIA for what, a decade? Longer?

My mom's home in Oregon is being seized by "friends" who she allowed in a few months ago, who now refuse to leave & have literally stolen keys to her outbuildings. It's impossible to navigate her rights & obligations because local housing lawyers are booked up w similar conflicts They moved two additional people in; mom can't afford to go anywhere else, so she has four people who live rent free in her house and glower at her as they go to and fro, leaving their dishes for her to clean and taking hour-long showers

There is a whole alternate canon, more vibe than fact, emerging here

https://twitter.com/NGrossman81/status/1607564054343680000

"My lived experience is that twitter was actually always pretty right wing"

Stellar jays have caught on that I'm feeding the squirrels from my window (I guess these are actually "Steller's jays." I just always heard it pronounced "stellar jay.")

Why is the NYT licking SBF's nether regions "Political connections" would probably have been a better broader category, to encompass all kinds of hobnobbing and back-scratching aside from just $

"Just whoring" should probably have been left more generic, to include rapport-building for future scoops

The downstream effects of this have the potential to destroy entire communities from the inside out

There will be support groups filled with parents whose children were put down like dogs by the same people to whom they pay their taxes

https://twitter.com/englishtrad/status/1591614873297104897

If you think this is an exaggeration, you may not fully grok the scope of this program as it *already* exists after just 5 years commonsense.news/p/scheduled-to…

@wesyang IMO most people who think they innately value intelligence in a partner are probably actually using that as a proxy for something else

It's actually a very good proxy for a lot of things — stuff like career/status potential, sure, but also "makes me feel deeply understood" @wesyang I think a lot of people — maybe men in particular but maybe not — want someone smart enough to agree w/ them about most things & elevate their own arguments in a way that gives them greater clarity on their own ideas, more opportunities to expound on their favorite hobby horses

Political violence is nearly always bad. It's also nearly always understandable. For a lot of people, the extent to which an act of violence is one of these two things is a reflection of the extent to which it is NOT the other, and that's why we consistently talk past each other If you viscerally grok that someone can be so different from you that their instincts about which social/political circumstances justify violence are fully incompatible w/ yours, you can either try to eliminate all people like this or find rules that protect you from each other

I think this is a pretty weak argument, not least because it basically implies that abortion is less about what women want than about making sure neither men nor the broader society have to deal with abandoned women and their children

https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1543587723650506753

I feel like one possible solution is to raise sons with half-decent judgment and values

It seems like by the time I got preggo most online baby communities had decided to end the eternal heated breastfeeding vs. formula debate with a truce, which is fine, but the form this takes in practice is basically mindless chanting of the completely inane phrase "fed is best" 1. Breastfeeding is much healthier
2. Yes, but sometimes it's really hard/impossible
3. ?????
4. Don't starve babies, the end

It's not about the house, it's about the priorities represented by the house. e.g. space for kids, safe neighborhood > walkability, cool neighborhood

https://twitter.com/wil_da_beast630/status/1516835012351598596

This is the actual issue

Twitter’s moderation game is unreal. If there’s no remotely plausible TOS violation, simply append a “misleading” label (no elaboration necessary) and disable all engagement aside from quote-retweets

https://twitter.com/TiceRichard/status/1468852040793210883

I enjoy getting into the weeds re: how misleading this actually is, but frankly I also think it’s fucking important that people are allowed to say things on social media that social media staffers consider misleading

I’m struggling to understand how the entire medical & media infrastructure can be so invested in a novel drug with the potentially catastrophic risk profile of molnupiravir when there’s a standard FDA-approved SSRI that performed just as well in a widely lauded large-scale RCT Molnupiravir caused such significant harm to fetuses in animal models that Merck has suggested ensuring contraceptive use during *and* after treatment, actively generates mutations that could theoretically lead to new variants & has a mechanism of action that may cause cancer

The media has gone absolutely schizophrenic on omicron, just totally unable to draw a coherent narrative or practice any patience where it’s owed — and even the most forgiving portion of its audience seems to be tired of getting pulled through the panic/blame shredder A key phrase I’m seeing a lot is “giving ammo to the anti-vaxxers,” which IMO can reasonably be parsed as a frustrated expression of that which cannot be stated plainly: the people committed to following institutional advice are tired of being kept in a coercive state of panic

Somewhat optimistic takes on Omicron out of South Africa bloomberg.com/news/articles/… Omicron is spreading fast, but no confirmed deaths globally so far. Depending on how long it’s been spreading, that could be a *really* good sign google.com/amp/s/www.alja…

They don’t tell you this, but (non-abusive) fighting and rough patches in the context of a committed relationship where neither person is afraid that the other person is going to reject them or leave are SO much better than the serial monogamy dating roller coaster Looking back I don’t know how anyone gets anything done when they’re spending their 20s and 30s with zero relationship security. Some people are probably wired to tolerate this better than others, but geez, it just consumes so much human compute

I usually argue a bit with Aella on this stuff, but honestly in a culture with low expected commitment norms she’s right that monogamous defaults basically just lead to serial breakups to trade up or enjoy the perks of novelty

https://twitter.com/aella_girl/status/1455627629449515010

Hesitantly accepting a polyamorous lifestyle so your partner doesn’t “have to” leave you when he or she wants to cheat doesn’t seem like such a big win to me though