No, you’re not supposed to get emotional about it. You’re supposed to realize you live in a fundamentally racist society, one that is as physically segregated as it was in the 1950s. And you’re supposed to rationally accept that people of different skin colors fundamentally do not have the same opportunities. You’re not supposed to get your panties in a knot about what is otherwise a very straightforward problem of resource allocation.

Great. We’ll start with equality of opportunity, which requires affirmative action.

Hell, this goes so much further back. I could draw a parallel to the Book of Exodus.

Moses is commanded by God to go to Pharaoh and free the Israelites. He does this by terrorizing the Egyptian populace, a populace that are under the total control of an absolute totalitarian ruler. They literally worship their king as a god. Imagine if Exodus had consisted of Moses telling Pharaoh:

“God says let my people go. If you don’t, tomorrow you’ll trip and break your left leg. If you don’t let them go, the next day you’ll break your right leg. The day after that you’ll break both your arms. The day after that you’ll die of a heart attack at high noon. These same conditions will apply to the next Pharaoh until my people are free.”

There. Moses accomplishes his mission, and the only person who has to get hurt is the only person that has any agency in the process. But no, instead God insists on terrorizing the innocent Egyptian populace instead.

This always got me in Avatar: the Last AIrbender. Half the last season is Aang fretting about how he’ll have to kill the firelord. By this point Aang had already single-handedly sunk an entire naval fleet.

She had an abortion. As punishment, Jesus is making her French.

Seriously. It’s criminal to not include a summary in a case like that.

The truth is that the strength of a democracy has little relation to the birth rate. If you live in the US, for example, you only live in a democracy if your income is in the top 10%. This has actually been studied. The opinions of the poorest 90% of the population have absolutely zero bearing on what government policy is implemented.

The US and China actually have similar levels of democracy. China forms all its policies from the CCP, an organization of about 100 million people. The share of the population in China that has any impact on policy is actually quite similar to the share that does the same in the US.

In the US, we just call our social credit scores credit scores.

This would actually work, though of course you would never get more energy out of it than it took to set it all up. But conservation of energy doesn’t actually apply when expanding space time is involved. The universe doesn’t actually conserve energy in all cases. Or hell, in most cases.

I killed someone. It’s a called a dead name for a reason.

Exactly. There’s a huge difference between being a hobby farmer and actually trying to make a living as a farmer or rancher. Without needing to support yourself off of it, you can raise only a small number of animals you can comfortably care for, grow what you want without concern for market prices, etc. It’s the difference between coding for a hobby and coding for a job.

I’m pretty sure this is why the Bolsheviks just started using firing squads.

Most malls ban unaccompanied minors. And most places where kids used to hang out similarly discourage their presence. The death of third places is a well-documented phenomenon, one that goes back decades before anyone dreamed of social media. And while kids have been forming their own communities since the dawn of time, kids haven’t been raised in suburban hellscapes since the dawn of time. If you can’t drive. If there’s no way to your neighorhood except a giant highway that’s impossible to bike on, how in the hell are kids supposed to meet up with each other in person? Digital technologies are really the only way kids have to socialize nowadays. We’ve taken everything else from them.

These laws are written deliberately broad to enable mass censorship. They don’t just ban sexual material, but use vague statements like “objectionable material.” Actual real-world news is being censored and kept from the eyes of teenagers. Pretty much anything on the Gaza war is considered objectionable material and inappropriate for children to learn about.

Nah. It’s not an age issue. It’s a social media issue. This stuff is bad for everyone. If you want to protect kids from the dangers of social media, start regulating how social media works for everyone. Why is it ok to start poisoning someone’s mind the minute they turn 18?

Yes. The societal level solution is the parents of the society choosing to do their jobs.

And the suicide rate of queer and other marginalized kids will skyrocket. What’s a few thousand dead kids in the name of protecting the children, right?

No you ass. What do you want, for the parents to hover over their kids 24/7? There’s is no realistic way even the most well-intentioned parent could ever keep their kids off this stuff.

My parents had a two hour per day limit on using the computer. The one exception was if we were using it to do homework.

You’re just not very imaginative.

Where are children supposed to meet and socialize? We already took away all their in-person spaces.

Truthfully, to ensure I receive better treatment.