There’s definitely a lot of truth to “A man is only as good as his conditions allow him to be.” However, that’s not really a good excuse to emigrate to another country and not respect the cultural norms of where moving to.

Let’s be cautious in assuming that all paywalls protect labor.

Ehhh, there’s a lot of liability in picking a choosing who can attend. Ripe for a discrimination lawsuit.

I’d actually hazard a guess that on average, parents are older these days. I don’t think the issue is really young parents, it’s that parents don’t discipline now. They just shove a screen in front of their kid instead of having a meaningful conversation. Parents now were raised with somewhat instant gratification and it’s even worse with their kids.

How does that solve the problem with unruly children? It just puts them in a new school with more liability than when they were just teachers.

I’ve been informed that I misunderstood the question and we can offer to contribute whatever we would like regardless of our qualifications. If that’s the case, I would propose antibiotics.

I guess I misunderstood the question as being what we we’re capable of personally contributing.

If it’s just hypotheticals, I would contribute antibiotics and how to make those.

Ok, I’ll bite.

Why are you qualified to contribute this chapter of a book to kickstart society? I’m totally open, maybe you are a constitutional scholar and I’m way out of line. I would like to understand why you believe that this is your chapter to write.

Yo dawg, I actually agree with you that this is the problem. It’s why I responded to OP that it’s absurd to suggest that they have the skillset to meaningfully contribute to the topic. America’s founding fathers basically dedicated their lives to democracy. The wrote books on books on books and yet here we are.

I said this in a comment elsewhere, but democracy and human behavior are always going to be at odds. If someone could write a chapter in a book to help a new society properly understand and fight for democracy, it would be done by now.

I think OP is just arrogant to even respond that he/she is qualified to contribute such a thing. It’s some main character syndrome bullshit if I’ve ever seen it on here.

I’m not sure your comment contributed much either. Just comes across incredibly arrogant to me.

The follies of democracy are mostly due to human behavior. It’s a complex topic and the idea that YOU can distill it into something meaningful is laughable to me. America’s founding fathers spent most of their lives dedicated to this and look where we are now.

It’s cool, you all can downvote me for being realistic. I thought this was an exercise in actual skills one could contribute, not pipe dreams. At some point, humans have to reconcile with human behavior not being congruent with democracy, but sure, you’ll write a chapter and society will figure it out.

Come on, y’all have to be more in touch with reality than this, right?

Considering no one has truly figured out how to make a Democracy survive, I’m impressed this is your contribution. You should probably be writing books before this one, if you have answers.

Jesus man, ok. Let’s get pedantic about this. I’m sick, I’ve got time.

Parent comment of this thread is:

Disposable products are gonna have problems to keep them cheap. The solution to straws is non-dispossble straws, always was.

Also this is still a silly topic, straws won’t save the planet.

So, on the table are both forms of straws. In fact, the immediate response to the parent comment leads with

Or stop using straws all together.

A few comments later you say

Straws are useless

To which I call you out and point out that they do, in fact, have a use. Instead of just conceding that they do have a use for a subset of the population, and aren’t totally useless, you pivot to disposable.

In context of this conversation, you absolutely need to qualify if you are talking about all straws or just disposable straws. That’s literally the conversation being had. You just seem to not like that someone pointed out a flaw to your logic. It’s fine to have someone offer different perspectives that cause you to refine your position. Nothing wrong with that. That was my whole point about acknowledging nuance.

This isn’t even a fair argument. The subset of people I refer to who benefit from straws would have had a whole host of different things working against them pre-straws. Sort of a silly strawman because that’s not my point. I honestly think you just forgot to qualify a previous statement by emphasizing that you think plastic straws are useless and not all straws are useless. I was responding to your blanket statement that straws are useless.

I agree that disposable straws are useless, no disagreement there. It’s why I own metal ones. I disagree that straws themselves are useless. They are useful.

Calling straws useless is a bit much. They’re usually excessive, but not useless. Ask your grandmother who can no longer drink from a glass properly. Or a quadriplegic.

There’s nuance in everything, my friend. You’d serve the world better to acknowledge it rather than speak in absolutes.

They’re not difficult to make, but they do require more plastic. Probably about the same amount of additional plastic as a straw, really. It’s funny to me when people only consider part of the equation and not the whole thing.

I just bought like a dozen metal straws that are in rotation. Also, coffee cup lids require slightly more plastic to mold. You’re not really saving too much with that trade-off when you think about it. Metal straws work great.

The US is basically Willy Wonka mumbling “Stop. Don’t.” When it comes to human rights in China. Just the minimum effort to maintain the illusion of caring.

I sort of agree with you, but not quite. The Russians sacrificed A LOT of their own people to beat the Nazis. The weather, terrain, and German leadership disagreements had a lot to do with it. That being said, Russia really won the war with the Eastern Front and yes the Americans showed up late.

The Russians didn’t beat the Nazis because they were particularly good, unfortunately. They had home field advantage, winters were terrible, and Russia was willing to sacrifice anyone necessary to win. They fight differently over there.

What’s interesting is that articles are longer to keep you on the page for ad revenue. Videos are shorter to feed you a lot of different content quickly to keep you around for ad revenue.

Really, we’re all being programmed by advertising strategies and that’s why we’re fucked.

Oh, I agree completely. As the masses arrive conversation generally gets less nuanced and less thoughtful. Group think becomes more obvious too.