"Hold my beer!" cried Clyde earnestly.

• Kinda true appraisal of the NY Times. For most of my life we kind of looked at their "stodginess" as a worthwhile tradeoff for a global & trustworthy investigative enterprise. But it's probably true that there's no more bullshit coming out of there today than there has been since 1920.

• The ironies abound.

• 1.8 Microseconds might not sound like a very long time, it but actually isn't. (2.5 meters seems like a lot, though.)

• You could never, ever imagine who's reading Steve Sailer.

Please wink if you saw it.

"The Mr. Fusion cut out!"

"Finally, my flying car!"

That photo reminds me of this excellent album.

Anti-capitalist cars grow on trees.

"Taking My Kids Where They Don’t ‘Belong’ is One of My Favorite Things"

https://www.yahoo.com/news/taking-kids-where-dont-belong-102801393.html

As someone else said, it's no wonder the comments have been turned off. (I wish I could have seen them.)

While she doesn't go into much detail as to how much the strangers around her have had to suffer over the years, not once does she tackle the argument that kids can and should be taught the basic manners of certain locations before they can be taken there. (Hint: If kids can sit quietly at mealtimes, but not in public, parents can say "we can't go to restaurants because you still can't behave." Only the stupidest won't get the message. Obviously, those too young to understand shouldn't be taken to quiet places at all.)

And she even had the gall to say THIS:

"The deeper psychology holding many parents back from taking kids places they 'shouldn’t' has more to do with the fear of what other people will think of our parenting, says Zeske. She is exactly right. I have certainly cringed thinking what other people are saying about me at restaurants, on airplanes, and at hotels. I still remember the titanic meltdown my daughter had a café in Vienna—it was so epic I can still vividly recall it 18 months later and I wouldn’t be surprised if the entire city has declared us both persona non grata. Look, I get it that some adults don’t want kids, especially those who throw tantrums, in their space. And these types of incidents might be particularly irritating to people who have chosen not to have kids. Perhaps this is little consolation, but I’m sure the Vienna cafe debacle helped affirm many people’s life decision to remain child-free. So you’re welcome."

And, I suspect she misunderstands countries like Germany. If even beer gardens there have kiddie sections, it's likely because the kids know they'll get yanked out and taken home in a second if they don't behave. Or, has Kinderfeindlichkeit disappeared?

Lenona, I suspect a great many of the parents who take their children places where parents don't normally take their children and and then say, "Everything was great. He was a little angel. Everyone loved him." are or were oblivious.

People who go places to get away from "family entertainment" and the families that patronize such escapes don't usually enjoy themselves when the patrons of "family entertainment" follow them to their non-family getaways.

Every parent tires of minding their own children and finds a way to desensitize themselves to the milder of a child's tantrums, squeals, and other headache-inducing noises. People who don't have children do not. For those people, your child is a volcano about to randomly erupt. So, the childless wait with bated breath throughout the experience, wondering when your precious little angel will let fly with a flung spoon or a high-pitched scream. And when they do, their experience is further degraded.

I've watched parents at nice restaurants ignore their child's high-pitched screams, singing, or even shouting while other guests shoot daggers at them with their eyes.

I spoke with an old man at the blood bank the other day. He never had children and his neighbors have installed a basketball hoop in their backyard for their two boys. Now, the old man has to listen to basketball being played from 3 in the afternoon until 9 or 10 at night and all day on the weekend. When he asked the neighbors to curtail their children's hoops activities, they refused.

To the parents, the children are out from underfoot, outside, and busy wearing themselves out. Besides, it's not that loud. But to the old man, it's like being on the front lines during an artillery barrage. Boom, boom, boom in rapid succession all night until bedtime.

Can they work something out? Probably not. According to him, the parents are unwilling to make concessions to him. They won't send the boys down the street to the park to play out of an outsized fear of child molesters and they won't set an evening cut-off on the games at night. And he's unwilling to simply put up with the noise for a few hours a day - citing the fact that when he moved into the neighborhood 40 years ago, it was quiet and there were very few children; he wants it to have stayed that way.

"It's not that loud," is all they say in response to his complaints. His tranquility has been shattered and the parents are indifferent because they get a brief respite from their two rambunctious boys. They can do the dishes, talk, or watch a movie. Meanwhile, the old man is going stir crazy. To them, their children are engaging in harmless games on their own property.

To him, this world has changed far too much for his liking. He's been left behind from a world in the 1970s which abhorred children to one in which children are accessories to be shown off at every venue.

Jack was right about that beanstalk.

Damn! The flux capacitor is broken!

Isn’t this a Farmer’s Insurance commercial?

Isn’t this a Farmer’s Insurance commercial?

My sympathies to that old man. I'm guessing earplugs aren't good enough, in his case.

In a thread from this spring, maybe, I quoted an article - probably from the WaPo - that said that a lot of weary parents, in addition to having little time to spend with their kids, honestly believe that the cost of a restaurant entitles them not only to a meal cooked by someone else, but child care from the staff. (Just because the meal costs more than take-out, I suppose?)

• For technical reasons too complicated to describe, this is a stunning photograph.

> honestly believe that the cost of
> a restaurant entitles them not only
> to a meal cooked by someone else,
> but child care

Someone on my Twitter feed pointed out that if you ever work as waitstaff or food service, you'll never again be rude to a waiter or waitress.

(Groves Restaurant, 1976; Choo-Chew, 1977-1978)

Remember being young? And made out of vulcanized rubber? And incredibly stupid?

That looks like a very valuable Whomping Willow.

Didn't kids play outside *more* in the 70s?

Neighborhoods have turnover as people age. I imagine when he was 40 all his neighbors were 70, hence no kids around. Now he is older the next generation has moved in.

Usually I side with whoever has been there longer. For example Austin had a bar street. Lots of people in college rented apartments there. It was the 'cool' place. Then those people grew older and had kids. Suddenly having a bar on the first floor isn't such a wonderful thing. So a lot of them tried to get the city to close the bars. I completely disagree with that. If they wanted a quieter more family friendly place to live they should move to one. Destroying someone's business to make your current life more convenient is wrong.

In the case of the old man no one is trying to kick anyone else out. No one is trying to take anyone's property away. The activities the kids are engaging in are standard for that type of property. If he wants that quiet life from 20 years ago back he needs to move and find a new place to live.

I think the GPS needs to be updated.

Didn't kids play outside *more* in the 70s? ~ NicoleK at October 13, 2020 5:45 AM

They went off to the park to play. They went hiking in the woods. They played out in the street. They were not sequestered in their own houses or yards.

Children were sent to bed when the cocktail party began, not sent to a dedicated game room to play with all the other children of parents who came to do some serious drinking.

Look at the popular movie genres of the '70s - i.e., The Omen or Rosemary's Baby. They were not movies celebrating children.

When the movies did feature children, they were not the bright, creative, and happy children of The Shaggy Dog, but the cynical, brooding, world-weary children of Paper Moon or Taxi Driver. They were the misbehaving brats of Willy Wonka or The Bad News Bears.

The MPAA's new "R" rating made sure children knew they were not welcome in the theaters as adult themes were explored in cinema.

Free love was in the air. The Pill meant you could have sex without pregnancy; without the bother of children screwing up the party. You didn't have to be your parents; or parents at all.

Divorce and legalized abortion were on the rise as no one wanted to be tied down to parenthood. Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973.

My impression of popular culture is that we value children more now as a culture than we did then; even when they're not our children.

I imagine when he was 40 all his neighbors were 70, hence no kids around. Now he is older the next generation has moved in. ~ Ben at October 13, 2020 7:59 AM

I would imagine that's the case, too.

From what I could gather, his neighborhood is one that has been gentrified with McMansions over the years, bringing in more families eager to live closer to the city center.

Conan, that reminds me of something else. I don't know in just what decade the term "hands-on mother" began, but I suspect it's relatively recent. (Not to be confused with "helicopter parent.")

Why? Because, even before 1970, when married mothers were typically expected to stay home, even 5-year-olds were expected to be more independent than they are now. For example, it was pretty common for kids that age to cross a few streets by themselves to get to school (if the school was that close by), and in the days before video games and semi-intelligent TV programs, kids HAD to amuse themselves in productive ways, when they got bored, or get put to work around the house. So it stands to reason that kids were expected to learn all sorts of life skills on their own as well, if only so Mommy could spend more time on housework and/or time with adults.

But, nowadays, kids have to be dragged away from screens and forced to exercise, which means pushing them into outdoor activities, such as sports, that they may not enjoy at all, and to convince them that sports ARE enjoyable, the parents have to attend and cheer them on. (My baby-boomer mother, being something of an academic snob, didn't push either me or my brother to get involved in sports. So, she didn't attend games either - but our sports were just school sports anyway.)

Kids also have to be kept out of trouble with the law, which means not just having all sorts of talks about what's legal and what isn't, but also talks on how to resist peer pressure (and shunning IS a form of peer pressure, when you don't have many social skills). Not to mention the need for scheduled intellectual activities that keep kids away from drugs, parties, sex, and unsupervised time with trusted adults who turn out to be criminals. So kids have little time to themselves, which means they have little initiative to learn anything they aren't taught, whether it's domestic skills or writing a resume. Which means parents have even MORE things to teach them!

So, it's easy to see how some hands-on parents have slipped into becoming "helicopter parents." That is, to be hands-on is pretty much a necessity these days, but helicopter parents just keep their kids from growing up at all. Unwittingly.

Somebody missed the turn for Hogwarts?!