Because it worked sooooo well when parents demanded for the government to censor content internet for the sake of their children.

We never should have placed warning labels on plastic bags, buckets, and ladders.

We graduate illiterates and innumerates ill-prepared for life and wonder why they want a parental overlord to watch over them, to smooth out the rough edges of life for which we failed to prepare them.

The question this brings up is, who determines what information is false, and by what criteria?

It also brings up the question of why people are relying on social media for scientific, political, and legal information.

"It also brings up the question of why people are relying on social media for scientific, political, and legal information."

You know the answer to this: Learning is harrrrd! Just tell me what to doooo!

(daddy)

This reawakens the old question of just what might an "innocent civilian" be - and the answer is generally some fool who let nameless others determine his(her) fate.

The principal flaw in democracy is that it depends on the citizen to govern, and said citizen wants nothing at all to do with that idea.

Tangentially related. I put this in the nah, it'll be fine category. BTW, the Chinese Commie Party is now a part owner of TikTok's parent company. I'm sure they won't have full access to the collected data.

TikTok’s plans to collect biometric identifiers from its users has prompted concern among U.S. lawmakers, who are demanding the company reveal exactly what information it collects and what it plans to do with that data.

https://techcrunch.com/2021/08/19/senators-challenge-tiktoks-alarming-plan-to-collect-users-voice-and-face-biometrics/

We can count on government to view anything critical of themselves (a scandal, illegal activities) as "misinformation" which should be censored. Big tech was happy to censor any mention of the wuhan lab as the origin for covid for over a year. Why? Because the chinese are such a big customer.
But it gets worse. They have been censoring criticism of BLM which is a political group aligned with democrats 100%, and which has called for arson and killing cops. A facebook site that documents islamist terror incidents around the world has been censored. Pro-life sites are censored. A sitting president (and now past-pres) is still censored. During the 2020 campaign several repub candidates had their content or fund-raising restricted. It is becoming dangerous.

Interesting. Newsom's recall ballot, and the envelope that can tip someone off it you voted to remove him from office without opening it.

https://twitter.com/RichardGrenell/status/1428462786389053443

They're applying what they learned during last years presidential elections.

Moar info on the OnlyFans debacle:

https://twitter.com/rahaeli/status/1428456853802000388

Sixclaws, speaking of parents who can't be bothered to do their jobs...

Cambion wrote this in response to a hotheaded Redditor who said she was fed up with people who regularly glare at her and her kid in public. (Maybe screaming, running, and grabbing things isn't acceptable in such locations? As the saying goes: "there's a time and place for everything, and this isn't it." Not to mention that plenty of PARENTS pay for quiet restaurants too, so they will glare at the awful strangers as well. I.e., it isn't just the childfree who glare.)

Note Cambion's first paragraph in particular. After all, either a kid is too young to go anywhere but the playground (unless firmly strapped down in a stroller) or is too OLD to be a serious hazard, whether to a server carrying heavy trays - or to people's eardrums. Learning not to run and scream can be taught at HOME, first.
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Cambion:

It's very possible to make kids behave in public. I mean sure, once in a while they're gonna have a tantrum because kids have short fuses, but kids who are trouble the second they set foot in the outside world have a parenting problem, not a being a child problem.

Great example from college. My professor's childcare fell through and she had to bring her son (about 8-9 years old) to class and I rolled my eyes because I figured this little turd was going to disrupt my learning that I'm paying thousands of dollars for. Nope! Kid sat right up front where Mom could see him, he was dressed in a little suit and hat and he didn't make a peep the whole two hours I was there. No crying or rolling on the floor, no crunching on snacks, no asking mommy to take him to the bathroom, no pestering the students with "whatcha doin'? Why? Why? Why?" I suspect the mom might have been a bit of a ghetto momma and didn't take anyone's ----, especially not from her own kid. Kid was better behaved than some of the students!

It's just easier for most parents to not bother fixing their kids' awful behavior and simply expect the rest of the world to tolerate it so they don't have to do their damn jobs. Only they'll call it "child-led learning" or giving their kids "freedom" or "space" to "learn" or whatever. Yeah, they aren't going to magically learn to not be -------- if you just ignore their bad behavior! It's like unschooling - letting your kids learn whatever they want at their own pace results in ---- ---- brats who can't do anything but play Minecraft...
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Toraneko said:

I had a similar experience a few years ago. I was taking some geology classes and one of the professors had no one to watch his kid that day. This was a fairly young girl, maybe around 6, and he was teaching in a small auditorium style classroom, probably at least 120 seats. She looked intimidated, but she mainly just sat in a student desk near his podium coloring the whole time, which was something like 75 minutes. She never got up or made a sound. Fortunately, that was the only time a kid was brought to one of my classes. And I agree, she was much better behaved that the spoiled bratty students.
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And here's the thread Cambion was responding to.

https://old.reddit.com/r/breakingmom/comments/p7c961/a_letter_to_childfree_or_people_with_grown/

One commentator said: "They should thank the parents who bring screens along. As far as I know, there's only one other way to make children sit still and not engage with anyone."

Only one? (I take it that person meant hitting or some such.) Has that person never heard of paper and crayons, reading a book (at restaurants AND at home), or Learning to Make Quiet Conversation With Boring Adults, a skill we ALL need to learn as early as possible? We all need to learn how to deal with plain, boring, LIFE instead of reaching for the remote - and expecting someone else to pay for the entertainment.

Not to mention that no one in the thread offers any proof that old-fashioned parenting methods are automatically hurtful in the long run.

(Within reason, of course. Car seats ARE necessary and always were. Over-use of playpens WAS bad, because babies needed to explore, interact, and grow their brains. Giving babies and toddlers opiates - pre-WWI - to make them shut up and sleep was horrible for lots of what-should-have-been-obvious reasons. Saying "do as I say, not as I do" never made sense. Parents who refused to apologize when they were clearly in the wrong didn't encourage respect. Etc.)

Pediatricians now AGREE that kids under two should not watch screens at all - and it clearly isn't harmless for older kids, either. So, there's nothing harmful about pushing three-year-olds to play with others or self-entertain, when alone. (There can be a two-hour daily limit on screens, including texting, because face-to-face social skills are essential.) Also, most would agree that tantrums need to stop by age four at the latest, even at home. Btw, as I've mentioned, it doesn't matter which part of town I'm in - in stores, the ONLY kids I see throwing tantrums are those under three feet tall - and who are strapped down. Chances are the well-behaved kids didn't simply outgrow their bad behavior.

"We never should have placed warning labels on plastic bags, buckets, and ladders."

Warning labels on pistols always made me laugh.

Thanks for the only fans update Six. It seemed like an odd decision but now makes sense. The Biden administration is continuing the Obama administration's policy of preventing businesses they don't like from accessing the standard baking system.

We never should have placed warning labels on plastic bags, buckets, and ladders.
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Well, in theory, yes, parents, at least, should have enough common sense to keep small children away from those things, even without written warnings, since toddlers misuse everything.

But, one could argue that a century ago, before birth control and antibiotics and so on, people just EXPECTED at least one of their dozen or so children to die anyway, for one reason or another, and so the parents didn't do much to prevent that. (I've never even heard of a 19th-century parent who made a lot of effort to keep small objects away from babies, who choke on such objects.)

Nowadays, parents of one or two kids are more obsessed with not losing them and are expected to keep up with all kinds of research - including prenatal care - that their parents didn't tell them about, since they never knew. (Lead paint, for one.) Even so, most of them just CAN'T remember what it's like to be under a certain age - and to have no understanding of danger in general, at that age, so the parents have to be taught, again and again, how to prevent such situations.

From The Good Earth, which begins just after 1900, I think (Wang Lung and his father are waiting for Wang's wife, O-lan, to give birth):

Father: "Ah me, to think that out of all the children I begot and your mother bore, one after the other—a score or so—I forget—only you have lived! You see why a woman must bear and bear.”

Lenona, I think you misinterpret me. I was thinking less about parental responsibilities and angst, and more about Darwinian culling of the stupid. It isn't much of a leap to predict a general degradation of human intelligence as we try to impart a world of perfect safety so that the dumbest of us survive to breed. I suspect something similar is happening with regard to immune systems and general human healthiness vis a vis modern medical practices and our obsession with cleanliness. Biology will eventually figure out a way to make our antibiotics obsolete. It's going to be like watching "War of the Worlds" backwards.

I was thinking less about parental responsibilities and angst, and more about Darwinian culling of the stupid.
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Except that adults are NOT the ones who put plastic bags over their heads - or who drown in small buckets. Had you cited mostly examples that are far more common to ADULT behavior, my response to you would have been completely different.

There's a reason that the editor of The Darwin Awards books - IIRC - refuses to print stories about children - and most teens, maybe? - who manage to kill themselves. It wouldn't be fair, period. Such deaths should not be presented as funny or justified.

Even intelligent adults can't necessarily be expected to act on information that was never taught to them. I knew a married couple from the Greatest Generation, highly educated, old-money, who had to be taught about flossing, in adulthood. (A few millennia ago, one could DIE from a rotten tooth.)

"Except that adults are NOT the ones who put plastic bags over their heads - or who drown in small buckets."

Are you sure about that?

Besides, I don't know any toddlers who read warning labels. And if you are expecting parents to suddenly become smart and responsible about protecting their children because they read a warning label, I think you are expecting too much.

You asked for examples of why adults 'need' warning labels, lenona. Just try youtube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCNiNmP2l2I

Are you sure about that?
______________________________

Of course I am. How often do you hear of adults who die from plastic bags - unless they're committing suicide, as novelist Michael Dorris did in 1997? (He drugged himself first, to be efficient.)

What's more, I know for a fact that it's been more than half a century since warnings about plastic bags became widespread, which is likely why we don't hear that much about small children getting hurt that way either, anymore. So how do you know that parents, on AVERAGE, don't take that warning seriously?

(According to Family Education, only 20 children die that way each YEAR. But, the CDC says: "Drowning was the leading cause injury death for those 1 to 4 years of age. For children 5 to 19 years of age, the most injury deaths were due to being an occupant in a motor vehicle traffic crash.")

Of course, drownings include those cases where the toddler wasn't supposed to be near the water at all - or even outside the bedroom - but wandered off.

And, I said adults. By definition, teens are NOT adults, if you were thinking of such cases. (Which is one reason parents try to keep their teens in adult-supervised activities - not just to keep them out of physical dangers, but to keep them out of trouble with the law, such as when teens egg on their peers to jump off bridges - and both the jumper and the other teens get arrested later.)

You asked for examples of why adults 'need' warning labels,
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I asked for no such thing. But the video was amusing anyway. I kept looking for someone who was standing on the top rung - and not finding such a person. Deliberately reckless, clownish behavior doesn't count the same way.

(Besides, I was already aware of such needs, as I made clear with my example of the Greatest Generation couple.)

And if you are expecting parents to suddenly become smart and responsible about protecting their children because they read a warning label, I think you are expecting too much.
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And how about THIS?

In 1965, about 45% of American adults smoked (I believe it was higher in the 1950s). Surgeon General Luther Terry announced the link between smoking and cancer in 1964. The warning label on cigarette packs began in 1970.

From the CDC:

"In 2019, nearly 14 of every 100 U.S. adults aged 18 years or older (14.0%) currently* smoked cigarettes.

"...Current smoking has declined from 20.9% (nearly 21 of every 100 adults) in 2005 to 14.0% (14 of every 100 adults) in 2019..."

Which means that, from 1965 to 2019, the adult American smoking population dropped by more than two-thirds. Did warning labels - and parental influence - have so little to do with that?

"Which means that, from 1965 to 2019, the adult American smoking population dropped by more than two-thirds. Did warning labels - and parental influence - have so little to do with that?" ~Lenona

Quite frankly, yes. Smoking boomed in the US due to WW1 and WW2. As those generations age out so has smoking.

https://daily.jstor.org/a-brief-history-of-tobacco-in-america/

Interestingly the use of tobacco is heavily tied to war. The move from pipes and snuff to cigars and chewing tobacco in the US is tied to the US revolutionary war. The switch to machine rolled cigarettes in the US is tied to the US civil war. There are similar ties between tobacco use in other nations and their history of war.

As for warning labels, the harmful effects of cigarettes were not exactly secret. Instead both before and after WW2 it was very common knowledge. The same with alcohol. You don't have to be too smart to notice problems with alcohol consumption and there are records of priests lecturing against 'the devil's brew' for centuries. Similarly in 1603 James the first of England pushed for preventing tobacco use there. Pretty much since the western world discovered tobacco it's use in all it's various forms has been a vice, with known harmful effects.

Rather than warning labels the greatest thing that lead to the reduction in smoking in the US was the US federal government no longer pushing the habit.

We've had plenty of wars since WWII, and young people start smoking every day. What's your point?

(Even if cigarettes HADN'T been part of a soldier's rations, soldiers have typically had to pay for their own booze and did, so the stress of war could easily have pushed them to start smoking as well.)

And some doctors were pushing tobacco in the 1930s - including King George VI's doctor, apparently. (Unlike with heavy drinking! Btw, unlike with drinking, there's no such thing as "safe smoking.") Plus, there were even TV ads for tobacco in the 1950s. Just because THAT no longer happens, it hardly means that tobacco billboards have had little power to recruit the young - as many have fiercely complained. (That may well explain why the current adult smoking rate isn't lower.)

From 2015:

"Survey Finds Higher Smoking Rate Among Millennials"

https://www.csnews.com/survey-finds-higher-smoking-rate-among-millennials

First third:

RICHMOND, Va. — A new survey found that not only do Millennials have the highest smoking rate, but they are also more likely to hide the fact they smoke.

According to the survey conducted by Ipsos Public Affairs on behalf of Swedish Match, the highest rates of smoking are among 18- to 34-year-olds (23 percent), just ahead of 35- to 54-year-olds (22 percent) and also higher than those age 55 and older (17 percent).

In addition, 21 percent of the Americans surveyed say they are current smokers, with 23 percent saying they have quit and 42 percent saying they have never had a cigarette, a figure that jumps to 54 percent among college graduates. Among those who quit smoking, 56 percent said they did so due to fear of health complications, with 32 percent giving up cigarettes due to cost...

(snip)

Of course, as others point out, the oldest people are more likely to have QUIT smoking, over the years. (And thus survived.)

I guess my point is you need to educate yourself instead of looking for random data points to pick and choose to support your already chosen positions. Good luck with that.

"Doctors" were regularly featured in such TV commercials, as it happens. (Maybe some of them WERE doctors?)

And:

https://www.thestreet.com/video/last-televised-cigarette-ad-wall-street-history

"...On April 1, 1970, President Richard Nixon signed legislation officially banning cigarette ads on television and radio. At the time, tobacco companies were the single largest product advertisers on television in 1969.

"By the early 1970s, the fight between the tobacco lobby and public health interests forced Congress to draft legislation to regulate the tobacco industry..."

(snip)

However, I couldn't find any proof that the "US federal government" was previously "pushing" the habit, as opposed to simply not caring about the results.

I don't see how the Jstor article was comprehensive - or how it proved that the government was pushing the habit. (Talk about a randomly chosen article...) What DO you mean by that, please? Where is the literature on that?

At any rate, the least you could do is come up with a study that proves that the anti-tobacco forces WASTED their time and money (including all those 1970s ads and school lectures aimed at children) over a SHARP decline that supposedly would have happened all by itself. (As opposed to a decline that might have happened very slowly, at the cost of far more lives.)

I'm sorry if I'm coming off as disrespectful. But when you say something that stupid I'm going to point out 'wow, that is stupid'.

There has only been one war the US has fought since WW2 with a similar impact, vietnam. Did the vietnam war have an impact on vice usage in the US? Yes, but not tobacco. Vietnam lead to a huge increase in the level of pot smoking.

As for what you've posted:
1. This is just terrible analysis.
2. The rates you are talking about (~20%) are nothing like post WW2.

In 1940 the smoking rate was around 75%. The average annual consumption rate was 3,500 cigarettes per person. In 1960 it peaked at 4,171. Today it has fallen to 1,078 or so. Which is similar to the 1920.

Like it or not warning labels have not had a significant impact on US smoking rates.

"However, I couldn't find any proof that the "US federal government" was previously "pushing" the habit, as opposed to simply not caring about the results." ~Lenona

Every drafted solder was given a regular supply of cigarettes with their rations in WW2.

https://www.defense.gov/Explore/Features/story/Article/1933268/c-rats-fueled-troops-during-and-after-world-war-ii/

On graphic labels vs. the standard ones:

https://www.rand.org/blog/2014/09/graphic-warning-labels-on-cigarettes-are-scary-but.html

As for studies that claim that labels lead to smokers quitting? I couldn't find any. I did find this one that showed they were informative. But nothing I could find showed any increase in quit rates or reductions in start rates.

https://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/15/suppl_3/iii19

Yes the anti-tobacco people probably wasted their time on labels. Perhaps not on other things.

Every drafted solder was given a regular supply of cigarettes with their rations in WW2.
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And, again, the article you linked to wasn't that informative as to WHY that happened. What gives?

Aside from the fact that smoking tobacco curbs your appetite (which the article didn't mention), YOU said that the smoking rate in 1940 - BEFORE the U.S. entered the war - was 75%. (What caused THAT high rate?)

So, one could easily argue that providing tobacco to G.I.s was more an act of mercy than anything else. Much like providing a little sugar now and then. It could hardly have pushed the smoking rate any higher than it was before the drafting started!

What did the U.S. government do, aside from that, to push Americans to start smoking? (Obviously, I don't mean the tobacco companies themselves.)

I don't see any real "analysis" on your part. If you're so "educated" on the subject, provide more substantial articles, please.

Not to mention that we can't be sure just how much influence non-smoking parents - including the uneducated parents, who could see PSA warnings on TV, even if they didn't read newspapers - DID manage to have on their CHILDREN, in the 1970s and later. (I wouldn't necessarily expect smoking parents to get away with saying "do as I say, not as I do.")

Lenona, those are 10 year brackets. 1940-1950 time bracket. WW2 was 1939 to 1945. The peak was 1950-1960, the time bracket after the war ended.

"And, again, the article you linked to wasn't that informative as to WHY that happened. What gives?" ~Lenona

Do some research and get back to us.

"So, one could easily argue that providing tobacco to G.I.s was more an act of mercy than anything else. Much like providing a little sugar now and then. It could hardly have pushed the smoking rate any higher than it was before the drafting started!" ~Lenona

No. The evidence directly contradicts you.

"What did the U.S. government do, aside from that, to push Americans to start smoking?" ~Lenona

You wouldn't have an issue with public schools handing out a pack of cigarettes with every school lunch? You wouldn't call that 'pushing' or 'encouraging' smoking?

End of the day I've shown evidence that contradicts your claim that warning labels lead to a reduction in smoking rates. Show some evidence that claims they do. That you can't believe something is irrelevant. That you can't do 'analysis' is your issue.