I had a similar incident; I was in the second lane of a freeway and a truck was going to merge into the first lane from a cloverleaf, and my Tesla freaked the fuck out and slammed on the breaks. I was lucky there wasn’t a car behind me for a bit.

Now that I’m in my 40s with small group insurance, I, too, am more focused on the 63 year old who wants to go after big pharma than I am on some faulty idea of youth. Godspeed, my friend.

My purse got stolen once and my Sony Ericsson T300 (and my favorite lipstick) were in it, and nothing will ever emotionally live up to that phone. I loved it and I probably love it more because it was taken from me before I got tired of it.

Speaking as said older sibling (not yours but someone’s), sigh thanks for the warning, I guess. I was gonna catch it at some point but maybe it’s not worth it. The She-Ra show from a few years ago is pretty good though.

Oh, nothing inherently wrong, but we’ve already had a couple of incidents of bad behavior. My kid got mad about something and sent some angry messages to a group chat that included racial slurs. It was a big learning experience to say the least (for all of us). Since then they’ve learned to unsend their messages, it seems, so while I can say my kiddo learned something, I have to hope that he also learned the things I needed him to learn. Being a parent is so much fun!

Someone is downvoting everything but I agree. I try and keep my helicopter parent impulses under control, but it is nice to know exactly where my kids are. My son (12) has a locked down old iPhone and Apple makes it pretty easy to make it practically a dumb phone. We literally have it set up so that he has to ask for permission before using any apps, with the exception of calling and messaging. (Even messaging is iffy; we want to be able to text him but it opens up texting with friends.) He doesn’t need it at school so he doesn’t bring it, but as he gets older, I’m sure it’ll start to go with him and I’m not upset about it. If he wants to go somewhere with a friend right after school instead of going straight home, it’s fine with me as long as I know about it. Without a phone, it’d be hard for him to make such plans on the fly, and let’s just say that planning ahead isn’t my ADHD-kid’s strong suit (yet—we’re working on it). As long as the expectation is set that he doesn’t use it during school, I think that’s okay; it can just live in his backpack until school is over.

Hopefully the media is changing. Off the top of my head, I thought of “Inside Out,” where the girl is an only child (I think?) and her family is depicted as pretty loving, just going through a tough move. I suspect a lot of kids’ media has also adjusted to two kids max; I’m specifically thinking of shows like Bluey and Daniel Tiger for instance.

CA thing too for sure.

Yes I 100% agree! Making everything automatic also makes people complacent and they don’t check to make sure everything is working as intended. I rather miss my light switch in my car. Daytime running lights are dumb unless they are just always-on headlights and taillights.

It’s a damn drive thru lane, I’m telling you!

It used to be in our bathroom behind a baby gate with a cat door in it (also where we have to keep the cat food), but we got a 2-in-1 washer/dryer combo and it freed up a spot in the laundry room, and I was super happy to get it out of my bathroom! I’ll deal with the occasional heist of kitty roca.

In older cars, where you could manually flip the rear view mirror to dim it, my dad would flip it back and forth trying to flash the person behind him so they’d get the hint about their high beams. Not sure it ever worked…

Back when I still used Nextdoor, I once posted a picture of the regular (green) headlight dash icon and the blue high beam icon, and spelled out what they’re used for and that people should know the difference. I got flooded with hearts or whatever the Nextdoor equivalent of upvotes is, I’m sure all from people who already knew and were also frustrated. There are definitely some people who are either ignorant or oblivious; I wonder if any of them saw my post and learned something? Can’t say the problem got any better.

Honest question from someone who has used a ton of different types of litter-trapping mats: do your cats actually walk on them? My problem with many — well actually, probably ALL of the mats that had any plastic was that the cats would leap over them because they didn’t like the texture. I had a utility mat in front of it for a while that had a fabric top and that went okay but didn’t really trap litter. I’m currently testing what basically amounts to a fluffy rug and it’s going okay I think? Supposedly helps with water/mud tracking also which is great since our litter box is next to the doggie door. (Yes, I have caught the dog grabbing a “snack” and heading outside in the short three minutes before the robot litter box cycles, sigh.)

You’re right and that makes me want to cry a bit.

Supposedly it’s that he stands that way to make himself look less fat, but your version is just as plausible.

I have three of the water bottles on the image and I gotta say, I do really like the Owala. I’m personally a fan of straws but I vastly prefer having something that I can close and throw in a bag without it leaking. The Owala fits that. The only problem I’ve had is if I don’t clean it for a while. I only use water, but after a while the water I drink out of it will start to make my mouth feel dry and taste bad, if that makes any sense at all. I’ve found scrubbing the silicone seal on the lid makes a big difference.

(Also I’m a basic white middle aged bitch so I guess only having three of the bottles in the image is good… right? Bleh.)

I live in the area and yeah, it’s everywhere. It’s become a game to spot the billboards that aren’t for AI companies.

I think these cloud companies have been pretty successful convincing people that at-home storage is more at-risk than the cloud because you could always have a house fire or something, or your hard drive could fail, or whatever. But it seems the pendulum is now swinging the other way as people get wise to the inherent dangers of only keeping things on the cloud, and trusting a company with your data no less.

Maybe the reason they’re sitting mostly unused is because much of the public feels similarly to OP and doesn’t want to jump through a bunch of hoops just to use a tennis court.

I’m so relieved to find a ton of other “no’s” in this thread!

I always felt like I was being a bit antisocial not to go to one. I’ve never been to a college reunion either. I’ve kept in close touch with only one person from high school and a handful from college. Add to that: 1) I don’t feel like I have much to brag about; 2) I would feel icky bragging even if I did. And that’s what I imagine reunions to be, if you haven’t kept in touch generally: just a bunch of near-strangers posturing to each other to feel better about themselves. I just don’t have any interest in that. It’s much the same reason I got off of social media about 10 years ago (minus the link aggregators/forums).