Tag Archives: kids

Weather, Ice Bucket Muppets, Free Range Kids, More From Furguson, and Some Movies

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This entry is part 83 of 100 in the series Today's Tidbits

The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge continues to spread (and pull in tons of money and awareness). Now we’re up to Muppets like Cookie Monster and Kermit the Frog participating.

I continue to be amused. (And, in some cases, impressed.)

There’s still lots of problems in Furguson… and there are so many media-types there to get a piece of the action that they’re becoming a bit of a problem themselves. Pro tip, news-hounds: if there are more of you than there are protesters, you should probably dial it back a bit and decide amongst yourselves who’s going to go cover another part of the story.

Then there’s a new survey out that says a whole lot of people don’t think any kids under 12 should ever be out and about unaccompanied. That’s just ridiculous. Most of the people who think that have obviously forgotten that they likely survived a whole lot of unaccompanied time growing up. (Especially if they’re my age or older.) These are likely the same parents that complain like crazy about being run ragged trying to get their kids to all the meticulously planned (and structured) activities they’ve pushed them into. Send ’em out to climb a tree, dammit. Falling teaches you about physics… and risk management. Coddling them until they’re in their teens gives you “adults” who can’t deal with the real world.

And, as you scroll through the feed, you’ll also see a few trailers for movies that look new and different and interesting. Probably not blockbuster theater “success” stories like Guardians of the Galaxy… but likely infinitely better writing and acting than all the movies everyone will hear about.

Here’s the feed…

Science, Aliens, Sexism, Stupid Application of the Law, and Buzz Aldrin

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This entry is part 60 of 100 in the series Today's Tidbits

I’ve been fiddling with websites all day–first at the day job and then after I got home.

But, pretty much every site I have my fingers in is up to date now. So, that’s good.

Sadly, this is the only one of my own sites that gets regular content these days. (And, really, calling some of this intro text “content” is really a stretch… and the FB feed reposting doesn’t count at all.)

I have a plan for tomorrow’s feed… I should have pre-loaded everything, but I haven’t. So I’m just going to be winging it tomorrow between crunching through on projects. Y’know, just like normally do. But it’ll be more frustrating, because I do have a plan I’d like to carry out.

Ah, well, my own fault for not budgeting time better.

Onward with today’s (surprisingly short) feed… (I must have really been busy)…

Sleep, Misogyny, Sun, Movies with and by People I Know, and Kids Today

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This entry is part 35 of 100 in the series Today's Tidbits

There’s… a lot going on. Not directly with me, mind you–work is busy and stuff–but in general, with people I know and things that I follow, there’s a lot going on.

Just saw a movie tonight made by and full of people I know. And I even had the chance to help make it happen via their crowdfunding campaign. I’ll have to do an expanded review over on Toob Talk (eventually), but, suffice to say, if you get the chance to see Of Dice and Men at a convention or film festival, do.

Then there’s all the hubbub going on about the culture of male entitlement, misogyny, rape culture, and the like. I do have a lot to say on the issue–most of it not even related to the recent mass shooting (which specifically targeted women and was perpetrated by a dude who, while obviously a bit crazy, was at least somewhat representative of an undercurrent in male culture in specific and American culture in general).

And then there’s ongoing talk about the attributes of different generations…

Basically, I have to make a whole lot of time to just write about all of this stuff.

But I also have to sleep… but I can’t do that on my own schedule because of various cultural norms that dictate when a “typical work day” starts and ends.

History Most Don’t Know, Instances of Future History in the Making, Talented Kids, and other Interesting News

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This entry is part 20 of 100 in the series Today's Tidbits

Today’s been another mixed-bag, newsfeed-wise. There’s a lot going on in the world right now and it seems most people don’t even come close to grasping just how much things will change, depending on which way some of it goes.

The big one, of course, is the ongoing Net Neutrality fight. But that’s running parallel to the continued fallout from all the revelations about how the NSA (and other agencies) have been spying on pretty much all of us. Both of those current events have some of the biggest players in the information game at one another’s throats. In the first case, it’s the content providers against the infrastructure owners. The the second, it’s companies like Google against the U.S. government.

Both of these fights are going to get a lot more messy before they get better. There are indications that there’s some heavy corporate influence shifting the sands of the Net Neutrality battle in ways that I (and many others) think will be very bad for the public in general. In the domestic surveillance case, a number of companies are trying desperately to regain the trust of their users (and their foreign business partners) by pushing back against gag orders and, apparently, gearing up for a drawn out fight with intelligence agencies and law enforcement.

There’s more than a little overlap in the “good guys” and the “bad guys” in these two arenas. I find myself rooting both for and against some companies (like Verizon, who stands a lot to gain if there’s no mandate for Net Neutrality, but is also in a position to fight against the government overstepping it’s bounds in the surveillance arena). It’s… problematic, to say the least.

All I know for sure is that the world has been changing really quickly over the past 30 years or so. For decades, we’ve been in a period of transition where out reach has extended beyond our grasp. Waters have been further muddied and vision blurred by high emotions and secret dealings. Even now I doubt we have anything near the full picture of everything going on in these two major battles.

This could go on for years. But I worry that the bulk of the public is either ignorant of the importance of these fights or already growing bored with the legal wranglings and semi-obscure technical specifications. Without the support of an knowledgeable public, the big players are free to do whatever they want, regardless of whether it’s good or bad for the rest of us.

Can’t say I care much for that.

But I don’t have any good solutions, either.