Ridiculous comment of the day:

[conuly]

(And boy, it was a doozy picking which one in the thread was the silliest - trust me, you're not missing out if I don't link to it)

How often do you ever see a 9 year old and a 6 year old in a deep conversation with their parents? A child doesn't have the attention span of that length to have a meaningful conversation with parents.

The really sad part here is that the person she was arguing with was also fantastically wrong-headed. And so is the person they were arguing with before she chimed in! It's the world's most boring, full-throttle flame war. Who the heck knew the comments sections to the newspaper comics were so full of drama llamas!? I've seen less pointless animosity in religion and politics forums. Hell, I've seen less of it in mothering forums, and until now I thought those were the be-all and end-all of internet drama.

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Retro Hogwarts Pinups from Different Decades

This Native Tribe Is Reintroducing a Disappeared Species on Its Own Land

Millenials can kill anything.... (LOL!)

Time Has Only Strengthened These Ancient Roman Seawalls

Rocking the Stasi

A Dutch sailor’s photos of the New York of 1979 (Check out the comments)

Tiny Jumping Spiders Can See the Moon

Best Practices for Raising Kids? Look to Hunter-Gatherers

“There’s Nothing New / Under The Sun, / But There Are New Suns”: Recovering Octavia E. Butler’s Lost Parables

The Lost City That’s Not Lost, Not a City, and Doesn’t Need to Be Discovered

Historians Uncover Slave Quarters of Sally Hemings at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello

US schools rethink meal-debt policies that humiliate kids (I can think of a policy that will stop humiliating kids - we can institute universal free lunch and breakfast. Bam, done.)

Dinosaurs' loss was frogs' gain: The upside of a mass extinction

The East St. Louis Race Riot Left Dozens Dead, Devastating a Community on the Rise

Father of Migrants

‘Love Thy Neighbor?’

Goodbye Nonpartisan Journalism. And Good Riddance.

What it's like to be a journalist in 2017. (Chilling.)

‘I was sold seven times': the Yazidi women welcomed back into the faith

Iraqi forces have killed thousands of Islamic State fighters. In death, what do they deserve? Seeking answers in the ruined city of Mosul, Kenneth R. Rosen unearths a terrible crime.

Comments

[konsectatrix]

Oh fantastic, a Roman concrete article (different source, but whatever) was the tab I wanted to link and then lost! I couldn't for the life of remember what the topic was.

Also the Millenial post is hilarious, and I want a comic.

[conuly]

I couldn't for the life of remember what the topic was.

Glad I could help!

[dawn_felagund]

I loved the jumping spider article! I feel about jumping spiders the way some people feel about cats. I'd be thrilled to have them raining into my study.

(I can think of a policy that will stop humiliating kids - we can institute universal free lunch and breakfast. Bam, done.)

At my school, enough kids qualify for FARM that the entire school becomes eligible for free breakfast and lunch. (A little-known policy that I worry will be on the chopping block in Trump's America.) It's wonderful! The kids line up and can have whatever and however much of it they want. It's fresh, homemade food that is sourced from our local farms whenever possible. They all also receive a snack at 9:30, usually fresh fruit. This past year, I didn't have a single kid complain of being hungry. I didn't have to stock trail mix or granola bars in my room as emergency supplies for kids who don't eat at home and, understandably, cannot function in a classroom because they're hungry.

When I taught in Baltimore, it was an alternative school that served kids who by and large also came from impoverished homes (or who were "in the system," which is no guarantee that they were being fed at home), and the kids received a "free lunch" from a contractor whose motives were putting as much of the per-student rate she received into her pocket as possible. She once served a tiny styrofoam bowl of chicken soup, three Ritz crackers, and a huge honkin' sugar-glazed donut as "lunch"; one of my colleagues took a picture of it and complained the school director. (Then she'd sit and read a Bible between lunch shifts, and I'd seethe.) The only time the kids got breakfast was when they had to take standardized tests.

I fed a lot of students in that school, as we all did, and spent a lot of instructional time dealing with behavior issues that came about primarily from hunger.

This made me see red, like if I'd been there, I seriously think I would've choked someone: "A milk carton was taken away, and the girl's food was dumped in the trash."

Such is how this country dehumanizes the poor that we'd sooner see food fed into a trashcan than given to a hungry child because, omg, she didn't "earn" it, she might become "entitled"!

[conuly]

(Then she'd sit and read a Bible between lunch shifts, and I'd seethe.)

Did her Bible not include a copy of the Sermon on the Mount?

[dawn_felagund]

I've come to the conclusion that there's actually two Bibles. I've read the one (or parts of the one) with the Sermon on the Mount, while conservative U.S. Christians have clearly read the one with hardcore capitalist Jesus.

[conuly]

The heretical Prosperity Gospel book, coauthored by Ayn Rand.

[larryhammer]

Bah. My 4-year-old has extended meaningful conversations. For values of extended that that encompass 5 minutes, after which we switch subjects not because of attention span but because they then need to think and process before returning to the topic a few days later. Recent repeat topics include death/dying, warfare, and why/how things were different in the past.

[conuly]

I KNOW!

But I'm not terribly surprised if they're not having meaningful conversations with her.

[larryhammer]

... fair point, that.

[kyrielle]

Hee hee hee hee OKAY POINT.

I would kinda love to see her deal with my five-year-old on a stomping mad social justice tear, however. I mean, this was a couple months ago now but it stuck with me:

"Mama, what's that picture you are looking at?"

"It's a bus painted for a protest. (Read text to him.)"

"Mama, what does that mean?"

"They're trying to say that everyone born with a penis should always have to be a boy, and use the boy's room, and everyone born without one should always have to be a girl, and use the girl's room."

"WHAT? That's not right! That's not fair!" (Proceeds to explain to me, at outraged length for his age, that not all girls and boys are lucky enough to be born with matching parts and that they're still the gender they are, not the one people say they are because of their parts.)

[kyrielle]

(Which, as you might imagine, is the further result of conversations we had in the past, and which were clearly a little more in-depth and coherent than she is giving a child his age credit for.)

[zesty_pinto]

Thank you for reminding me why not everything deserves a comment section. Ugh.

[bibliofile]

I didn't know about the East St. Louis Race Riot. Ye gods.