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[dragdeler]

Finally a purpose to the toilets.

[martinuzz]

Somewhere to put my Big Fucking Turd 2000

[Loud Whispers]

Sheltering in place? I didn't think there was any crumb (hah?) of truth/inspiration to the kitty litter thing, I figured it was just entirely fantasized into being out of the ether. Although I suppose if anything were to be the catalyst for weird shit in the states, terror/school shooter drills would probably be it.

And yeah, the guy who put this thing together is just a yahoo fuckwad trying to get attention. There's no problem to be resolved, and animal control neither has nor wants anything to do with any of it. There's no way it's getting passed, and he's probably just looking to whine about his nonsense not going through.


But cons getting irrationally upset about even the concept of furries and somehow associating that with animal control is a pretty primo meme. Freshest batch of wackadoodle I've seen in ages.

Wonder when US schools will start installing hesco bastion forts in classrooms

One of my friends is a teacher, she said straight up the kids had gone feral during the pandemic

Not surprising when you think about it. Parents are coping with life at the same time they're trying to raise their kids too. Imagine how the WW2 parenting generation dealt with their loved ones in combat, rationing, patriotic zeal that looks downright terrifying through today's eyes, government propaganda everywhere, living every day for years believing the fate of the world was at stake......how did they cope? How did that reality impact how they parented?

Compare and contrast this generation. Living the narrative of getting squeezed by the US and global economic model. Raised on War since they were kids. Living in a country ripping itself apart politically. Millions dead from a thing no one truly understands. Crammed into their homes due to a global thing that might? affect the fate of the world. Information overload. Zero trust. Disrupted life patterns personally, professionally, recreationally. Everything is harder to do. With all that, yeah, I can see where having the energy to parent just isn't there as much.

It's also worse in the UK where typically both parents are working full time and work the longest hours in Europe. So their kids are genuinely raised more by tech than by themselves. And you get all the usual sad cases of extreme addiction to social media, video games, porn, chronically online children and parents can't really do anything about it because they barely see their own kids. I spoke to one mother who was at her wits ends, cos her kid was a former straight A student but was spending every spare hour on fortnight. School just told her "lol just take away his computer, take away his phone" and she complained to them saying it was easier said than done, especially when every school work submission needed to be done online. There's that contradiction between ppl complaining that young people spend too much time on their phone without addressing why in some places you can't travel, buy anything, socialise, get a job or even read a fucking restaurant QR code menu without having a smartphone

[Ulfarr]

It's also worse in the UK where typically both parents are working full time and work the longest hours in Europe. So their kids are genuinely raised more by tech than by themselves. And you get all the usual sad cases of extreme addiction to social media, video games, porn, chronically online children and parents can't really do anything about it because they barely see their own kids. I spoke to one mother who was at her wits ends, cos her kid was a former straight A student but was spending every spare hour on fortnight. School just told her "lol just take away his computer, take away his phone" and she complained to them saying it was easier said than done, especially when every school work submission needed to be done online. There's that contradiction between ppl complaining that young people spend too much time on their phone without addressing why in some places you can't travel, buy anything, socialise, get a job or even read a fucking restaurant QR code menu without having a smartphone

You know what, I'm gonna say something extreme (sic).

Parents should adapt to the current era and stop waiting on others to deal with their kids. It's 2024, most of the parents with school age children, are what? 20-50 years old? That means they have at least 1-2 decades worth of pc/phone using experience, they should be able to learn how to block sites/games/whatever on their kids devices or even in their home network. Granted that's not a waterproof solution but think about it, either the kids give up and start focusing on their studies or in order to circumvent their parents they start studying stuff that could prove just as useful in their future.

(/rant)

[Loud Whispers]

You know what, I'm gonna say something extreme (sic).

Parents should adapt to the current era and stop waiting on others to deal with their kids. It's 2024, most of the parents with school age children, are what? 20-50 years old? That means they have at least 1-2 decades worth of pc/phone using experience, they should be able to learn how to block sites/games/whatever on their kids devices or even in their home network. Granted that's not a waterproof solution but think about it, either the kids give up and start focusing on their studies or in order to circumvent their parents they start studying stuff that could prove just as useful in their future.

(/rant)

Blocking sites, games, whatever are all solutions which aren't really solutions. For one, kids are usually far more tech adept than their parents. Certainly I know as a kid I and every other kid I knew effortlessly bypassed all school network restrictions on what you could access with just our 10 year old brains. And things like dealing with chronic tech addictions where the tech consumption is actively consuming their life and stopping them from carrying on with their life and their development, yeah you can just take away their ability to access tech through logistical means, but for very practical reasons you can't isolate your kid from tech forever without also isolating them from contemporary society itself. And you don't address the underlying issues of safety or self-discipline, so you end up going to war with your own kid and the moment they're free from your oversight will go back to the same patterns of self-destructive behavour.

The only real solution is to parent your kid, teach them how to use the internet safely, how to have fun without falling for a skinner box addiction, the same way you might prepare your kid for dealing with drinks, sex and gambling without completely losing themselves in the sauce. But this is where the deeper problem comes in; society is fucking broken right now, and there is no support at all for parents to actually raise kids. So median income in the UK for a household is £23,000 but the median cost of just living in London is £33,000 whilst the average cost of raising a single child is £12,360 per year. So it's utterly nuts when young people are already starting their careers in debt, seeing most of their labour wages lost to rents, sustenance and transport, and are then somehow also supposed to not work overtime and raise their kids. Some parents are just fuck ups sure, but a lot do not even have the tools to not fuck up, because every day is bleeding into the next

[Kagus]

Big yep on the lack of support... A lot of the politicians in Norway, particularly center and right, are very concerned about and bemoaning the low (and decreasing) birthrates here... One individual from the Center Party recently came out and demanded that strong action had to be undertaken to do something about this "catastrophic" trend!

...his proposed solution though? Banning media coverage/amplification of "voluntarily childfree" individuals, citing this as "extremely damaging propaganda" that needed to be stopped.


Any mention at all regarding the already insufficient and steadily diminishing support options for parents, particularly young and/or single parents? Yeah nah, bootstraps mate.

[Magmacube_tr]

I'd like to put my own stuff here as well.

The birthrates have also been steadily going down here in Turkey. This is due to many reasons, but the current living standards is the primary one. Children are expensive and so is everything else, and it is impossible to actually raise them because both parent have to work. This is especially the case in Ankara and Istanbul. It is also because the very rigid and arcane cultural and religious requirements and rituals involving the process of marriage. And the constant meddling of both extended families in a couples familial affairs. And then there is the fact that Turkey is 7th on the average age of losing virginity, worldwide.

The goverment has done pretty much nothing so far, except importing low-quality workforce from various Islamic shitholes.

I am actually kind of surprised that this is the state of affairs, mostly because of the saying that goes something like, "Turkey is the Africa of sexual hunger."

[McTraveller]

I'm not sure I understand comparing the median income across all of UK to the median cost of living in London.

That's like comparing the median income in the US to the median cost of an apartment in NYC or San Francisco.

I'm curious though, what you envision "support for parents" to look like. I can't think of "one trick" that would do it - it would need a massive systemic restructuring I think.

[nenjin]

Child care tax credits. Better parental leave.

But I sort of agree that the problem can't necessarily be solved at the government level; the government doesn't control the entire economy. Parents have a median they have to meet to survive. But if they want to thrive and provide better than mere subsistence? Either you gotta work more, or you gotta work for more. None of those are in control of the government. Businesses set wages, dictate working hours and people decide how much of their time they want to spend on working (beyond mere subsistence.)

And the constant meddling of both extended families in a couples familial affairs.

As someone from a country where the concept of the extended family unit has been dying for years, can the extra families not provide support for raising/educating those kids? That's how it used to be in America, to a greater extent than it is now.

"Turkey is the Africa of sexual hunger."

I'm not even sure how to parse this metaphor but I'll just say, tongue-in-cheek, US#1. (I assume it's about the ratio of available women to men. And while it's probably pretty skewed over there, a lot of the world isn't far behind. It's especially bad in India and China too.)

[Magmacube_tr]

Child care tax credits. Better parental leave.

And the constant meddling of both extended families in a couples familial affairs.

As someone from a country where the concept of the extended family unit has been dying for years, can the extra families not provide support for raising/educating those kids? That's how it used to be in America, to a greater extent than it is now.

"Turkey is the Africa of sexual hunger."

I'm not even sure how to parse this metaphor but I'll just say, tongue-in-cheek, US#1. (I assume it's about the ratio of available women to men. And while it's probably pretty skewed over there, a lot of the world isn't far behind. It's especially bad in India and China too.)

For the first one, no. Just no. Extended families in Turkish culture will not only try to choose your life for you, but genuinely get into what you do in the bedroom. And they won't help you with the kids.

And for the second one, it isn't a metaphor. It is an actual saying over here. And I'd say it is pretty accurate. It isn't actually due to the man/woman ratio. It is because of a very pervasive and perverse form of not-so-purity culture that screws up whatever is natural about sexuality so that everyone becomes sexually and romantically dysfunctional. This causes everything to become unsatisfying and tensions to rise, which then gives way to scandals spanning entire villages.

[martinuzz]

Dropping birthrates are not bad. They are the only solution without bloodshed to bring down human population to sustainable levels (well okay, you don't bleed out from famine or thirst either).

They bring about a temporary demographic problem for a generation or two, with a high number of elderly making up the general population, but that is a temporary problem.

[hector13]

The BBC choice of picture to go along with their headline of a dancer dying of an allergic reaction.

The story is wtf in itself (mislabeled cookies with quite common allergens) but the picture was of said dancer taking a selfie, and on the back of her phone was a label that read “fuck off” and a stylized cock and balls.

They have since changed it, but it was an interesting choice, particularly considering they had quite a few other, less cock and ballsy in the body of the article.

[Kagus]

BBC: Best Balls and Cock

[Loud Whispers]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

On the topic of furry drama just thought you guys might like these

[Ulfarr]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

On the topic of furry drama just thought you guys might like these

When you see a meme and adopt it as your new personality:

Spoiler: The meme (click to show/hide)