BahRamYou
10d ago
The obvious issue with that hypothesis is that, in most countries, the decline in fertility started long before the invention of smart phones. I'm sure the phones play a role, but it's hard to see them being the sole causal factor. Unless "phones" here is being used as a catch-all for any kind of modern entertainment technology, including old-fashioned CRT TVs, but I get the sense that the blog author means it literally.
My own opinion is that it comes down to the changing views of women's status and place in society. Technology like phones obviously help to change that culture and spread feminist messages, but it's not directly related to phones or technology at all. A big part of it is that, in the past, there was a relative shortage of men because they tended to get killed off in wars and dangerous manual labor, but now men are the majority in younger ages and there's a scarcity of women.
BahRamYou
10d ago
I didn't say you shouldn't understand them. I said that if you marry into a multilingual, cross-cultural family then there will always be some things you don't understand. What do you do, forbid the wife and kids from speaking their native language in your presence? "I swear to god, if I hear one word of Russian in my presence, you won't like the consequences...?"
BahRamYou
11d ago
I think people should just get used to being in situations where they don't understand every word that's being said. Maybe if you grow up speaking English in a predominantly English-speaking community, you're just used to everything being in the language you know, but the rest of the world isn't like that. People speak different languages. And even if you spend a lot of time studying, it's damn near impossible to reach the sort of native-like fluency where you understand literally everything that's being said in a big chaotic group setting, including the little jokes and obscure cultural references.
But that's OK. You don't have to understand. Most of that stuff just isn't very important. Hell, I met a guy from Glasgow once with a very thick accent, and even though we were both native English speakers I could only understand about half of what he was saying. But we still communicated just fine. People are just spoiled by media these days putting up a perfect translation of everything.
For individual advice, I think it's nice when kids make some effort to still learn and use their family's native language. If nothing else, it'll make their grandparents happy, and make family reunions less awkward. But realistically they'll never be perfectly fluent in it, and it's a lot more important for them to boost their English skills. Just don't push them so hard to practice it that they start to resent it.
BahRamYou
13d ago
I mean, I would hope that they're just teaching it as a text like any other, and letting students make up their own mind about what it means. But I'd be worried that Texas is trying to mandate it into the latter.
BahRamYou
13d ago
So therefore they are adulterating the passage and failing to teach its true meaning.
That's kind of my problem with this plan in a nutshell. The bible is a tough read. You've got this very old-fashioned text, which probably began as some sort of oral history, only later written down by various different people at different times. Then that gets translated from paleo-Hebrew to Aramaic to Greek to Latin and then finally to English. On top of which, a lot of it is just plain confusing, with complex metaphors and moral lessons that only made sense from the point of view of a bronze age tribe living a harsh life. From my point of view as an atheist, some of it is fascinating and great reading, but some other parts are a horrible mess or just plain boring. I don't think it should be used to teach kids reading, because they're inevitably going to misunderstand it. I don't even trust most high school teachers to properly understand it- there's a good reason that theology and bible study is its own unique discipline.
BahRamYou
22d ago
My opinion is that I don't mind a bit of hypocrisy in politicians, or flip-flopping, or even outrigh lying sometimes. It's part of their job.
We don't want politicians to be perfectly honest, consistent, straight shooters. If they were, countries would go to war over basic disagreements, and then just stay at war forever because no one could ever forgive or forget. The job of the politicians is to smooth over those disagreements however possible, and words are cheap.
So for the past few months, Trump and Vance have been saying pro-Israeli and anti-Iran stuff, because they were allies with Israel against Iran. Now they're trying to make peace with Iran and get Israel to stop fighting, so they're saying anti-Israel and pro-Iran stuff. That's just how the game of politics works. But as far as I can tell they would never actually do anything against Israel, and the deal with Iran is still basically "stop bombing, allow shipping through Hormuz, all other details TBD."
BahRamYou
22d ago
I feel like this essay kinda nailed it: https://www.compactmag.com/article/the-lost-generation/
For a long time now, leaders of every organization have been under pressure to hire more women to make things more equal. They don't want to step down themselves, or fire anyone, so the easiest solultion is to just prioritize women for every new position. The result is that, while overall employment still tends male, new hiring is strongly stacked towards women.
On top of that, there's technology and automation, putting downward pressure on employment in general. No company wants to hire anyone at all.
On top of that, there's the relationship between the sexes. Women might say they want an equal partner, but their revealed preference seems to be that they want a partner who's superior to them and has power.
Put it all together and you've got an absolutely toxic situation for young men. I don't like where this is going.
The biggest obstacle I see is that Iran is so highly fractured right now. The IRGC isn't some tight-knit organization, it was always decentralized and now its blown up to hell. There's probably some hardliners who want to keep fighting, some doves who want peace, and a variety in between who just want personal advantage. Even if some sign a peace treaty, there's no good way to stop the hardliners from breaking it. And there may not be any one individual in Iran who can exactly account for where all of their nuclear material and anti-ship mines are.
To play Devil's advocate a bit... isn't there a place for this in any realistic democracy? The average voter isn't an expert in economics, or international relations, or constitutional law. Yet we're still expected to vote on all of these things. The only way this system works is if someone else interprets and simplifies the key issues for us, and maybe that requires a funny pundit more than a technical expert.
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