…the consequences of falling were not well understood yet
Eh? Cliffs, trees; fall off anything at 10 meters or higher, and your odds of dying are around 50%. I’m pretty sure folks were aware of the consequences long before Eiffel showed up.
Perhaps it was more that risk taking and dying young from various illnesses was a thing that happened around you a lot, so you were more accustomed to it and didn't expect to live to 80.
This behavior is probably overrepresented in the bougie places reporters live.
I live in Redmond, WA. Bougie? My rube Midwestern ass thinks so. And there are feral kids all over my neighborhood. Plenty of kids walking to school in groups, or solo. Neighbor kids talk about riding the bus/train to places. Granted, there are a lot of immigrant families around here (hello, Microsoft, et al.), and I'm sure that skews things.
Whenever these conversations come up, I've always noted that they don't really seem to apply to the PNW. My neighborhood (in Seattle proper) has lots of kids running around as well. Neighborhood kids will stop by to pickup my son and whisk him off to some adventure down the block. Getting your kid back involves listening for the correct sounding screams of joy as you walk around and figure out whose yard they are in.
Seattle also has a pretty decent policy around the radius for kids walking to school, so there are always gaggles of kids walking together to and from school for elementary and even some middle schoolers. The high schools are spaced far enough out that kids use buses at that age.
My coworkers in lower CoL areas seem mystified why I'm paying an arm and a leg to live in Seattle to raise a kid. And yeah there are some serious downsides (20-30k a year daycare, restaurants are too expensive to go out to often, even take out is insane), but there are kids playing soccer in the streets after school and kids setting up lemonade stands in the park.
That's what I'm paying for - A city that is built for people to live in, not just for cars to drive around.
That's why I'm quite happy to live in Vancouver BC as well. No kids (and I'll never own a home), but if I did, I can't think of a better place to raise them compared to other car-dependent hellscapes where nobody trusts each other.
It is a function of road design. If the neighborhood is just houses with all the places to go located on 40mph+ roads (meaning people are driving their high grill head height SUVs and pickup trucks at 50mph+ while looking at their phones), possibly without sidewalks, I’m not letting my kids go out there alone until they are teenagers.
Also, places are just too far due to the aforementioned 6 lane roads and 100ft+ wide intersections. And crossing those intersections on foot, in daytime, is daunting as an adult.
People decry this as socialism but remember that gated communities with security guards also cost money.
Whenever I get angry about 40 percent of my paycheck going to the government I try to make a list of countries that are better and it's not a long list.
> The economic growth and so-called advanced economies (think Germany, The U.S, Japan, etc. What's been referred to as the “Global North”) relies by a large proportion on a significant net appropriation of resources and labor from the “Global South” (think Kenya, Peru, the Philippines, etc). This appropriation reaches astronomical levels. In 2015 alone, the north appropriated 12 billion tons of embodied raw material equivalents, 822 million hectares of embodied land, 21 exajoules of embodied energy, and 188 million person-years of embodied labor; worth [a total] $10.8 Trillion in northern prices. Enough to end extreme poverty 70x over.
The West steals $10-$12 Trillion/yr in embodied raw material equivalents, embodied land, embodied energy, and embodied labour.
I've noticed the less American and less wealthy people are, the more normal their kids interact with the world, i.e. "free range".
I don't know what it is about rich white people and freaky helicopter parenting. I also notice it with homeschooling and those crazy borderline eating disorder diets. There seems to be an association there between rich white people and pushing self-destructive behavior on kids.
I personally don’t see its being a case, based on my observation.
There is this town nearby where I live - super white, gives old money type of vibe, very expensive real estate. It’s full of free range kids running around on the streets.
It was shock to me to see it, after our diverse suburb, where kids pretty much either locked at home doing homework or at classes all the times.
So in my opinion there is definitely a cultural aspect of it.
'Feral' seems like an odd choice of word, given the activities you're describing. It sounds like they're just out and about doing totally normal stuff. I bet you wouldn't appreciate someone describing you as 'feral' if they saw you in public walking to the store or getting on a train.
"in a wild or unsupervised state" seems like a particularly apt description of children. it does not seem to be derogatory: language really should be evocative as often as literal.
I think it was the perfect adjective in the context of their comment.
The poster clearly meant it with a flavor of whimsy to it, not in a derogatory way. Maybe also as a tongue in cheek jab at how people they perceived as overly concerned about supervision would describe such kids.
I'll put my hand up as having been a joyfully feral kid once upon a time.
'Feral' seems like an odd choice of word, given the activities you're describing.
I never said the feral kids were participating in those activities. :-) Look, it was loose use of the word, you're placing way more judgement on the term than was ever intended. Yes, the children have homes and parent, of course they're not feral.
Perhaps I misunderstand you, but I imagine those three companies have minted quite a few IC millionaires (let alone management). But maybe high single-digit millions isn't what you consider to be "really rich", dunno.
Trying to set a threshold for what counts as "really rich" is the reason for the comparison I was asking about. My sense is that the average employee of an investment bank or hedge fund is a lot richer than the average employee of Apple, Facebook, or Google.
Amazon and your local auto parts store both sell them, they’re not expensive, so what’s holding you back? Just remember that they burn for 20 minutes or so, and you can’t extinguish them. (Well, a bucket of sand works.)
Even 911 will reasonably accommodate a test call as long as it's not high usage period or whatever, call the non emergency line to coordinate if you're concerned, just say "I wanted to test e911 from my cell phone" or equivalent. Remember, systems need to be tested and testable in real life, not just software engineering! When you set up a PBX or voip phone system, you'd better make sure 911 works through it or someone might have a really bad day.
Only if you do it in a place you’d otherwise not be able to have a fire. I wouldn’t recommend your living room, or the stairwell of you apartment complex.
“LH (Longhorn) is a pig.” Of historical note is that this was sent seven months before the Great Reset where a lot of the work on Longhorn got scrapped. The .NET and Windows teams never seemed to get along after that.
But I was wondering if there's truth to the billionaire class being hypocritical and thin-skinned.
It seems obvious to me, given the public meltdowns we’ve seen over the smallest of slights. IMO, I shouldn’t even have to name names. But it is an interesting difference in perspective to observe.
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