Clement Tahershamsi @Clementulus@social.cleverlibre.org

@ross_macfarlane Not mentioned in the article but something I would be curious about is how much of this forest was replanted after clearing. Are these fir human planted monocultures or was this a natural forest? Would increased biodiversity slow the spread of the insects and fungi and therefore make the forest more drought resistant?

@garry We shall see. I still intend for them to use computers and such and to learn about their workings, like I was able to do as a youth. But I do not think that removing the handheld devices (which essentially allow you to access programs at any time and place) will severely hamper their tech skills. But I get what you are saying and I do agree parenting is a huge balancing act.

@Theraviranjankr This is exactly why teaching kids at a young age to be skeptical is so important, but schooling (and our culture more generally) is designed to get kids to just accept what they are told. As a society we reap what we sow.

@RockerDoc @oakster @conradhackett I was actually wondering about this as well, how much does an increase in avoidable mortality lower life expectancy? Did not see a clear answer in the paper but I am sure that it has been looked at before.

@garry I know that there are going to be a significant number of parents like my wife and I who will be strictly regulating screen time for our kids (especially personal smartphone use, which will be essentially none until they are teenagers). I hope that there will be thorough studies on this group versus groups of kids from households with no regulation of this kind to get a good understanding of what thhe effects are. I know that studies are already published to this effect (and the results are not promising for excessive screen users) but we are really only at the front end of this thing, which, in my opinion, is going to turn into an even bigger influence on the general health of our societies than childhood obesity.

@garry I often think about how so many people growing up in this day will have almost no idea what it is to have their mind "wander". This was such a huge part of my childhood, just having so many moments to simply sit and think. Nowadays I have younger folk express genuine shock that I do not bring my phone into the lav so that I can scroll through whatever while I do my number 2! When do people just follow random thoughts these days?

@tswan @stux Food shortages are partially due to fertilizer shortages and poor weather for growing (droughts, heat waves, flooding etc...) our farmland that was once producing more than enough for us is struggling to produce as much as they used to. Tvs dont suffer from that however.

@jasonhickel Hold on a moment. You seem to be implying that the capital owning classes are making arbitrary decisions about what to produce in some sort of vacuum. They are not. 100% of the goods and services produced are to fill demand, whether real or perceived, and the fact is that the majority of comsumer goods are bought by people who are middle and lower class. All of us willingly spend our money, our capital, on an astonishing array of things that are, frankly, purely luxuries. It would be tedious to point to the upteen billions of dollars spent by people in developed nations on so many things that are completely unnecessary (just alcohol and cigarettes alone is astonishing and those are literal poisons!) And if you think that all that spending is just from the "upper class" then perhaps you should look into those stats a bit more. People could chose to spend their extra resources on helping their fellow men, and some do, but most would rather go shopping (or better yet shop on amazon!). The reason Musk and Bezos have billions while unicef struggles is not some conspiracy, its because we all vote with our dollars and turns out, we voted for them.

Why does my 4 year old insist on measuring time in "sleeps". Surely she has heard her mother and I use "days" and "weeks" countless times? Funny what #kids come up with on their own. #parenthood

@yerald I just always assume that a legion of gnomes are hidden away in the walls doing all the paperwork so unobtrusively that almost everyone has forgotten they exist and they just assume that some form of ancient magic does their taxes for them.