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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 17th, 2023

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  • I grew up in the suburbs of a midwestern city, where we could run into the woods to play army or ride bikes in a closed neighborhood (not gated, just no through traffic) or walk from yard to yard with no fences except for houses with pools or walk to the next neighborhood over. We were free to explore as long as we didn’t cross certain streets and came home by dark. We walked to the bus stop to go to school.

    Contrast that to where I live now in a major metropolitan city where kids never see “the woods”, can’t safely ride bikes anywhere but bike paths, have tall privacy fences blocking both socializing but also blocking multi-yard sports areas, have no “neighborhoods,” and have to be driven by parents in a car directly to school (where they have to wait in a line of 100 cars to pick up kids everyday). How can kids ever become self sufficient? They have to be parented every minute of their lives until they are 16. It’s wild.

    But that is in the US. When I visit Europe there are kids by themselves on the subway going wherever a 10 year old needs to go.


  • Congrats on missing the point completely.

    This story is a hit piece to make Iran look bad. You think it’s a human interest piece to make people feel sad for an awful thing that happened to a young girl. It’s not. It’s about making Islamic countries look bad for attacking a poor white girl who was just trying to get healthy. It conveniently ignores where and why Iran attacked and what Israel has been doing to get attacked. It completely ignores all relevant context behind the story. It completely ignores the dozens of kids that are getting killed by Israel on a daily basis. THAT is why people are bringing it up.

    And two things in response to this particular post by you: 1) Nobody is blaming this kid. Do you not understand written English? Not one single person said it was the kid’s fault for dying. 2) Nobody would bring up Gaza in a story about a school bus in China because China isn’t out there murdering dozens of Gazans on a daily basis. This is a story about Israel being attacked, so it is relevant to bring up how Israel is attacking multiple countries.

    We all feel sad that a little girl died. But this story was a political story masquerading as something else. You fell for it.





  • Travel was much different for your parents. European travel was actually much more expensive for them, adjusted for inflation. Back then, only rich people casually traveled to Europe (or young kids who stayed in hostels backpacking around). My first trip to Europe was when I was 30, and the cities I visited on that trip are FAR more crowded with tourists now than back then. When I was in college I took a trip to India with a friend who lived there, staying with his family for free and eating cheaply when not at their houses. That flight to India costs the same now as it did 20 years ago, not adjusted for inflation (meaning it is actually much cheaper now).

    Going to Europe now is so commonplace for normal people that quaint little towns are overrun with tourists. I have seen flights from LA to Europe for cheaper than flights from LA to Indianapolis.

    Conversely, for your parents travel within the US and to Mexico was cheaper then. You could get a flight from Indianapolis to Cancun for $150, with hotels being dirt cheap. Flights to Florida were $100, and nice hotels were $100/night. Nowadays, those flights are 3 times more expensive and the hotels are 5 times more expensive. When I was fresh out of college and middle class, I could travel around the US and to Mexico and Costa Rica pretty cheaply. Nowadays, I can go to Europe for about the same price as going to New York.

    Finally, back then people had vacation savings accounts to pay for travel. They would save up all year to take vacations. They would save their Christmas bonuses (which aren’t a thing anymore). They didn’t have cell phones and rationed out long-distance phone calls. They might only have one car instead of three. They didn’t pay for internet. They paid for basic cable, not 5 streaming packages. Their house cost a tenth of what houses cost now. They didn’t buy as many new clothes as people do now.




  • That is WILDLY narrow-focused when considering what is actually required to get this to work as a system of systems. Yes, parts of the system already exist. Getting them all working together with all of the kill-chains closed in an automated “dome” system is a completely different story. And that is ignoring that new satellites and ground systems are needed, which will all need to be defined, acquired, designed, built, tested, and deployed. Building a single GPS III satellite from an already existing design that has already been acquired, built, and tested 10 times would take longer than 3 years. Hell, just the requirements definition and acquisition will take 3 years for a program this big in scope.