There are a number of high profile candidates who very clearly articulated “not right vs left - top vs bottom” at every turn. Class awareness is growing. Not sure if it is widespread enough to have a big impact yet, but it is becoming part of the conversation.

And let’s be clear here - “Christian Nationalism” is not Christian at all. I’m not Christian but far as I can tell Jesus himself was a “love each other” guy not a “political power” guy. I’m all for rebelling against the church but Jesus the guy had some great teachings and was in no way seeking political power. I don’t have beef with him.

Cowboys are awesome - but there were a lot of stereotypes of Native Americans + women associated with that era. It’s unfortunately tricky to revisit the Cowboy thing in a way that doesn’t also revive a bunch of unhelpful stereotypes.

My mom isn’t big on Legos but she does garden - there are some very cool botanical sets that they didn’t have when I was a kid! Fun for the family Lego people and also fun for grandma… am really enjoying those.

I mean I’m in my 50s and for years Reddit was awesome for me. Sure “Reddit” didn’t make all those posts themselves - but they created a space where folks like me could (and did) enjoy contributing and engaging.

Has been getting worse for a long time, but that doesn’t mean it was never good.

I don’t mind that Reddit in some ways profited from the content I contributed- because

1. I got enormous value from the site and it was 100% free for me
2. I intentionally was contributing to the site knowing that they would host my content and potentially profit from it.

AI takes without consent and charges for benefit

Agree “many obvious reasons”. That said I feel as though there may be some merit to the “we need a way to keep AI bots from just taking all our content and reselling it via AI”.

There are a million other reasons to stop using Reddit and I won’t be going back.

But for years they built up a ton of great user contributed content. Just like it’s unfair for art, music, other content to be absorbed / plagiarized and repackaged as AI… it is also unfair that web bots steal all the old/good Reddit content and don’t give credit + make money off content generated by old Reddit.

Note: reddit bad. Also AI plagiarism bad.

It’s great for us all to be the best we can be, and to always be working to improve.

“Perfect” is an abstract idea - it’s not really applicable to something as complicated as a human. Not just because it isn’t obtainable, but because we definitely would never be able to agree what the criteria are.

This is me! 🙂 I could make you a long list of things wrong with my parents / things they did wrong, but last I checked humans are going to be human (not perfect). My parents love me and they did the best they could. I had a WAY better childhood than most.

However 40 years of undiagnosed female ADHD didn’t go well. I didn’t feel like I deserved to be struggling so I pretended that I wasn’t. THAT didn’t work.

Eventually got knowledge and support - things are looking up for sure. Just - boy oh boy a lot of energy wasted and failures that could have been avoided if I knew then what I know now.

Grateful I know now, but folks who are struggling and don’t know why have my heart for sure.

Everyone makes mistakes.

If you had a reasonable childhood count yourself lucky - your mistakes will probably be reasonable. If you suffered from severe trauma/abuse or you have mental health challenges then you are likely to make different kinds of mistakes.

It is everyone’s job to work towards being better. You do something shitty then YOU did it - your childhood didn’t do that, you did. It also might be true that you don’t even recognize how shitty it is because you were taught it was “normal”.

We all are responsible for our actions, but some folks have been surrounded by kindness from birth so kindness is natural and easy. Other folks have to work really hard and make a lot of mistakes to learn that their behavior isn’t ok.

Yes, we are all responsible for our actions.

Equally true = some folks face enormous challenges because of background or brain chemistry, while others have it so easy they don’t get why anyone would struggle.

Absolutely humans are deeply affected on conscious and unconscious levels by all kinds of things that are out of their control - both experiences and brain chemistry. Absolutely it is a privilege afforded to only a few to have access to the support and resources needed to become aware of their situation and create deep change for themselves.

It’s also true that if you do a bad thing you did a bad thing. That does NOT mean you are a bad person, it does NOT mean all the things you can’t or couldn’t control are your responsibility, it does NOT mean that you even were fully aware of what you did.

But if you do a bad thing you are responsible for what you did. YOU did it. It is your responsibility to get on a path that will allow you to recognize and change that behavior.

It is nobody’s job to be perfect or beat themselves up for mistakes. It is everyone’s job to work towards being better - to themselves and to the people around them.

Part of that is understanding that you are responsible for your actions. You may genuinely not have been capable of making a better choice at the time - but if you did it = it’s on you to own the mistake.

Agree. There are some things American agrees on - example: if you are white don’t use the N word.

But there are a lot of other words/norms that we don’t agree on. Or ones that used to be ok and now aren’t. Example: Sweet Sixteen was a sweet and funny movie when it came out. Now it’s full of rape jokes and racist stereotypes. Same movie - culture changed.

Some folks adapted to those changes more quickly than others. Some folks want norms to change even more. Some folks still didn’t get the memo / are annoyed that people are acting like anything is different.

I did like that movie (am female, 50s) but I also agree it’s a good thing that rape jokes have become less ok. That said - I have a lot of compassion for folks who adapt more slowly. There are jokes you could make 20 yrs ago and everyone would laugh- but the same joke today will get you fired.

I think it’s really important to be kind and patient with folks who are slow to get the memo. I want to be respectful but he/she is a very hard habit to break. I’ll give it the old college try, but if you think I am a bad person for having a hard time adapting to that then I think your expectations are wildly unrealistic.

Even positive changes take time. Be kind to each other. If someone is unkind for sure call them out! But don’t get your panties in a wad of their language or humor is a little outdated but their actions are kind.