Good Things Friday (238) and Link Love
September 15, 2023
1. Normally this wouldn’t be a good thing but the start of the week was particularly hard. I woke up with less than nothing in the tank on Sunday morning and had the kids solo while PiC was out for the next four hours. I also spilled smelly stuff on the ground and had to commit to a full bleach and scrub scenario. I’m used to running on nearly empty and making do but starting from less than empty means that I’m just one or two missteps away from spiraling into a CFS flare. I could feel it coming on, all major joints were aching, my limbs were heavier, and I was having to dig deep just to breathe normally.
I made a real effort to do only the bare minimum of cleaning, restraining myself from the natural impulse to scrub the whole floor just because I was already there, assigned the kids solo play time, and forced myself to rest for two hours, twice. I wasn’t rested, but it was enough to let me push back the incipient flare up and that’s a huge relief.
2. I’ve been transferring my social media from Twitter to Bluesky slowly. It’s light on features and I don’t love everything about it but it’s enough like functional Twitter circa 2009(?) to be an enjoyable functional fallback for now. Edit to add: If you’d like to try Bluesky, leave me a comment with your contact info and I will share an invite when one becomes available. I’m Revanche on there.
3. We accidentally dyed one of JB’s white tops pink, and they need it for school, so PiC did two days of soaking in Oxiclean and I followed up with a detergent scrub and soak, and finally on the fourth day, we triumphed! The pink faded to purple to nearly imperceptible!
This is neat: Bioblitzes: Discover Nature
We Investigated Roblox: Your Kid’s Favorite Game Is Exploiting Them
This is a depressingly good description of some of my ME/CFS days. It’s not every day and not always the worst levels, thankfully, but I can’t predict the worst days and very little can be done but to just get through it.
It is very difficult to maintain faith in a world where justice is this difficult to pursue: How Columbia Ignored Women, Undermined Prosecutors and Protected a Predator For More Than 20 Years
Ooh I got a login to bluesky but I don’t see you (I searched for your blog name). I don’t promise to post ever but I’d like to follow you/see what you find useful there. I’m heybethpdx.
Good for you for taking it as easy as you could AND for noticing that you were doing it.
Oop I don’t know why it didn’t even occur to me to share that. I’m Revanche over there!
Honestly, I think that the ftc needs to take a hard look at a lot of children’s apps and platforms, as do schools and teachers. And they need to start cutting their access to kids if they don’t change their ways.
My kid switches classes for certain subjects, and two of her teachers this year are including Prodigy in the mix. I have been getting a LOT of fervently-worded kid requests to have the game at home. I looked into Prodigy a couple of years ago. I didn’t think a lot of the gamification and the learning/practice looked pretty lightweight, but I was ok with it. What I was NOT ok with was the near-constant manipulation and shilling for subscription. There’s something about seeing that a company looks at my kid solely or primarily as a revenue stream that really pushes my buttons. I’m planning to ask about Prodigy during parent-teacher conferences this year. It’s possible that the company has changed its ways, but I doubt it.
Which is to say that the Roblox situation doesn’t surprise me. There are good actors in the children’s category, but I feel that they’re outweighed by the bad ones.
Agreed.
JB was introduced to Prodigy last year and I let them use it a little bit after school and on weekends. They observed that very thing! They said that they were constantly being hounded for money and it was annoying. Their interest in it has waned pretty quickly so in hindsight I figured it was good for them to learn that lesson about how “free” games are not free in reality and how they get money from you otherwise. I hope it helps them learn to dismiss the shilling when they get a little older.