As a fellow European, you turning an obvious joke into some weird flex on Americans is cringe af.

Yeah, I think my sense of smell in general has never returned in full capacity. I think it's slightly weaker. Crazy stuff.

On a serious note, COVID isn't the only virus that can cause loss of smell (permanent or temporary). I lost it before COVID for a month or so, and it took some time for it to return completely. But to this day, there are still certain chemical smells (like deodorants in spray) that smell a tiny bit off to me.

It wasn't just secretly, or that secretly at all, but it still stuck with me. When I was 10, I was texting a friend about having started periods, an extremely sensitive topic, and my father grabbed my phone to read who I was texting. It's been very long since that happened, and I don't have the best memory, but things like this I remember very vividly. Some kids are more sensitive, and you have to build a strong relationship with them for these things to potentially work. I think there is even a Black Mirror episode on this topic.

There's also a problem that if the kid does know they're being monitored, they can and some will figure out how to get past it. I can't offer an immediate solution, because honestly, social media scape is severly fucked nowadays, but there's no winning scenario I can think of that doesn't require one to have an extremely good relationship with their kid. And even then, it might not be enough.

I'm glad I'm both old enough I didn't grow up with tiktok and the likes, and that I don't have kids to worry about. Being a parent in this day and age sounds absolutely exhausting and uncertain from multiple modern-world perspectives.

Kudos to any working parent who manages to handle it well and has a kid with a good head on their shoulders.

Not in detail, but it actually does:

“Often the mothers are saying exactly what I am but need their child to hear it from an expert,” says Dr. Dendy Engelman, a Manhattan dermatologist. “They’re like, ‘Maybe she’ll listen to you because she certainly doesn’t listen to me.’”

While younger kids may be reasoned with, teenagers aren't as easy to handle as some say. Puberty is a hell of a drug.

IMHO, this is a very sensitive topic, and I'm glad I don't have kids for this to be a worry for me.

Smartphones became a big thing when I was already in high school, and social media at the time still wasn't this aggressive, but my father did monitor my activity on the PC, mostly secretly, and it made me feel anxious. This violation of privacy damaged my already shit/barely existent relationship with him. It's also why I'm so paranoid of secretly being monitored. You have to already have a pretty good relationship with your parents for this not to potentially mess you up, at least in my experience.

What the solution to this is, I don't know. Better digital/tech education in schools and at home would be a good step in that direction, but strict ad and product regulations should also be implemented, which - unfortunately expectedly - is being fought against (at least in the USA, according to the article).

One of my family cats is currently at the end of her life due to kidney disease. It really sucks, glad they're doing something about it. Now if only they could do the same for dogs.

It's funny to me how easy English has it. All you have to do is use "they", and if people think that's awkward, they should see how difficult it is to navigate it in a language with complex verb conjugations with gendered nouns and verbs. It's complicated to the point that non-binary people will still use their assigned-at-birth (if that's the term?) pronouns, to save everyone - including themselves - a headache. There's of course a movement to change the language, but it's difficult.

I did that when I worked customer support. The only way I could retain the little bit of sanity I had left. But to be honest, we were so understaffed that even if I slipped, they wouldn't have fired me. There was one guy who was so angry with a customer that he wrote their number down, and then over his break called the customer with his private phone to argue with them. Still didn't get fired, lol.

Seems like they didn't set www to redirect to the main site. If you go to https://dripapp.org it works fine.

Not all. Jumping spiders and wolf spiders took all the good eyes and ran away with them.

I've been reading so much about how simple it is to lose weight, it's all about caloric deficit. I've also been in Hashimoto's and hypothyroidism communities long enough to know that's not always true. It's probably true for healthy individuals, but with Hashi's and hypothyroidism, metabolism doesn't work as well, so you can be in caloric deficit and work out, yet still unable to shed the extra weight.