Deacon

Actually thank you for the question. I’m still processing a lot of this stuff so in many ways writing it out ended up being to my benefit more than yours.

If anyone has seen a higher res version of this I would appreciate it.

I had very similar experiences. Let me know if you ever want to talk about it, but I’m also unsociable so I will understand perfectly if you never do, and may even be relieved.

You get it.

I was homeschooled K-12 and never went to college, so home school is literally all I know and I have thoughts.

1. Motivation matters - I was home schooled for religious reasons by parents who were themselves educated but wholly unqualified to teach a single child much less 4 kids. They homeschooled us primarily to avoid the indoctrination of the secular world, where the lies of evolution and gay baby killers reigned supreme. Thus, I was not well educated and didn’t realize it until I got into the work force. I have been battling crippling imposter syndrome ever since I realized how deficient my education was - I’m still in the process of understanding the scope of that deficiency
2. oversight is not optional. In my situation, we were homeschooled without any government involvement or oversight in any way. My parents told me at the time that this was how the laws in my state worked but they also told me to stay away from Truant Officers so I think they were lying. I had no sense of equivalency or where I stood compared to my peers until I was in the process of testing out to get my GED (because weirdly, prospective employees weren’t keen to accept the “diploma” my dad had printed from MS Word) that I saw my percentile rank in various subject
3. Unless you are an educator, don’t try to run a curriculum. If you’re going to homeschool, pay a tutor. If you can’t pay a tutor, probably don’t home school

I know that last bit sounds extreme and I don’t think my home school experience is typical so take it with a grain of salt.

Edit: none of this even addresses the social impacts, which are intense if not mitigated with a lot of sports and group activities, etc

So many of them. So, so many.

Maybe the only one I’ve kept perfectly intact is my belief that the golden rule is prime.

I was raised a young earth creationist, picketed abortion clinics when I was elementary school aged but don’t worry I was home schooled from kindergarten through high school. Was basically a republican/libertarian until about 2015 when my spiritual leaders, including and especially my parents, began to compromise all of their values.

More recently, probably even until 2020, I viewed myself as an aspiring centrist.

Now I’m an agnostic atheist who is seeing how far left the political spectrum goes, and I still think centrism is a nice idea, in a totally different world than the one we live in, with a totally different meaning to “center”.

Here is the thing I should disclose though, because I suspect it applies to a lot of things.

I was raised steeped in a level of bigotry that was all-encompassing but cloaked in Christian love.

I have intellectually separated myself from that bigotry, but I believe I still have instinctive/subconscious/unidentified bigotries to work through.

I am trying to be very conscious of that as I make my way in the world, trying to love my neighbor as myself, and trying to continuously expand the definition of “neighbor”.

Edit: I also cut my parents out of my life entirely around the time DOGE sent their “fork in the road” email.

Ironically it is comments like these that led to Reddit gold. But thank you kind stranger for saving me having to descend into The Depths for this.

GOOD POINT.

It wouldn’t do to be too rude in our opposition to senseless killing. Decent people might get offended.

In other words, everyone is vulnerable to this totally new form of hazard if they use these “tools”.

Your screen name game is on point.

deleted by creator

Reporting for duty.

The feeling that I’ve helped someone or something feel safe and loved. Usually that is cats but in any case it feels nice to know you’ve put more of those foundational good feelings into the world somehow.

There is a cat in the crook of my arm right now, and I know she feels safe and loved and in return she’s basically radiating mental health at me.

Ah my namesake and fellow gandy dancer.

You’re talking about 80s subway right?

I call it salting and I do it religiously.

Or do I?

I hope they never recover. No ill will to the working level who would be impacted, but it needs to be clear to companies that this shit is TOXIC to your brand to even consider in 2026.

This is why you don’t let bears rent skis.

Which is why I will never buy a car made after 2015 if I can possibly avoid it. If I were writing the rules,

• My car should not be capable of pay-walling any features

• Just like my phone, I should have fine grained control over what data my car shares and with whom

• No vehicle controls that may need to be accessed while driving should require more than one click on a touchscreen to access

• Any touchscreen UI should be easily controllable from a steering wheel type d-pad

• No non-entertainment vehicle controls should be primarily accessible from a touchscreen

• Any controls that affect the speed, position, size, or access of the car should only have secondary touchscreen controls that are upstream of any failures modes in the primary physical control; in other words, a UI control should only be a backup method for important functions of the vehicle, and they shouldn’t be able to break the main method if they break

When I had to reluctantly buy a used car, I made it a point to buy a used car no newer than 2015 and this is why. Well this and touchscreen mania.