Backroads

Not only are Utahns jerks, they consider the speed limit a starting point, think tailgating constitutes good communication, and wouldn't know a turn signal if it smacked them upside the head. I don't know if you were bring hyperbolic, but I have met many people, including my sister, who insisted the law said tailgating is the correct way to signal a change of pace in mass speed. They will swear up and down they read it or learned it in drivers Ed. Sister was sent to drivers school lieu of a ticket and was shocked to learn otherwise.

I have mixed feelings over the immigration hoopla. Find most of the hoopla overblown at this point. But this hypothetical had me curious.

Reddit, for some reason, keeps recommending me the sub Waiting to Wed, and there are some doozies of stories of why Boyfriend/Girlfriend just can't get married yet. You don't have to explain, but short of a still existing marriage for one or both of you, are legal matters really stopping you?

Loved the original. May need to pick this one up. 😁

In that regard, I doubt we'll see much difference in funding, as the federal government never bothered to give the funding it promised.

I shouldn't, but when I encounter that accusation of hypocrisy I bring up my cousin's Satanist ex-husband who uses to beat her. No! They say. Only Christians would do that kind of hypocrisy!

Now what I'm about to say obviously proves part of the issue, but K12 is just as public as anything. I teach for a similar obligation school, and we have had parents of special needs kids who can't hack it. I hate to say it, but sending their kid off to an out of the home school is often the only way the family can function, to have a break for six hours. I think we might see the rise of more institutionalized situations. And I don't know if that's necessarily a bad thing. A friend of mine had her life changed when she stopped caring what people thought and put her oldest in a home. And it benefited the whole family, kid included. But it will take some social adjustment for that. Many people prefer to think of the kid in special education as the adorable child with a few funny social quirks and not the kid that many parents honestly can't raise on their own where an online school just won't work. For food or for bad, current special education policies have taken a huge burden from families we hadn't seen before and I don't know how many families are ready to take that back.

This is where I'm trying to get comfortable and I'm not necessarily there yet in many ways beside philosophically. I like the idea of people having to complain to closer organizations than the federal government. I'm willing to detox from China. I'm still not entirely sure about other things. A lane change here, but education. No one has approached of how ending the Department of Education benefits special education.

My brother works for the church office and apparently was sent to see this for work to scope it out. He enjoyed it. Also agrees with @Ironhold and also found the end silly.

I don't know if I can think of anything novel to propose. I have seen enough of an intersection in homeschool where families would never let their kids be seen or don't believe in cops or government intervention at all.

I think my question is if we want an alternative to law enforcement or CPS or if those are things we just have to accept.

Petty me says "figure it out" but you're absolutely right.

What would you have them do in cases of abuse without involvement of the government?

Disclaimer: I have no complaint against homeschooling. I generally admire it and would do it if my kids expressed any interest. I have no ill-will at all and concede that bad things happen to all kids no matter their schooling. So, my husband works at a hospital and a few weeks back came home with vague details of an incident he worked with involving a deceased child and arrests and social services. Turns out, upon later news release, a "homeschool" family had starved their kid to death. I say homeschool in quotations because I doubt any homeschooling was happening and the family simply signed the affidavit to reduce eyes on the kid. It's a nasty situation where it seemed a lot of people in social services dropped the ball. It's become one of those cases I can't get out of my head. Again, I'm not blaming homeschool, but I'm also aware a lot of families homeschool to get away from government interference and be more selective of their own village. Which I admire and I dislike the idea of government as a babysitter. While this clearly puts all responsibility on the families to be the best they can, it seems it allows for potentially awful consequences on innocents. So, the question in the subject line: should the community (not necessarily the government) ever be allowed to step in and say "this isn't okay"?

I was seeing that it wasn't even supposed to be The Last Supper, just a random baccannahal and wound up looking too much like the painting.

So today the family and I were playing Betrayal at House on the Hill (a tabletop board game where you essentially create a horror story following some scripts, the kids love it). Today's was "Make America Disintegrate Again" where we had to stop a lich from running for president and running the planet into a dark Eldritch dimension or something. It was a lot of fun. It was certainly a fun poke at how we admire/hate politicians. To get serious, I don't know how the Antichrist will appear. Maybe there was a mixup and it's some kid in rural England a la Good Omens while all look elsewhere. We may be going back and forth on the logic and the signs mixed with how we would like to see those signs.

Or my parents' next door neighbor. A dear, wonderful woman. But as awful as an assassination attempt is, some of us were looking forward to making some popcorn and listening to Neighbor rant MAGA about it. (Still haven't run into her)

Disclaimer: I consider myself a huge proponent of school choice. Families should have every right to choose how their kids should be educated. I thusly support the existence of private schools. But my opinion is that many if not most private schools are skirting by largely on the mere fact they are private schools when at the end of the day all that means is, well, they're private. The best thing is that a choice and effort must be made to get into a private school, which implies the parents are involved with their kids to some extent. I've just heard too many horror stories to put private schools on a pedestal. Too much catering to parents/grade buying over actual education, pure chaos, etc. There's a similar issue with charter schools. The number of people who think they're free private schools and then pitch a fit when they find out they're public, I swear. I think parents have good intentions but forget to properly school shop. Just last week I ran into a mom asking for charter school recommendations to help her child who needs lots of freedom and little structure. A general rule of thumb is that if a charter school has "academy" in its name, it's going to be very rigid. And most charter schools in our area have academy in they name. The golden child one is known to be super strict and the more loosey-goosey ones are in the verge of closing. This left the mom very confused about what would be a good fit for her freedom-needing kid.

Speaker as a teacher, I do think schools ought to and can do a lot more. I won't deny that. But I will share the biggest barrier to dealing with bullies in schools: parents and red tape. For every parent who says they'd teach their kid a thing or two if said kid was found to be the bully, there are ten parents who will defend said kid to no end. A shockingly high number of bullies also fall under the special education umbrella, who adds another barrier to properly dealing with them. I think there's plenty more schools can do, but I wish parents would do much more than defending their little bullies. On another note, I teach for a virtual school. I swear, every kid who is is enrolled due to "bullying issues" often leads me thinking "you were the bully, weren't you?"

We didn't even get "popping". We got "loud noises." I'm not much of a Trump fan but bad headlines will backfire on those writing them

I even offered "set it down on this corner a full yard away and we will handle it from there somehow".

Ten years ago, we moved into our home. There in the kitchen was an ancient refrigerator, ugly and worn. We figured we would replace it very soon. Last week, we finally got sick of it mildly leaking and having some minor light issues. I went shopping for a new fridge. A few days ago, they came to deliver it. They packed up the old one and hauled it away. That's when we learned the delivery people are otherwise useless. Today an internet search revealed to me I am supposed to bribe/threaten/bully them. Anyway, they refused to bring in the new fridge because reasons. This was repeated the next day. Picking it up ourselves proved a challenge. After some calming breaths, I am going to shop elsewhere. I don't know how long cooler food is going to last.

Medium rare, here.

I might actually watch it, too.

My goodness, that stuff is good.