381–390 of 552 posts
I managed to somehow fuck up the straight line trip home, and returned nearly 2 hours later to my mother in hysterics on the phone to the police.
I think that was the end of my independence and parent's faith in me.
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I guess it depends on what part of the 1900s... I grew up (also in the 70s&80s) as a "latchkey" in an area that was built in the 50s and 60s and had the same experience of walking and riding to school. This seems like a "reality TV" phenomena of the last 25 years. Certainly, there are suburban deserts that are completely unwalkable, but most housing is not like that (certainly not "affordable" housing) simply because…
Does the remark about immigrants make sense? The typical immigrant can't be more concerned about fitting in that the typical native. Because the typical native's behavior determines what "fitting in" means.
Immigrants are statistically the most law abiding and often times, even conservative, members of a a community and it probably is one measure of long-term survival (esp. in the U.S. while living under the microscope of a work visa) so they need to go to great lengths to fit in and avoid even the appearance of impropriety - something the natives (and in all likelihood their children, if raised there) would take for granted. Meanwhile local citizens gather on the street corner protesting mask wearing or whatever nonsense they feel like.
A large component here is simply risk tolerance. Society's risk tolerance, especially for kids, has fallen pretty dramatically. This is probably related to just how many fewer kids US society has in general (births per woman has fallen in half since 1960, and it takes a culture some time to catch up). If you have fewer, then the individual ones become that much more valuable. Your attention and time is divided much l…
It's also about some collective trust/fantasy, in addition to the tolerance. For example, I don't think Tokyo is particularly safer than a (walkable) US city. But since people there collectively believe Japan is a safe country and are proud of it, they let their child go out. But I agree that the risk tolerance points too. I have talked to a handful of Japanese parents and none of them let their small kids go out wit…
In over a decade of living in Japan I've only encountered aggressive begging/panhandling once. Street violence is very rare, muggings too. One week in London and I'll see more than in 10 years in Japan.
Pure anecdote: I was jogging on my regular running route and I saw a wallet on the ground with 5000 yen hanging out of it. It was wet so I picked it up and put on a visible dry spot on a nearby wall. I ran past it the next day and it was still there, same spot, same cash sticking out. Finally on the third day it was gone. Maybe the owner came back for it, maybe it was stolen, maybe it was handed to the police. I don't think visible cash on the street would have lasted so long in most places.
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As a parent, I wouldn't do this in busy areas. I've seen people get hit from drivers running stop signs and red lights. I have to look at drivers turning right on red to make sure they see me, not sure that all children are tall enough to do this. Too much of a risk. It doesn't take too much searching to find examples of horrible accidents: https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/kids-hit-by-car-while-wa...
I don't think I've ever seen someone be hit by a car. The only people I know who have been hit were riding bicycles in traffic. But I would make sure my kids know not to just trust the lights. > It doesn't take too much searching to find examples of horrible accidents: It doesn't take too much searching to find examples of being hit by lightning or winning the lottery. Anecdotes are meaningless in that context.
I'm not nearly as terrified of strangers or homeless drug users as the legion of SUV drivers scrolling on their cell phones. Distracted drivers are several orders of magnitude more dangerous and several orders of magnitude more common.
[1] from 2016 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6637963/
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I do not feel safe letting my kids walk on roads in their current state.
I assume you mean they don't know enough yet? You can improve their state so that crossing the street is quite safe. What do they need to know to avoid being a pedestrian fatality? Here are the top three things.[0] 1. Don't walk under the influence. 2. Don't walk at night. 3. Only cross at an intersection. [0]: https://www.ghsa.org/resources/news-releases/GHSA/Ped-Spotli... .
This image from a daily mail article of all places shows the trend over multiple generations in a family very well: https://i.imgur.com/YcjjsiI.jpg It's from the UK but it's probably even worse in the US (I think in the US now most kids aren't allowed out of the yard of their house on their own until they're old enough to drive basically.)
That's a great graphic. I can't figure out what it is doing this - I'm UK-based too, and I know logically that everything is now safer - I used to walk two miles to the woods with friends at the age of eight or nine, but I wouldn't trust my own children to walk to the bottom of the hill here. I don't really understand what has changed. Why were my own parents less paranoid? There are lots of people giving lots of rea…
The UK in particular is somewhat obsessed with "health and safety", which is probably #2 on the favourite thing to complain about (after the weather, of course) but at the same time people gleefully participate in it too.
I lived in England for a while (as a Dutch person) and my English girlfriend was always paranoid about things I didn't see as a problem, for example I was perfectly comfterable carrying stuff from the car to the house and leaving the car unattended on the (enclosed!) parking lot for a minute, but she'd insist on locking it. N=1 of course, but I observed a number of other similar things over the years I lived there with different people. When it snowed for a bit the British were in a state of near-panic, and things like the Met announcing "there may be power cuts and shortages" didn't exactly help calm fears. It's 5cm of snow people, announced a week beforehand. We don't get snow that often in NL either, but I've never seen it anywhere near as chaotic as in England.
I guess I'm rambling a bit here, but my point is I think the problem is wider than just "kids". Partly, I think that's good: we're more aware of risks and deal with them a bit more consciously, but you can go too far in this; a risk-free life is a boring life hardly worth living.
"It's dangerous" or "it's a risk that [..] will happen" is almost always true in a sense and hard to argue against; "yes but no life can be without risk" comes of as weak, especially when it concerns something like your children.
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It's pretty stable, though, and the rise isn't actually that large (just about at 2008 levels, and far below 2004 levels): 2008-modernity: https://s.hdnux.com/photos/01/23/72/75/21999466/3/rawImage.j... Graph that includes pre-2008 levels: https://miro.medium.com/max/700/1*llD-nfzEV_nV-hISBQIRCQ.jpe...
> It's pretty stable, though, and the rise isn't actually that large (just about at 2008 levels, and far below 2004 levels): I walked through Cap Hill and DT Seattle to catch a bus at 2am back in 2003. No worries at all. A lot of crime isn't reported now days, e.g. my mothers truck just got stolen and she is not going to report it because the police are likely not going to even bother talking to her about it. I've ha…
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I grew up in a 3rd world country (now I live in Europe) in a city that by HN comments seems similar to SF (big and full of harmless homeless people/drug addicts everywhere). I remember when I was a kid and I was with my mother I stared to a homeless man for some time. Of course he just seemed peculiar to me, I was a little kid, but this guy got mad and screamed "Do I owe you money or what? why do you keep looking at…
If you stare at anyone long enough they will get mad. I don't recommend this experiment.
I don't have any kids, so I don't really feel comfortable telling folks how to raise theirs. But I will tell you my perspective. As someone who grew up in the "be back home in time for supper" 1970s, today's world seems completely foreign. When I started kindergarten, Mom walked me to school on the first day so that I'd know the route. And after that I walked to school on my own until I learned to ride a bike. I rode…
I don't have any kids, so I don't really feel comfortable telling folks how to raise theirs. But I will tell you my perspective. As someone who grew up in the "be back home in time for supper" 1970s, today's world seems completely foreign. When I started kindergarten, Mom walked me to school on the first day so that I'd know the route. And after that I walked to school on my own until I learned to ride a bike. I rode…
you can't. It's basically illegal in USA and Canada, and your neighbours and school will report you and child services will have a nice chat first time, less nice next time.