That’s the policy at most schools. Actually enforcing that in the face of a classroom of kids who don’t respect the rule? That’s a much bigger problem. They’re a lot more clever at sneaking them out than you would think. Moreover, if the phones are just feet from them, their presence is never out of mind. They’re a constant distraction even in a bag. Phone apps are literally designed to be addictive. Imagine if we had a rule that said “crack pipes are fine in your bag. As long as you don’t take them out and smoke in class, you’re fine.” Even if we lived in a world where crack somehow was legal for minors to have, how effective to you think that rule could be enforced?

Or up into your neighbor’s house. Then slowly steal your neighbor’s house, one board at a time, and add it to your own house!

Yes, that is obvious. I’m not worried about chemical contamination. Physical contamination and injury is the problem. I’m much more worried about civilians interacting with an environment saturated with these things. A kid is riding a dirt bike through the woods one day and gets garroted on an invisible glass wire dangling between two trees.

What are all those glass fibers going to do to an area after the war ends? That stuff won’t decompose.

I can confirm. I was there standing in the corner watching. But in a strictly nonsexual way.

The Adjuster remains at large.

After all, nothing more saintly than shooting a man in the back!

I was going to find some extremely old racial epithet that starts with an N, so obscure it wouldn’t offend anyone anymore. But I decided I don’t want to Google “obscure ethnic slurs” today, so I decided to skip this comment.

I think we shouldn’t even have legal names anymore. Nor legal sex/gender. Why does the government even need to keep track of my name at all? Maybe we just have a number tied to our biometric data. Maybe our profile is just defined facial scans, iris scans, thumb scans, and, for ultimate proof, our DNA profile. The state has a profile number on you that ties you to your biometrics. That sounds scary, but the government already has a profile on you if you have any kind of state-issued ID. And states are already collecting biometric data on their citizens.

We could simply tie all state business to an ID number and biometric data profile. When doing a transaction with some other party, the same biometrics could be used to prove your ID. Buying beer at the store? You hand the cashier a card that has your photo and ID number on it. They can type that number in their computer, query a state database, and return your age. Opening a bank account? Prove your ID with ID card and at least two forms of biometric scan. Signing up for a mortgage? Prove your identity with a DNA test.

We don’t even need legal names. Or legal genders. Let’s just do everything with biometric data, photo IDs, and other methods devoid of all the cultural baggage. Let people call themselves whatever they want. Let others choose how to honor that choice.

You want to change your gender? Have at it, the state doesn’t care about your sex or gender at all. It doesn’t even keep track of it. Give your kid a stupid name? At any time, they can start telling their friends to call them by a different one And that new name will instantly have all the legal power as the one their parents gave them - none whatsoever. The state will no longer tell us what our names are. Our words and character will do that instead.

Don’t worry. If I’m elected pope, you’ll get to see the return of the Cadaver Synod, bigger and better than ever! In fact, I’ll set up a whole special court just to try former popes I have a theological beef with! They’ll have several cases going on simultaneously. I’ll put dozens of former popes on trial!

As new Pope, I promise to repeat the Cadaver Synod. I promise to dig up the corpse of Pope Benedict XVI and put him on trial for his homophobia and transphobia! And I may not stop at him…I may have to set up a whole special court just for putting former popes on trial.

Honestly, at this point, I’m on board with just banning social media algorithms entirely. No more personalized feeds. You can have a website that publishes whatever you want, but you can’t tailor individual feeds to individual people. People can replace their “feed” with what the original internet was meant to be - visiting a series of websites. Want to read nothing but right wing blogs? Fine. You can spend all day navigating to different URLs for them. But no more spoon feeding individually personalized content to people.

It turns out that method of content delivery is just a very dangerous and damaging technology that really fucks with the workings of the human mind. If you tell AI to build an ideal feed model for a person, it builds a nightmare that traps human beings in skinner boxes.

We can ban these algorithms. We don’t have to continue to tolerate their existence. And in the grand scheme of history, it would be no different than a thousand other things that we discovered, at first thought was a panacea, but eventually decided the benefits weren’t worth the costs. Asbestos is a fantastic fireproof insulator, but we willingly let those benefits go in lieu of its severe respiratory effects. DDT is an incredible pest killer and insecticide, but it also was rendering entire species of birds extinct. Targeted, individually tailored social media algorithms create entertainment feeds that can entertain us to such degrees that the kings of old would lament their jesters in comparison. But what these algorithms are doing to us, what they are doing to our society? On political polarization? The effects they are having not just on children, but of people of all ages? We as a society need to recognize that the benefits just aren’t worth the costs. We are tearing our civilization apart for the sake of cheap entertainment.

We need to ban targeted social media feeds. We have faced technologies like this before. We have made the choice before to give up the benefits of these things for the sake of the greater good. We’ve done it before, and we can do it again. It is time we ban targeted social media feeds.

Sounds like the Lizardman Constant at work again!:
https://gwern.net/doc/sociology/survey/lizardman/index

My partner added “as someone who can’t even say the word 'seminary” without giggling…"

It wouldn’t be the first time!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadaver_Synod

I promise to spend the entire papacy dressed in dresses that look like they belong in the White Tower scenes in the Wheel of Time series.

Or, on the theory that we’re living in the stupidest timeline, they’ll go with “Pope Biden I.”

Eh. Rules are arbitrary and can be changed.

Looks like it’s time for another pope race. I would like to throw my hat in the ring. As a lapsed Catholic trans woman who’s never so much as visited a seminary, I know I’m an unorthodox choice. But maybe it’s time to mix things up. My central campaign planks? We’re going to bring back indulgences and try to make the Papal States a thing again. Also, expect skits and improv sessions to have a big place in Catholic mass in the future!

And that’s nothing. You know how they’re pushing for washing machines, dishwashers, etc. to be internet connected? Currently they’re forcing this for data mining purposes. But I have no doubt their real goal is to eventually make these devices like printers, with expensive consumables locked in by internet-connected DRM. They’ve already gotten people used to using dish and clothes detergent pods. How long until they’re putting everything in plastic cartridges, locking things down with DRM, and charging like printer companies do?