Beauty pageants are so fucking cringe and should be deleted in their entirety.

Yeah, they are cringe, but these are adults, not children. It’s the same as a bodybuilder competition, as far as I’m concerned. Not for me, but as long as people aren’t getting hurt, it’s just entertainment. Just keep the kids out of it.

That’s, what, the profit Apple makes every 0.002 seconds?

The program has actually SAVED money, so this should be enough incentive for taxpayers to want to support it.

“Despite recent measures to root out abuse by priests and increase transparency, some victims say the Vatican still has not gone far enough to protect children even in the West, where intense media coverage of paedophile priests has led to greater scrutiny of church practices.”

Francis has been in power for over a decade now, and that quote (from your link) was written years ago. Nothing has really changed.

Yeah, a real leader among leaders.

The Catholic Church has protected pedophiles among their ranks for as long as the Catholic Church has been around.

They’ve thrown a few under the bus after overwhelming evidence has been filed against them, but that doesn’t change much.

Stop trying to justify molesting children.

Yes, I read a report from the UN stating specific reasons why the pandemic sidetracked many students, especially underprivileged ones.

Those who were given more opportunities to learn at home and not spend time in front of screens fared much better.

Profits can become expenses when it is spent, for sure.

We’ll basically be turned into fuel cells… like on The Matrix… but it’ll be billionaires controlling the machines… probably made by Tesla.

Yeah, I guess that’s how modern corporations are using profits.

I come from a small business and charity background, so salaries/wages/employee benefits would be considered a business expense. Profits would be banked and used to cover expenses in the future.

In business, you can’t predict what your expenses will be next year or in 10 years, so you need profit to act as a buffer. Some years, your revenue exceeds your expectations, and you profit that year.

This could allow you to spend more money on those legitimate business expenses next year, or bank it for years when your expenses exceed your revenue.

Even a non-profit has to have leftover to bank for the future, expand, etc.

But consistently having billions in profit tells me that there’s a massive problem somewhere, and it’s more than likely as a result of wage theft or gouging customers.

I disagree, because profits can be used to upgrade equipment, reward employees, R&D, invest in expanding the business, etc.

When used properly, profits keep businesses healthy and self-supporting without relying on shareholders, the government, or bad actors to get involved.

But absurdly excess profits shouldn’t exist, and absurdly excessive wealth hoarding by individuals should never be allowed to happen.

Even a simple redistribution back to the people who should have been getting this money (i.e. workers) would have a profound impact on the quality of life of millions.

It estimated that 148 top corporations made $1.8 trillion in profits, 52 percent up on 3-year average, allowing hefty pay-outs to shareholders even as millions of workers faced a cost of living crisis as inflation led to wage cuts in real terms.

I guess we know where all this “inflation” came from.

And stop calling it “profits”, it’s theft. They are stealing from customers by overcharging, and they are stealing from employees by not paying them enough.

There’s absolutely no reason why their workers aren’t getting a large chunk of that money, especially when “profits” are up an average of 52 goddamn percent.

When the hell is enough money enough for these assholes? What are they planning to do with all this hoarded wealth? Buy a country?

“Your job may disappear altogether — not good — or artificial intelligence may enhance your job, so you actually will be more productive and your income level may go up,”

Our income level may go up 😂😂😂😂🤣🤣🤣🤣😂😂🤣😅😅😅🤣🤣😂😂🤣🤣😅😅🤣🤣😂😂😂😂🤣🤣😅🤣😂😂😂

I’m not sure why you are insisting that parents taking on this extra burden while working (from home or not) is an unreasonable explanation for this.

I’m not insisting, the experts are. There’s plenty of data that shows that this is necessary if you want a child to have normal development. Unless, of course, parents are paying for high-quality care elsewhere, which has been shown to give similar advantages.

And what’s unreasonable with expecting parents… to be parents? I don’t understand why any child should be disadvantaged because their parent(s) decided it was too much work to actively care and participate in their development.

When my kids were young, I was working full time, while my wife’s career was put on the back-burner so she could take care of them. I still had to come home from work, help her with the kids, often staying up until 3am with a baby who had colic, then get 4 hours of sleep before heading out to work to do it again. My weekends were devoted entirely to the kids, and my wife would have a bit of a break.

It was exhausting. I get it. But it had to be done. My eldest didn’t even have access to TV until she was four, so it was all about books, interaction with other kids, outings with us, and library visits for their programs. Then it turned into kindergarten, and we were still putting our energy into her development. And as she got older, it was sports and other activities that required a big commitment on our end… it really doesn’t end!

Child-rearing is by far one of the most committed things a person will do in their lifetime. More than work. I don’t envy anyone who has to split their time between a demanding job and their child or children.

Well, at least as of 2020 parents spent more time with their kids during covid. .

They also did read more to their kids in 2020 vs pre-covid. However, I can’t find data suggesting that they continued reading at that rate through 2021 and 2022.

Another stat did suggest that low income kids had a harder time keeping up during covid. Factors included family members who did not know English, fewer books in the home, and low literacy rates among parents (making it hard for them to read to their kids), and more media consumption (a major factor in poor development among very young children).

So, if we put everything together, we could assume that kids in low and probably middle income families were at a disadvantage compared to kids in high income families. Since they make up the bulk of the student demographic, they were likely responsible for the drop.

If the situation at home remains bad, I’d expect these scores to continue to drop compared to previous years and other countries.

I’d say that for those families, the pandemic didn’t help, but those problems were there well before covid.

https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2023/06/quality-child-care-science-math

The study looked at “Children who receive high-quality child care as babies, toddlers and preschoolers…”

So, is the drop in reading and math a direct result of kids not getting high-quality childcare as babies and toddlers? Because I don’t even think thay the majority of American parents ever had the means to make that happen outside of the home.

That might be something that only high income families could afford, but I’m not sure if the article reports on whether children from high income families also experienced a drop in reading and math scores.

WFH does seem to indicate that people work longer hours in total.

Without a daily commute or prep time getting ready for the office, and especially during lockdowns when people simply didn’t leave their homes, there was significantly more time for non-work related activities.

This is why so many people actually enjoyed the pandemic. They had significant amounts of free time for hobbies, exercise, etc. Bikes even sold out for like a year, because the demand for recreation cycling during the pandemic was at such a high level.

But time with your kids, even for 20 minutes of reading, offers a huge advantage to their development. This can easily be incorporated during bedtime.

In any case, I do still believe that a lack or reduction in reading at home has an impact on these scores, and I do appreciate the thoughtful discussion 🤝

Take those kids and put them at home with parents who still have to work and you’ll probably see a dip in education levels.

Still having to work, from home or otherwise (but mostly at home if we’re talking about the pandemic), and that would still leave most regular hours to be a parent (I.e. and read to your child).

I’d like to see stats and truly know what accounts for these drops. We already know that kids spent more time in front of screens during the pandemic (for entertainment, not education), but what about parents reading to their children. There should have been MORE time, not less, to do that.

“The pandemic” doesn’t explain it.

What specifically, during the pandemic, led to a 2% drop in their scores?

Were kids not being read to at home? Did they spend all their time during lockdown watching TV?

Screen time, which should be limited to under an hour for preschool aged kids, is considerably higher than that, and it got worse during the pandemic.

It seems like parents or caregivers would be to blame for that.