Posts by feralranger

Robert Reyes4 said:Good parenting isn't just about staying out of trouble, and it doesn't necessarily guarantee success later on.
There are plenty of examples out there, sure, but generally speaking, I think punishment is a losing game.

I am somewhat uncertain; if we look at her specific case—and indeed the perspective offered by those psychologists—one might argue the exact opposite is true. Regardless, the takeaway here seems to be that there is simply no such thing as a universal 'blueprint' for success.

Robert Reyes4 As expressed by feralranger:
It is simply because they neglected them from the very beginning. Once you fail to lay down a solid foundation right out of the gate, trying to patch things up later becomes an uphill battle that most people aren't prepared for.
I am inclined to believe that the most vital element is...
A proper diet should serve as a catalyst for developing self-discipline and a newfound respect for others; however, one simply cannot achieve such lofty virtues through the blunt instrument of punishment.

It isn't always that simple, nor does there exist some sort of universal "magic formula" for these situations. I recall a kid who attended school with my son; he was quite frankly the most relentless bully in his entire grade. The kicker? His mother was a professional psychologist specializing specifically in child development! She raised him strictly "by the book," following every psychological principle to the letter, yet somehow, her little boy still turned out to be a nightmare for everyone else.

On the other hand, one of my close friends—my maid of honor from years ago—certainly believed in the old-school method of discipline, relying heavily on a firm hand to keep her three children in line. And yet, looking at them now, they turned out to be the absolute picture of propriety; we're talking top-tier manners, elite private schooling, Ivy League degrees, the whole nine yards. They’ve never once stepped an inch out of line or caused a moment of scandal.

We raised our children without ever resorting to corporal punishment, yet it is becoming increasingly apparent that her offspring are navigating life with far greater ease and success than ours ever did.

One shouldn't fall into the trap of assuming that your particular experience serves as some sort of universal blueprint or a definitive "how-to" guide for everyone else. There are countless examples out there that prove otherwise.

Andrew Doyle said:Point one: kids don't go to prison. We are talking about children here, not adults. Furthermore, you aren't even "grounding" a toddler; that's something that happens once they're older. You cannot simply lump all cognitive, emotional, and developmental stages together and then try to trivialize the situation by claiming a punishment is the same for a two-year-old as it is for a sixteen-year-old. Developmental phases are distinct and come with entirely different needs. Because those needs differ, the perception of any given situation differs accordingly. You can actually sit down and have a rational conversation with a sixteen-year-old about their actions, whereas with a two-year-old, that is physically impossible. Their understanding of cause and effect is fundamentally different.

With a small child, you just have to pull them away from danger immediately without making a whole production out of it. You don't sit down and debate a two or three-year-old about why they shouldn't run into a busy street in Chicago. With a sixteen-year-old, however, you actually have something to discuss, which allows you to implement specific consequences—like the weekend grounding example mentioned here.

Nowhere in my previous post did I ever suggest that children are being sent to an institution explicitly labeled as a 'prison.' Let’s not wander into the realm of fabrication, shall we?

My argument was simply that the methods adults use—imposing confinement or restricting a child's movement (whether you call it house arrest or some other euphemism, the core concept remains identical)—function as forms of physical and psychological punishment. It is physical because it strips away the freedom of movement, and it is psychological because of the mental toll that loss of autonomy inevitably takes.

I was merely stating facts, not offering a philosophical dissertation on whether one type of punishment is superior to the other. Any form of discipline falls into the category of being either psychological, physical, or a combination of both. There isn't a third option to discover.

George Davis6 said:There is no scenario where a child MUST be physically disciplined. There isn't a single situation where an adult MUST be physically punished either. Do you see the analogy there?

You can explain to a child that something is dangerous without resorting to physical punishment. Kids aren't idiots! Physical discipline leads to nothing but fear of parents, a loss of self-esteem, and all sorts of other nasty long-term consequences... And as for that idea that a child will "conclude" one thing or another—they won't. A child doesn't understand why Mom or Dad suddenly seems to hate them in the moment they're being hit or why they're causing them physical pain. A parent needs to be a safe harbor—a refuge from pain, insults, and humiliation...

And yet, society insists on doing exactly that. A prison is essentially a form of physical punishment—via the restriction of bodily movement—coupled with psychological torment stemming from the loss of liberty. Even something as trivial as grounding a child is, in its own miniature way, a combination of both physical and mental discipline.

Dennis Patel7 said:So, from what I understand, this laptop comes equipped with some kind of ambient light sensor that automatically adjusts the screen brightness based on the room lighting.
I already went into my power settings and disabled the sensor entirely, but it hasn’t fixed a thing—every single time I launch a game, the brightness just dips on its own.
Basically, I need a way to completely kill this sensor once and for all.

There are potentially two ways to tackle this nuisance. You could attempt to locate the specific driver within the Device Manager and disable it there, or you might try to physically find where the sensor is tucked away—can you actually spot it?—and simply cover it with a small piece of black or some other opaque adhesive film to effectively, and quite literally, block its optical path.

swiftraven2 said:Greetings,

I recently picked up a Dell XPS 15

And now, I find myself completely stuck while attempting to install macOS via a USB drive.
The laptop lacks a CD drive, and since no drivers have been installed yet—not even the USB drivers—absolutely nothing is being recognized. It’s a complete standstill.

What on earth should I do next?

On any modern computer from the last decade or so, you shouldn't actually need any extra drivers just to boot from a USB. You simply need to ensure that in the BIOS, USB booting is enabled and that the USB drive itself has been properly formatted with all the necessary installation files and is set to be bootable (which is something you really ought to verify).

Kevin Kim7 said:I don't see why that's necessary.

Anyway, I set it up and it's working now. The downside is that whenever I try to access a shared folder, I have to manually enter the credentials from the host PC.

Back in the day with older versions of Windows, you wouldn't have been bothered by such trivialities, but modern operating systems have become far too "(pre)smart" for their own good; they essentially try to think on your behalf, assuming you desire a certain level of security protocols when, in your specific case, you certainly didn't ask for them—they simply ended up making your life more complicated. It’s a remarkably common occurrence.

Jesse Anderson2 said:A buddy gave me his empty hard drive to burn Windows XP onto so I can give it back, but I want to make sure I don't wreck my own rig in the process.
Basically, I’d plug his drive into my PC—which is running Windows 10 on an SSD—do a clean install of XP on his drive without worrying about drivers, then just unplug it and hand it back. If I do that, will my computer still boot up fine once his drive is gone?
Can I just wing it, or is there something I should watch out for?

You can certainly just disconnect your own drive if you perform the installation via a CD, DVD, or USB stick; doing so provides absolute peace of mind regarding your own setup (though if the installer is sitting on your SSD, you'll need to move it to one of those external media types first). That being said, it is vital that his drive is set as the primary boot device in your BIOS and that the partition is marked as active. If those conditions are met, the installer will recognize it as the "C:" drive and proceed with the installation. However, I must warn you that dealing with drivers—specifically those tied to the motherboard hardware—could prove to be quite a headache unless your two machines happen to have nearly identical hardware configurations.

Kimberly Martinez4 said:I’m currently stuck on an old Microsoft contract with a dynamic IP that doesn't expire until late next year. Ever since Verizon "took over" Microsoft, I’ve been trying to wrap my head around things and found out they supposedly don't offer dynamic IPs anymore. For any addresses starting with those specific digits, neither a router reset nor a manual disconnect through the interface actually does anything. A polite help desk agent explained it to me, but I’m still digging for answers because my connection drops once a day. It kicks me out of whatever game or app I'm logged into, yet the IP address stays exactly the same. I’m no tech wizard, but my understanding is that dynamic IPs should change during a daily reset, whereas static IPs shouldn't cause a disconnect like this. Right now, it feels like I'm caught in some weird limbo between a static and a dynamic setup—I get the daily reset, but the IP refuses to budge.

I’m wondering if this is just a widespread shift toward static IPs across all providers, or if it's just a Verizon thing. Or maybe, in my specific case, this weird IP configuration only applies to legacy Microsoft customers whose contracts were already active when Verizon stepped in.

Do people using other providers like Comcast, Spectrum, AT&T, Cox, or T-Mobile deal with this same mess at Verizon, or is a dynamic IP still actually dynamic elsewhere?

If I were a betting man, I’d say you’re merely enjoying a "pseudo-static" address; essentially, you have a temporary assignment that nobody is willing to guarantee will remain unchanged come tomorrow.

There isn't any widespread industry trend quite like the one you're describing.

Neither this blatant censorship nor the utter inability to provide straight answers comes as any sort of shock, really.

A colleague of mine is currently putting together a piece regarding the current state of the media landscape here in America. This serves as one of his primary data points, so I sent him the link in the hopes that he might find at least some utility in it...

Admittedly, we didn't see eye to eye when we first discussed this, but as time marches on, he is increasingly forced to acknowledge that my assessment was correct. Those outlets that loudly brand themselves as "progressive" or "free" often prove to be even less liberated and far more prone to narrow-mindedness and intellectual stagnation than the very groups they condescendingly look down upon.

And this particular example illustrates that phenomenon perfectly.

(The general state of the American media is quite dismal across the board—whether you're looking at the right-wing or left-wing outlets, it's bad everywhere, that much is indisputable...)

Well, it appears my posts—which actually contained logical arguments and a legitimate link to an NBC article—have once again been scrubbed by the censors.

feralranger said:

north wind said:I really don't understand the eye-rolling here, especially when you've positioned yourself as if you have some inherent right to dictate what happens during someone else's pregnancy.

No group of "medical experts" can, or should ever be allowed to, make reproductive decisions on behalf of a woman—or the life within her—unless we are living in some dystopian nightmare straight out of The Handmaid's Tale".🙄
Furthermore, I fail to see where you get the notion that anyone else possesses a superior claim to decide the fate of another person's offspring.😲

What you're claiming is simply incorrect. According to current medical ethics standards, if a procedure does not result in a fatality, doctors are professionally obligated to preserve life. Link

Given the advanced technology being discussed by our colleague, an abortion would no longer equate to ending a life; rather, applying the very same protocols doctors are bound to follow—as evidenced by this link—would mandate them to save that life.

and:

feralranger said:

north wind said:I wasn't even suggesting that, nor did I dispute it.

The gentleman was specifically referring to the extraction of embryos from a woman's body to be transferred into "artificial wombs" without her consent or knowledge, which is entirely different from the topic you are currently dwelling on.🙄

While extraction is indeed a consequence of an abortion, in the context of the advanced technology previously mentioned, the procedure no longer results in death; consequently, under existing medical guidelines, physicians are required to save the life. Link

In essence, as technology advances—which was the core of our discussion—the threshold for survival shifts. Fewer abortions end in loss, and more end in survival. If the fetus survives the procedure, doctors are ethically bound to intervene and save it, a fact clearly supported by the provided link. The link is srelevant pages. NBC.
So, there is absolutely nothing inaccurate about those censored posts.

Censorship is merely a reflection of one-dimensional narrow-mindedness.

I find myself wondering which moderator decided to censor posts that were culturally nuanced, logically argued, and backed by relevant links?

The censorship here is so glaringly obvious that these clumsy attempts at justification serve as nothing more than a confession... because in all your frantic efforts to rationalize this crackdown, you haven't actually pointed to a single thing that warranted being penalized or scrubbed. Every single post was perfectly fine; indeed, if they hadn't been censored or deleted, nobody would have felt the need to repost them in the first place... and with this platform, one can never truly be certain—sometimes the server just seems to lag and fails to register an entry, leading a user to simply switch tabs... but in the end, it turns out it wasn't a technical glitch at all, but rather intentional deletion, which is to say, outright censorship, which is a far greater embarrassment for Reddit, quite frankly.

Charles Fox10 said:One shouldn't draw any definitive conclusions from that specific instance of moderation, as we frequently act on autopilot without even bothering to glance at the actual content of the deleted post.

First, a participant is censored and their post is wiped away under the incredibly elastic label of "trolling," and immediately following that, a second user is purged by the same mindless "autopilot" logic. It is painfully obvious that both entries were perfectly legitimate and composed in an entirely civil manner.

And yet, instead of simply acknowledging and rectifying the error, we are presented with these truly meddlesome justifications fueled by sheer dogmatism and censorship.

Paul Kern12 said:The author here is clearly referring to children who are already grown up, which becomes quite evident when you look at the replies to that particular thread:

Exactly, that was indeed the context, and I merely chose to quote the specific portion where my colleague posed his question before I provided my response. However, given how they’ve been playing games with deleting and censoring posts, one begins to wonder if anything can truly be viewed as permanent... Had I possessed the foresight to anticipate such blatant manipulation and censorship, I might have taken a screenshot, but unfortunately, I failed to do so; nevertheless, even from this snippet, the situation remains abundantly clear.

I didn't receive an actual answer from you, merely a desperate attempt to justify this censorship. If you bother to look at what was quoted in my initial post, it becomes quite evident that my colleague’s question was perfectly appropriate, just as my response was entirely beyond reproach.

Furthermore, I have already made it abundantly clear that I have zero interest in your tiresome excuses regarding one-sided thinking and censorship; my concern lies solely in whether those positioned above you actually endorse such narrow-mindedness and suppression. That point was explicitly stated in my second post, which is number 3 in this thread.

You’re merely entangling yourself further in this mess. If we aren't dealing with a simple server glitch and you actually went out of your way to delete your posts twice, then your embarrassment is even more profound than I initially thought. I took the liberty of quoting his question—which was perfectly valid—and provided a response that was equally appropriate and it is all right there for anyone to see within my original post.

In your desperate attempt to mask the criteria of one-sidedness and blatant censorship, you are only succeeding in exposing yourself further; everything I have been saying is becoming increasingly undeniable...

What kind of trolling is this? Are you actually trying to plant these ideas just to justify your own censorship? It’s transparently obvious.

The individual asks: I would actually be curious to hear what those children think... whether they feel satisfied that their mothers chose not to go through with it, or if they believe everything would have been perfectly fine if they had been aborted instead.

And I am simply providing an answer, all within the necessary context.

I couldn't care less about your justifications for narrow-mindedness and censorship; my real question is whether there is someone above you, and if this stance is being mandated by your superiors. (If that's the case, then the shame brought upon the entire organization is even more profound, naturally...)

This whole charade is utterly pointless. How exactly am I supposed to respond to a post that’s been scrubbed from existence before I can even reach it...

When my initial reply vanished, I foolishly assumed it was some technical glitch; I hadn't yet grasped the reality that I was witnessing deliberate censorship.

There wasn't a single justifiable reason to delete that first post, assuming, of course, that this wasn't merely a server error and was actually an intentional act.

By doing this, you simply confirm that we are dealing with premeditation, in other words, outright censorship.

My previous entry was perfectly civil, respectful, and strictly on-topic, just as this one isn't merely some mindless copy-paste job.

If I am forbidden from expressing my thoughts—if they are being deleted—then what else could one possibly call it if not censorship?

The situation speaks for itself... the quality of the content and its adherence to decorum are perfectly clear.

What I am actually looking for is a response from someone higher up the chain, as it is patently obvious that you are merely acting as a mouthpiece for this censorship.

At first glance, I foolishly assumed the server had simply glitched, but it turns out we are dealing with censorship once again; it wasn't some technical hiccup when my post vanished the first time.

The subject at hand is the "way of life" section in the policy PDF, and it appears lonebadger6 was once again busy playing the role of the censor.

Since the original post has been scrubbed by the censors, I am unable to provide a link, so I shall simply paste the text right here.

Quote: in passing said:What I would actually find interesting is the perspective of those children... whether they feel satisfied that their mothers chose to carry them, or if they believe everything would have been perfectly fine had they been aborted instead.

...having server issues yet again...

My own mother ultimately decided against an abortion due to precisely this kind of external pressure—religious reasons, specifically—as she was facing severe vascular issues, and doctors warned her she could lose a leg if she didn't proceed with the termination.

As for my own stance? My opinion, and indeed the very reality of it, is that I would be dead and possess no opinion whatsoever if she hadn't made that choice... so, in any given scenario, my viewpoint is inherently predicated upon her decision to forgo the abortion... just as my very existence is.

Consequently, my grievance lies with the ideological narrowness, the one-sidedness, and the blatant censorship being practiced here...

My contribution was directly relevant to the topic and composed with appropriate decorum.

One would think that dogmatism and intellectual stagnation shouldn't be the hallmarks of a free press, so why is this forum trending so heavily in that direction?

You actually brought up the possibility of a.

People lie quite frequently, don't they? The motivation can range from a simple craving for attention to more calculated endeavors, such as promoting a new book or, frankly, just chasing a paycheck...

Secondly, a couple of strangers—whose commitment to the truth remains entirely unverified and therefore highly questionable in my estimation—shared something truly extraordinary. Naturally, I remain skeptical.

What hiddeneagle98 wrote strikes me as somewhat more plausible and credible... he was recounting his own personal experience, and while our acquaintance is limited strictly to this forum, I would venture to say he possesses a certain integrity; I simply see no ulterior motive for him to be spinning some elaborate yarn...

In my view, I believe you are being sincere, or rather, that you genuinely believe what you are writing... but then again, that is merely a matter of belief...