That, and the insistence on viewing "social media"/"screen time" as all one thing that's all bad. My phone is where I read, shop, bank, talk to my friends, and even pay my damn taxes. This whole thing feels like banning shops because some people rob them.

It's the smugness that gets me. The "oh I'm sure it doesn't feel like it now, but you'll appreciate this when you're older" aimed at kids who are losing their whole social contact network outside of school. Right before the summer holidays.

I grew up without internet or mobile phones. I also spent a fair bit of time roaming parts of the neighbourhood alone or at least without supervision, in ways that no parent would allow at that age now. The things we did as kids are often gone! Out of reach! Forbidden!

They sound like boomers telling their kids to go "pound the pavement" and hand out resumes to get a job. The world doesn't work that way anymore! Kids don't have social media as an ADD-ON to everything we had, it's replaced parts of it! There is no golden ideal youth experience waiting for them!

I've kind of been waiting for more about goblins ever since Toby noticed their magic/blood smells like baking cookies and burnt popcorn. It was such an odd little thing to notice that it felt like a thread being laid down to pick up again later.

And thankfully my boss is good to me and I was able to work from home.
But I have two weeks off Xmas and I need it more than words can say.

"Ma'am, doesn't your husband have nipples??" youtube.com/shorts/yiet8...

Apparently they don't think nipples on boys is something that crosses species!

And I mean, props to pet owners who are willing to come and ask for advice when they're not sure about something to do with their pet's health! But boy howdy is it funny how many people think boy cats won't have nipples 😂

Our whole suburb and a chunk of the next one over were out. Annoyingly, we were the last ones to come back up. I know our last issue was a branch on the wires, but I'm not sure what caused the rest of the issue.

Power is back! That worked out to be about 4hrs, so that was fun.

Apparently both the power and the internet can be blamed on the wind. We're at 2hrs and counting, btw. And still no update on when they expect either to be back up.

If it wasn't so hot, I'd give up on internet and power using activities and try to get something done, but it's too hot to do anything but flop right now. A nap may be imminent...

*She has been paying this off with her taxes, and only because she's earning above the repayment threshold. There's no interest, only COL indexing. She's down to AU$10k after 5 years, and the government is about to forgive 20% of that.