It's very in line with Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves To Death and the idea that the medium itself shapes communication and public discourse.
People seem not just unwilling, but at times unable to tolerate any sort of discussion that's long enough to get into the real nuance of an issue. Postman blamed the news, especially TV news, and an over reliance on TV/Video as means to convey information (though he actually supported TV as entertainment). But he also cautioned against the risk centralizing what he referred to then as "computing" in a way that seem to almost prophesize what's currently happening with social media and AI.
That weirdness is, of course, the whole joke about Holt starting and ending his texts that way.
At the end of the day, despite my spending way too much time in this thread defending the mandatory use of periods, I have to admit that it doesn't really matter how you write a text to your friends.
But proper grammar is important when you need to communicate clearly with a large audience who might not be aware of the colloquialisms and informal conventions you're used to and it's better to have a strict system of rules to make sure everyone can understand. Which is why primary and secondary schools teach the English language and an overall decline in literacy is cause for concern.
So yeah, context is important, but there are many contexts where proper grammar is required.
You eventually restated my point. It's a convention used among a portion of the population, documented in articles and studies, but not taught or a part of formal grammar.
At some point a set of fairly strict rules is important for a written language, as your point with Gen X and Boomers helps to illustrate, because it makes sure you can be understood by a broader audience when clarity is required. Punctuation is a fundamental part of that.
Omitting periods in text is a technilogical colloquialism. I'm not arguing that. But that doesn't mean, as the poster that I first replied to implied, that people who omit periods from texts are the only ones who "know how to write".
Over-use of exclamation points is another poor habit, since they can mark something that's important regardless of it being a positive or negative. With quoted speech it could be something that's either angry or joyful. Using them to convey a non-threatening tone shouldn't be required. I get that it is in some cases, and I belive that indicates a problem with our overall literacy and a renewed misogyny in the workplace.
Whether this is a result of the medium of communication or a decline in literacy is up for debate, but word choice and context should do the bulk of conveying tone and relying on punctuation for that purpose understandably looks like an indicator of poor literacy.
There may be an informal convention among some people that using a period at the end of the last sentence in a text is passive aggressive, but it's far from universal and far from being a rule.
Seems like it's just as pedantic to expect people who have habitually used correct punctuation for decades to adopt this convention without ever being told and then blaming them for not abandoning an immensely useful part of written language for no apparent reason.
If you insist on interpreting my use of punctuation in a text as anything other than an effort to communicate clearly, I'm likely to start being passive aggressive at some point.
It's more than that even, they're usually the reason why the government doesn't work.
Social security would work great if funded properly, so what do they do? Screw with the funding. The ACA would work if properly funded, so what do they do? Let the subsidies expire. Medicare for all would work if properly funded. The education system would work if properly funded. The VA works when properly funded. And so on, and so on, and so on. In most cases, all it takes is the money and resources that they'd rather steal or give to their donors and like magic, we'd have a functioning government again.
They constantly sabotage programs that benefit tax payers while spinning the lie that government run programs can't and don't work. And after decades of dealing with underfunded programs run with minimal staffing and a maximum of red tape, of course people believe them.
OBLIGATORY I'M NOT A DOCTOR DON'T TAKE THIS AS MEDICAL ADVICE FIRST.
Monster runs about 160-180 mg per can depending on variety. Coffee is about 80-120 per 8 oz cup, depending on the bean and roast.
A 400-500 mg dose of caffeine daily is considered safe for most people according to Wikipedia. So 2-3 Monsters a day for a heavy caffeine user isn't a crazy amount.
Now, when you look at Bing and Reign, which IIRC have around 350 mg per can, those numbers go up real fast, but you're still not going to get close to the approximately ten grams of caffeine needed for it to be a lethal dose, you'd puke long before you got that much liquid in your stomach.
Also, the physical effects of caffeine abate over time. Users build up a tolerance fairly quickly, and it gets to the point that the twitchiness, elevated BP, and higher heart rate aren't really present like they'd be for someone who doesn't consume a lot of it. Again, paraphrasing Wikipedia here. So a moderate user (say 1 - 2 Monsters or Red Bulls a day) probably isn't on the verge of an infarction at all times, as the media seems to enjoy impling.
It's mostly just soda pop with extra caffeine, and caffeine is bitter, so they jack up the sugar content to compensate. That's a bigger issue IMO.
But overall, there are likely millions, if not billions of people who down two or three energy drinks daily and don't drop dead. So while the caffeine numbers seem extreme, it's really the sugar, artificial sweetners, and probably unhealthy lifestyle that goes with being a chronic user that will cause the most damage over time.
Someone else may be able to come up with a more concise and better worded argument for it, but the way we've implemented private ownership/use of natural resources seems pretty shitty. Especially considering how many people have been screwed over and how much damage is often done in the process.
Owning something that existed long before people, and would have continued to exist if we've never evolved, seems suspect in general. While there's value in the labor involved in extracting or preparing these resources for use, the material itself wasn't created by anyone and should belong to everyone in some way.
A portion of the income derived from the exploitation of all natural resources should be redistributed as UBI.
Right now, I'm listening to three very talented young people writing original songs in my garage, who will, even if successful, put in significantly more work for significantly less recognition simply because I'm not JJ Abrams.
That's not a terrible price point, and I've been saving for more bike stuff anyway, cause I've still got the new hobby bug pretty bad. Until I saw your post I honestly didn't know this existed outside of something like a Peleton, and the app looks more entertaining than what they're offering.
This is definitely going on my list. The best thing I've done for myself in the last year was to get a bike for my health, but winter's making my rides rough and I'm bored after ten minutes on a stationary bike. It'll have to wait until after the holidays, but this might be the next good thing I do.
I have a 20 week streak going for exercise, both cycling and lifting weights, with 77 days total that I've exercised on. For the last 8 weeks, I've been active for at least 25 minutes every day of the week, even if it's just walking the dogs. My blood pressure is down an average of nine points and my pants are getting loose again.
Today was rough. It was a bit too cold and windy for good cycling, and the route I picked (because I thought it would be better protected from the wind) had a lot of hills. I only managed to ride 12 miles in the same amount of time it normally takes me to ride 15.
If feel like more of them just realizing that they won't be the exception to the rule and only really care now that it's obvious they'll get the shit end of the stick just like everyone else.
For a great many MAGAs it is and always was about weaponizing a social and political movement to hurt people they don't like and now that it's hurting them, we're seeing clearly that their principles never aligned with what they espoused. It's always hypocrisy with them, they aren't willing to be tradwives and follow the ideals they claim to support, but they're happy to use the idea to attack feminism.
If they wind up being forced out of politics, I have no sympathy for them. It was so very apparent, going all the way back to the beginning of Gamergate, that this was the trajectory of the movement.
His primary qualification is that he was an officer (eventually reaching the rank of Major) in the Army National Guard, via ROTC, and volunteered to serve in Guantanamo and Iraq during the War on Terror.
I highly encourage people to compare and contrast his service record with that of Jim Mattis, or any other appointee to the same office in recent history, for additional context.
I just... go to my doctor on a regular basis... If I'm worried I make an appointment. He's a nice man, he explains things and gives me good advice. It's almost like he's had some kind of professional education to help him identify and treat health problems...
And I already pay a ridiculous amount for health insurance, I'm gonna get my fuckin' money's worth outta that before I send pictures of my shit to god knows where. There's no copay to get one of those mail-in poo buckets delivered every few years.
If you can comfortably drop $600 on something as abjectly stupid as a dedicated poop-cam I bet you can get at least comparable coverage to what I have.
I bet the only advice you get if it does flag something as abnormal is to see your doctor anyway. The analysis is probably done by a half baked AI or a squad of former call center workers who say through a one hour training video.
I will never understand this or the internet connected appliances. Our society is so utterly fucked right now.
It's very in line with Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves To Death and the idea that the medium itself shapes communication and public discourse.
People seem not just unwilling, but at times unable to tolerate any sort of discussion that's long enough to get into the real nuance of an issue. Postman blamed the news, especially TV news, and an over reliance on TV/Video as means to convey information (though he actually supported TV as entertainment). But he also cautioned against the risk centralizing what he referred to then as "computing" in a way that seem to almost prophesize what's currently happening with social media and AI.