It is a beautiful part of the country that I feel a lot of people overlook. I always enjoy visiting or passing through there.

My sisters-in-law have a lot of kids, and their lives just seem so locked down and programmed. They're MAGAs, so I dunno how much that has to do with it, but it seems every year I see less and less kids out playing in my neighborhood, and everyone is just on phones now or playing MMOs or whatever. I don't know enough to say it's bad, and since I don't have any kids I try not to stick my nose too far into people's business, but it seems the very opposite of my childhood.

Tangent time: I was listening to a YT vid this morning with a long time Sesame Street creator and it was about how the type of childhood Sesame Street was created for no longer exists, and how it has tried to change to accommodate the modern childhood. They talked about how in the 70s-90s (pre-mainstream net I feel is a good cutoff point) that growing as a child was about finding your place in a community, as you were out and about, learning who was around you and finding your role. Now Bluey is the most watched show by parents and children. I've watched some Bluey, and it still has some community gathering, but it's a lot more home-centric, with parents having a more active and direct role entertaining and teaching kids, whereas our parents set us free upon the neighborhood to learn from our sense of adventure and making mistakes. I'd love to have had a Bluey childhood, but one of my big concerns, especially with the rise of things like the parents' rights movement, is my childhood sucked, and to this day, I really don't like my parents. I was stuck with them wayyyy too much even with the freedom to spend most of the day outside and away from them. If I was around them every moment I wasn't at school, I probably wouldn't be here today. So I worry about kids that don't get that unsupervised time away, because that and the time with my grandparents was my only real happiness.

The other fun random thing in the video was a brief side chat about micro-generations. They said there is a large number of I believe 5-6 year olds that are having a massive problem in that they refuse to wear shoes! Having a bulk of their formative years at home due to COVID, they just never acclimated to having their feet caged up all day and refuse to keep shoes on. I found that so interesting!