It's not that people can't be addicted to cell phones, its that cell phones aren't the cause of the addiction. A child using their phone too much is much the same as a child using a gaming console too much. The end result is often the same with mental health issues and problems coping with reality. In both cases however the device didn't cause the issue, its lack of parental responsibility which you really can't legislate a fix for.

Some parents care deeply about screen-time, some are so busy working two or even three jobs and do not put in the time it takes to properly supervise their children. Some have no excuse but its still their parental rights to raise their kid how they see fit.

Expecting schools to fix problems that start at home is how public education became so vilified in the first place.

It's not a zero sum game. Reducing PFA use throughout would still help. We don't have to phase it out completely to help mitigate the issue of overexposure en masse.

Thinking like that is why so many problems remain unaddressed.

This is harder to do well than you think as someone that's done drywall thankfully in a part of the house you can't readily see. Keep in mind, you have to move or extend electrical outlets and any other fixtures.

I too know the pain in the arse that is cinder block housing from the 50s albeit my house was built in 1960. Most times you can get away with drilling a couple of holes and putting spray foam into the hollow part of the block. It won't get you all the way but it will at least get you to the point where the AZ sun doesn't make the block on the inside uncomfortable to the touch.

As someone that does like to do stuff myself I hear you though. When pros took care of the 30 foot long crack in the sewer pipe, (Insert PUN here) they had to cut into the brick on the outside leaving me although 15 feet where I had to put new brick in. Once it is covered in paint didn't look half bad, you can tell its not original though.

Insulation is hard though, there are lots of things inside walls that can cause problems. Even spray foam can be troublesome as it will go wherever the path of least resistance is and that point is not always obvious.

You are a bit confused. Monopolies most often are not the result of government enforcement, that is mostly unique to internet providers where it is a natural monopoly. Most Monopolies are created through acquisition. Big company A buys smaller company B competitor. Now the market has one less competitor, Company A repeats this procedure over and over and becomes Sinclair broadcasting or Microsoft or Google or all the meat packing companies who's names I can't remember off the top of my head.

Bell was broken up because it was abusing its monopoly and it is the last example of trust busting in this country. Since then, all the baby bells that were created in its wake have largely been consolidated into ATT which if you work in IT Operations you'll groan immediately as they are terrible to work with because they simply do not care about you or your business. The same goes with FiServ in banking, and literally dozens to hundreds of other markets.

Monopoly is the natural conclusion of capitalism however. Success allows you expand and buy out your competition until you no longer have competition and then you set your prices. American industry is littered with examples of this.

The very game of Monopoly teaches this lesson quite well at the expense of everyone who's playing with you.

There is a giant gap between laissez-faire capitalism and complete socialism. A big example is that we used to do a fair amount of trust busting. When you regulates parts of industry that have gotten out of control you can ensure the market remains mostly fair. This has not been done for 50 years at this point. The closest we got was Microsoft antitrust case and look how little resulted from that in the late 90s?

Capitalism is animalistic and you can't really blame animals for acting like animals. It is natural for a business owner whether publicly traded or not to seek higher and better profits. On its face there is nothing wrong with that unless you are cutting costs by dumping your garbage in my yard and expecting me to clean it up. If you succeed by actually being better than your competition then you are the definition of actually deserving your success.

There used to be at least somewhat of a social contract and it died with the American dream somewhere in the 80s.

Much of the hard right anti-trans folks have no actual interaction with trans people and forget, that they are in fact, people.

How many times have you seen a Republican change their hard right stance when it suddenly impacts their own personal lives. It's unfortunately impacting my niece who is in a loving relationship with another woman. A lot of people in their town have such a distaste for two people that wouldn't hurt a fly. It's amazing to me that they care so much about something that has zero impact on their own life.

I think most people have a tendency to view trans folks through the lens of drag shows which are obviously not representative of the group, if you can even call it that, as a whole. Although I contend most of them haven't been to an actual drag show or they wouldn't be so concerned about them.

The capitalist system we use is the ultimate ponzi-scheme. It requires that economies grow infinitely. An economy can only grow by adding more people unless you actually want to pay existing people more. Since Elon in particular certainly doesn't want to pay them more, he has opted for population growth to ensure the can keeps heading down the road.

If the economy shrinks because population declines, you can look at Italy and Greece and see what happened on a small scale. That doesn't mean you're necessarily wrong about the overall outcome, it will be very bumpy and terrible for a lot of people but it will also continue on and likely as you say, become a lot more efficient.

Why are the only options shutting down "Big Agriculture" or letting bad practices persist?

We've spent the better part of 40 years deregulating in this country to very predictable results. When profit is the incentive it is natural that businesses will do whatever they can to increase said profits. If a company is publicly traded and profits don't increase year over year the stock tanks rather than being seen a stable company.

You need to face it, corporations with the same legal standing as people is indeed the cause of the majority of issues that face modern society. Does that mean we need to go full communist? Of course not, but we can certainly regulate industry and corporate America better than we do. There is so much money in politics today because corporations are allowed to use their money to fund PACs while CEOs also fund their brand of choice. Greed used to be considered one of the seven deadly sins. It is now considered as a virtue but our country is founded on this idea. The wealth and power Elon Musk enjoys today dwarfs that of the robber barons of history.

It means all Florida social media users would have to provide some form of identification that indicates their age. Not just kids. It's the only way they can comply with a law this draconian. I believe the law is well meaning but in true Florida fashion it fails in execution.

This is similar to laws requiring backdoors into encryption implementations for law enforcement. By making it easier for law enforcement you make it monumentally easier for criminals as well. In this case, it means companies who've made it their livelihood sharing your information (All social media) will be forced to collect even more information which they will in turn sell.

Porn sites often notorious for hosting malware will be forced to do the same, how many people want porn sites to have a copy of their driver's license?

China famously have just chosen to copy cars that were manufactured there. If you want your IP stolen and used for China's purposes having them manufacture anything is the way to do it. Corporate America still hasn't learned this lesson even though Top Gear even did an episode about it more than a decade ago. Showing off the Chinese version of a BMW X5 and several other cars they straight up copied.

The TPP with all of its flaws was the only real way to address it, when you create competition in countries that have a treaty agreeing to honor IP laws, then you open up viable competition without theft en masse.

How about you start by capping all the methane spewing wells that were capped and no longer produce oil. They are the single largest contributor at this point and quite within our technological means to deal with right now. That means holding oil companies accountable for cleaning up their messes however and that costs investors money so it doesn't happen.

When even basic steps like this are glossed over, more drastic lifestyle altering steps are of course not going to stand a chance.

While its true that physical activity is important, its not nearly as important as consuming better food to begin with. Burning 2000 calories through exercise takes a VERY long time. That would several hours of physical activity. A typical Mcdonalds Double Quarter pounder with fries is about 1500 calories in just one meal. When you consume that crap you are already behind the game unless you're going to be up on a roof or landscaping the rest of the day.

Convenient healthy options like Salad and Go are making huge strides. Salad and Go for instance is cheaper than McDs and way fewer calories. For every one salad and go however you have dozens of far worse options which many people will either be forced to choose via lack of options or choose based on it being all they know.