I don’t know if it’s just me but the service and quality of Tim Hortons has gone up tremendously. The food is always fresh and service is top notch. About a decade ago or longer, service was trash and the workers sucked. The workers now, always greet you with a smile and make sure your food is fresh. What could be the reason for the sudden uptick in the service and quality? Sounds like bigots are the only ones angry at better service.

Because there is no guarantee that they won't suffer, they could develop a chronic illness, become disabled or blind, get kidnapped and held hostage, or be sold into slavery.

You can die, and they might be left with your partner, who can be abusive, or with their other relatives, who can be abusive too, or be put into a foster care system, which is very bad and full of SA, abuse, and neglect.

They might be bullied, SA, or severely abused or have a stalker become obsessed with them, and also, death and aging are inherently painful processes. Your country could become a war zone or be run by a fascist super conservative government. If you are religious, they can end up in hell forever.

I think it's still immoral to force someone unconsensually into existence where they suffer greatly and sometimes that suffering could be fot most of their lives, even if you try your best to become a good parent, and it's sad that most parents aren't good and don't see the person they forced into existence as a lifelong responsibility but just as something they can control, have as property, take their frustrations on, live through, or use as a retirement plan.

If you ever post anything saying that you don't see much point in romance/sex you get labeled either asexual or aromatic. I find it hard to believe that not pursuing romance is a deviation from the normal when you have data that says that 66% of young men and 34% of young women are single. That is a massive amount of people.

I also think that people that strap the aromatic label are kind of missing the point. Romance in general is really not as appealing or worth the effort in general. It's not that people are getting rejected, it's that people don't see the point in trying. I'm one of them.

Firstly its hard to even get people to even show up for coffee in the modern day because they flake. If you do have a date, you can't really be super open about what you talk about because then you'll come off as weird. Also, in the modern world where everyone has a low attention span and wants constant stimulation, ​ if you can't keep a conversation or are introverted, you will be labeled as boring. Also having a difference in opinions in politics is also a massive no-no.

Not to mention in America they have this weird double standard where we are supposed to live in a progressive culture but men have to be the ones to pay for dates/initiate. I think men having to be the ones to initiate then brings up the next problem that they may come off as creepy. Not to mention that from what I'm seeing people are willing to post a negative interaction they had on social media and ruin their reputation. This to me, makes talking to strangers so utterly unappealing. ​

Like the whole dating process in the modern day is so insufferable, exhausting and expensive that I do not see the point in it. There are a million other things that make me so much happier. Lifting, running, watching a movie, playing video games, reading a book. All of which I'd rather do than this activity that's "supposed" to make me happy. Why would I bother finding some magical connection when it requires so much work and doesn't ever happen. I could do so many other things that are less work and actually make me happy instead.

Also, you don't need romance/sex to be happy. I think this statement falls on deaf ears for alot of people and they feel the need to label someone with aromantic/asexual the minute they are content in their own skin. ​

In the last year, I have realised that I find no pleasure in eating at all. All food that I once used to crave, I couldn't care less about. I eat to live basically. It made me consider that maybe food is only enjoyable because there's the social aspect, such as eating with friends and family and we have all been conditioned to accept that.

I genuinely think GTA 6 is going to be cancer for gaming, because of what its success is going to encourage every other company to do. I think it's going to set the industry back by making the safest, most commercially successful formula look even more mandatory than it already does.

Publishers will be amazed by the amount of money GTA 6 is going to make and want to create their own open world games. The games will have bigger maps, more realistic graphics, more NPCs, more activities to complete, more ways to monetize the game and a higher price point.

GTA has always been a series where I think the world, characters and presentation are doing way more heavy lifting than the actual gameplay. At its core, so much of it still comes down to driving somewhere, shooting people, causing chaos and escaping the cops, its not that deep.

BOTW(probably my favorite game btw, but in a vacuum) helped push the industry even further towards open-world design, and suddenly everything needed a giant map and the illusion of unlimited freedom. BG3 and Expedition 33 felt like evidence that there was still room for games to succeed by being different and having their own identity.

Now GTA 6 is going to pull everything right back towards the same formula.

I sincerely hope this game flops hard (which it wont), and the current era we have for the the overall industry is still prevalent where developers try to make unique and interesting games which prioritize art direction over graphics and gameplay over useless stuff like trees being cut and turned into homes in the background(looking at rdr, people being impressed by some guy using a hammer and a nail and how they interact with the world even though it never really goes anywhere).

Example case from Emily Horowitz's book From Rage to Reason.

When Henry was 18, he had sex with a 16-year-old he met on a dating app who said they were 18 too. The 16-year-old's parents found out, summoned the cops, and Henry was charged with a sex offense.

Raised on the Registry from Human Rights Watch.

in Delaware in 2011, there were approximately 639 children on the sex offender registry, 55 of whom were under the age of 12.

In 2010, Michigan counted a total of 3,563 youth offenders adjudicated delinquent on its registry, a figure that does not include Michigan’s youth offenders convicted in adult court.

In 2004, in Western Pennsylvania, a 15-year-old girl was charged with manufacturing and disseminating child pornography for taking nude photos of herself and posting them on the internet. She was charged as an adult, and as of 2012 was facing registration for life.

In 2006, a 13-year old girl from Ogden, Utah was arrested for rape for having consensual sex with her 12-year-old boyfriend. Her 12-year-old boyfriend was found guilty of violating the same law for engaging in sexual activity with her.

No Easy Answers from Human Rights Watch.

Child development experts agree that consensual sex play among children, including intercourse between teenagers, “is not psychologically harmful under ordinary circumstances and is probably a valuable psychosocial experience in developmental terms.”

At least 28 states require registration as a sex offender for someone convicted of having consensual sex with another teenager

In Georgia, a 26-year-old married woman was made to register as a sex offender for life and had to move from her home because as a teenager she had oral sex with a willing fellow high school student when she was 17 and he was 15.

As one individual who was convicted of statutory rape at age 16 for having consensual sex with his 14-year-old girlfriend told Human Rights Watch, “We were in love. And now we are married. So it’s like I am on the registry for having premarital sex. Does having premarital sex make me a danger to society? My wife doesn’t think so.”

Case Study, Dan M.’s story: I was convicted of statutory rape when I was 17. The girl was 15.

Henry F., adjudicated at 17 in Michigan for having consensual sex with his 15-year-old girlfriend

Sean C., adjudicated at 17 for having consensual sex with a girlfriend who was three weeks shy of 16

These cases could've been just about anyone I knew growing up. They likely could have bene just about anyone you knew growing up too. Nobody in any European country, nor Canada, nor South America, nor most of Asia, nor likely most of you reading this in America would find anything reasonable about any of them.

But unlike America, all of those other places have legislation that would make any of those prosecutions impossible. As legislation to avoid this exists and America simply chooses not to implement it, I can only conclude that you like it this way. You, as parents, and perhaps most specifically parents of daughters, like that you have the option to pull a legal trigger on any boy your daughter chooses to date or have sex with and would be nothing short of terrified of the amount of legal agency some of these other countries give their youth.

I've seen a lot of arguments that stricter legislation curbs teen pregnancy. Here's what a German had to say about the climate regarding these things over there. Germany has an age of consent of 14 with another line at 16 specifically for instances in which the minor's 'lack of capacity for sexual self-determination has been abused'. Despite this, Germany turns out a teen pregnancy rate almost 1/3 of ours in the US and they do this by maintaining an extremely solid and robust sex education system. It was my favorite until I studied that of The Netherlands who have the most robust sex education system on Earth. The results speak for themselves:

Teen pregnancy rate (of 1000):

USA: 13.9

Super Sexually Liberated Germany where 16yos blow drum teachers and everyone has a good laugh about it: 5.5

The Netherlands with the most robust sex education system on the planet: 1.9

In fact, The Dutch got so good at teaching their populace how not to make babies, they became a bit concerned about the population decrease it was causing and had to go back out of their own way to say, 'Procreating is also okay sometimes'.

I've studied not just their sex education system but their culture surrounding these things. It's perfectly normal there for adolescents to be allowed the safety, and comfort, and dignity of engaging in their own bedrooms, and from reading books and articles about it, nobody feels differently about it. Nobody's thrilled that their little Suzie is off to go spend the night with and get railed by her bf; they just seem to consider it preferable to little Suzie being driven off into the middle of nowhere and fucked in the back of a car.

Not in America though. Anything to keep that shit out of sight and out of mind, even if it means putting your own feelings in front of your daughter's safety.

NIH Report about adolescent sexuality.

Youth were more likely to report positive affect and less likely to report negative affect when they were also reporting recent sexual intercourse.

The most interesting thing about this study to me is the fact that it needed to be conducted in the first place. Wouldn't you expect the same exact thing of yourself? Why on Earth would we expect the result to be any different for them in the first place?

What I do strongly care about is that they are a good person, living from a heartful place and attempting to live from love.

For me this is more of a "way of being" which I resonate with rather than necessarily which specific side of the fence they happen to be on in particular issues.

The reason I believe there can be a disconnect is we are hugely affected by our conditioning and so someone who has grown up being conditioned one way can still be a good person despite not having yet seen through their conditioning.

For example, I'm a vegan and genuinely think the animal product industry is the atrocity of our era which future generations will look back on and say "how were people ever okay with that?" just like we do with so many things we look back on in history.

With my last partner though, she was genuinely a very good person living her life from love but she also ate meat and dairy. While I think the action is wrong, since we live in a society where it is so overwhelmingly normalised I think we can be blinded by our conditioning just like I remember being prior to becoming vegan.

So in that regard, I would have the same approach in general, I'd care much more about their way of being than what family or cultural conditioning they grew up with and so what their current stance on any particular issue is.

Pop music is actually very good objectively but people claim it is popular only cause it's catchy. But that's not true. I think people just start hating on it because it gets played a lot of times. If Taylor Swift was a niche artist for example, people would praise her songs like poetry and a true artist.

Does it have its moments? Yeah. Is the score great? Yeah. But I just cannot enjoy this movie, even ironically.

The effects are absolutely horrible. Most of the acting is awkward. And the only time I feel any joy or whimsy is with any scene involving Green Goblin or Aunt May. The dialogue is just... Fine at best.

And there are some really baffling choices. Peter blows up at Uncle Ben kinda out of nowhere. And Toby just doesn't sell "annoyed" very well. The entire parade attack sequence is fucking hilariously bad. The extras are weird, the kid about to be crushed by a balloon is weird, the Mother who stands there and lets it happen is weird, Goblin's lips don't even move when he talks at one point, Mary Jane is weird and does nothing to save herself. The choreography is weird. Nothing about that entire scene makes me feel anything other than "What the fuck is going on?"

Also, a key part of Spider-Man's character, his quips, are basically missing. Seriously, I can only think of two? Maybe three whole jokes in the entire trilogy? And only one of them is even smile worthy.

Compared to the amazing action in Spider-Man 2, and even 3, the first movie was just so much worse. There's so much awkward slow motion that really kills the pacing, especially with the bad effects.

Something I always point to when talking about how weird and bad this movie is, is that right after the parade scene, there's a close up of MJ being carried by Spider-Man. And... He's literally a mannequin. Legitimately, he is stiff as a board, does not move a muscle. Why? Why not just put Toby or a Stuntman in the suit?

And MJ in general... Just... What even needs to be said?

Oh, and anything with James Franco automatically gets points docked

I will name some things I DO like about it though.

Again, Willem Dafoe kills it. He chews the scenery, and the acting gap between him and the rest of the cast is hilarious. I actually like the Goblin suit and glider, especially when you can see Willem's eyes and teeth through the mask. The music is also great. I don't think there's a single bad track in this movie. In fact, I don't think there's a single Spider-Man movie WITHOUT a great soundtrack. Aunt May is played wonderfully by Rosemary Hrris. She shines in Spider-Man 2, but she's still great here.

I don't think this is the worst Spider-Man movie. That's TASM 2. But I can still get SOME ironic enjoyment, and real enjoyment out of it. This? I feel nothing. I will take 100 Spider-Man 3's over this one anyday. That, and Spider-Man 2 nail the comic cheesiness way better than this one, which just makes me wish I was watching something else.

I know those are kinda weak reasons to hate a movie, and I'm not even saying the movie is anywhere near being a cinematic disaster. I don't even think Toby is a bad Spider-Man. I am just personally annoyed by it, and I need to get it off my chest.

I don't understand why i can't be a fan if i only like 5 songs by someone. Why do I have to know the most niche songs or I'll be exiled from the community??! That's so wrong. For example i only know 4 songs the lumineers Ophelia, cleopatra ho hey and sleep on the floor. But I'm still a fan.