CoderKat

Did you have to, like, sneak people in through a window or something? Surely there were cameras at the normal entrances. Or were the number of guests not an issue, just the alcohol?

If you don't want to drink, that's totally fine and entirely your choice. It's not for everyone and some people simply should not consume alcohol (eg, those with a history of substance abuse problems or anger issues).

But having fun at parties with alcohol is a pretty typical part of growing up. There's a middle ground between "staying home alone" vs "dying prematurely". You can drink enough to have fun without it being at risk of killing you. It's not healthy to bing drink, to be clear, but personally, I found it worth it every now and then to have some good times with friends. Just be mindful of your limits, hangout with people you trust, and always have a sober ride home.

just indistinguishable women’s clothing chains

Ugh, while I do enjoy clothes shopping, I always felt there's waaaaay too many of these. I can't tell the difference between most of them. Some selection is great, but the larger malls I've been to have so many seemingly identical clothing stores that you can't possibly even look at them all. I've always wondered how it's feasible to have so many. It feels like having 5 gas stations on the same block. I wonder if the stores closers to entrances or the food court have an advantage over those in the middle?

That's definitely gonna be a locational thing. In my area (near Toronto, Canada), I'd say malls are more popular in the winter because they offer an escape from the cold and there isn't that much to do in the winter, anyway. Summers in my area aren't going to get hot enough to change that any time soon.

But for something like Arizona, it's really easy to picture how that would be the case, cause summers there are murderously hot.

I wonder how such large buildings have such amazing AC, anyway? Most malls and big box stores have god tier AC.

A lot of malls I can think of (in both my current and previous city) do have tons of housing around them (though admittedly they also tend to waste a ton of space on parking). Some are admittedly a mixed bag. My parents live near a mall that is surrounded by a giant suburb and not that many medium density apartments. Though the biggest mall in that city is downtown and is positively surrounded by high density housing. Another reaaaally big mall is in a street that frankly is terrible for walking despite being full of businesses (it's a really long, low density street), but the entire back side of the mall is residences and lots of medium density at that.

In my current city, one of the biggest malls is kinda similar to that. It's got mostly detached housing near it. But it's directly on our LRT and that makes it super accessible for probably the majority of high density housing residents, which counts as walkable in my book. A significant number of people can get there in 10-20 minutes by convenient and frequent public transit. The other big mall is also on the LRT but the other side of the city. It's got much more housing near by, including a large amount of high density apartments. There's also a smaller mall more in the middle that is just surrounded by high density apartments. That mall has been hit really hard by COVID, but at least the street it's on is full of life. It doesn't make for traditional mall experiences (e.g., no food court), but it's still a super walkable area, regularly hosts mini festivals outside, and is also on the LRT route.

As I type this, I think it really drives home that LRTs and subways are utterly critical for walkable cities. Literally all the malls I've mentioned are major transit hubs (which makes them great to live near if you want to take transit), but buses relatively suck compared to LRT/subway. The ability to just head to a station without having to know the schedule is extremely convenient and the frequency also just makes it more viable to get to the mall quickly. I've used public transit for years in both cities (and to get to all the mentioned malls), but the best experiences are definitely with the LRT. The LRT also makes high density housing a lot more sensical, since being close to the LRT stations is extremely convenient and high density housing is the most scalable way to achieve that.

Most of my bigger local malls have been pretty great, too. Whenever I go, they're bustling with activity and I love it. It's fun to make an outing out of it. Hit up the food court for so many guilty pleasure options, look around some cool stores, and be able to try on clothes before buying them (the lack of being the biggest reason not to buy clothes online -- some companies have really inconvenient return policies, too).

But that's definitely not the case for every mall. There's a small one near me that is just sad. Despite being in a fairly busy area outside, it contain a bunch of empty storefronts that went out of business during COVID and still haven't found new tenants. I'm not sure why it's been that way for so long. Are there that few people looking to start businesses in that area? Or could the landlords just be massively overcharging? It sucks, though, cause I like being able to visit interesting shops in person.

It's crazy that even when people are told about this, they usually still defend it. I don't get why the heck any normal person would like the idea of spending a few months salary on a ring. It's such a terrible way to start a new marriage, especially with wages being what they are these days.

It doesn't usually go down when you pay debt off. In fact, paying off all your credit card debt every single month is a great strategy that will get you a good credit score. And is ideal, because that way you avoid the high interest rates that credit cards have.

It also doesn't go down if you check it with sites like Credit Karma. I believe what you're thinking of is hard checks, which loan issuers use and they can slightly ding your score as they represent you about to get a new line of credit. Though honestly that part is pretty sketchy, since it applies even if you don't get a new loan.

Is that even unique to social media? We have "news" sites that do the same thing (like the various alt right ones). If the goal is to tackle misinformation, we should tackle misinformation directly.

You could say that about a lot of things, though. Video games and TV were commonly criticized this way. And it was a popular meme on Reddit that people would be so addicted to the site that they'd spend hours scrolling it.

Criticizing tik tok is just popular on sites like this because people here really don't like tik tok.

At any rate, parents can already try to restrict their children's access. But governments are gonna have a hard time doing so without hurting everyone as a whole (eg, see the attempts of some US states to require giving your ID to porn sites). Dunno if you remember being a kid, but I found my way around every restriction my parents set and I just disliked them for it.

I remember having one of those as a kid. For a few days, it was the best thing ever, till I got bored with it and never played with it again.

Also, is there even any need to tell people that parts aren't copyrighted? That'd be pretty tedious to do ("texture on model pot_interior_clay_2_cracked is not copyrighted"). But if a game has a mix of copyrighted and non copyrighted media, that basically means nobody can use the non copyrighted parts because they simply can't identify which parts those are.

I suspect there's no need to tell people. After all, mixed media is already a thing. I can make a copyrighted video, for example, in which I quote some Shakespeare. The Shakespeare quote isn't copyrighted, but the rest is. I've never seen any kind of copyright notice mention this.

So the net result might not be any different. Just if you steal assets from something, they might have a harder time identifying if they have a case of copyright infringement. Only if something was entirely AI generated would things likely change much. Though there's also some weird edge cases. Like what if a human makes a 3D model but an AI textures it. 3D models are basically never used without their texture. So what's the copyright implications of using videos of this textured model? Perhaps something for a very expensive legal case to figure out?