Big Think Interview With Lenore Skenazy
Lenore Skenazy, who advocates for the free-range kids style of parenting, helps you learn to stop over-obsessing about your children.
Question: Are parents different today than they were in previous generations?
Lenore Skenazy: I think they’re really different. I think we are much more preoccupied with our children every second of the day. Are they safe, are they learning, are they getting enough out of this moment, this class, this instant, when we’re supposed to be bonding, and we’re really afraid for them all the time. And it’s not just me thinking this. You know, you get to a certain age and everybody thinks, "Oh, the good ol' days, we stayed out, we had fun, we played outside until the streetlights came on."
But the proof that things really have changed in just about one generation is that if you go get the DVD of Sesame Street Old School, it’s a two-DVD set of the early days of Sesame Street, 1969-1974, and you see all the stuff that we sort of associate with childhood. You see kids on trikes, you see kids playing follow-the-leader and there’s no accredited PhD trained follow-the-leader leader, it’s just kids. You see them playing in a vacant lot and balancing on the beams and climbing through the pipes and stuff, and before you see any of that, what I consider “normal childhood”, my childhood, a warning appears on the screen at the very beginning, this is not a joke. It says, “The following is intended for adult viewing only.” Adult viewing only, they cannot endorse a normal childhood the way they did back in 1970. That is now considered radical, crazy, dangerous, and I have a friend who’s a lawyer there and frankly they debated it and they were afraid of getting sued. What if, God forbid, somebody goes out and plays by himself? They weren’t willing to take that "risk" anymore.
And what I’m interested in is, why is that considered risky, considering the crime rate back in the ‘70s and ‘80s, when most parents today were growing up and playing outside 'til the street lights came on, that crime rate was higher than it is now. So if it wasn’t risky then, or wasn’t crazy-risky, wasn’t nutty parents who didn’t care at all about their kids, sending their kids out and never caring whether they came home or not. If they weren’t terrible, if our parents weren’t terrible, why are we considered terrible if we let our children ride their bike around the neighborhood or walk to school? Really, people will scream at you if you do that with your kids.
Question: Why are parents more afraid than they used to be?
Lenore Skenazy: I think there are four reasons that we’re more afraid, today, than our parents were, or more concerned. The first is that the media has changed. My parents were watching Marcus Welby, the people lived, they didn’t sue. It was a cheerfuller time, in terms of television. You didn’t have Nancy Grace, you didn’t have "CSI," you didn’t have anything as disgusting and revolting and scary as "Law & Order: SVU," because the old "Law & Order" just wasn’t scary enough. The children weren’t small enough and cute enough. So, media changed, and it also became 24-hours and ubiquitous. So you were always seeing, now, a child being snatched off the street. That’s just the number one story, that television has figured to put on, whether it’s a drama or news.
Another thing that’s changed is that we are in a much more litigious society. I’m sure this doesn’t come as a shock to you, but so many things in childhood are considered too dangerous because, God forbid, what if—we’re always what-iffing—and what if a child fell off a teeter totter? Well, let’s just get rid of them, say the park districts, and what if, my kids were going on a fifth grade field trip, the overnight field trip, the one trip they take into nature all year, and the assistant principal had us in the auditorium, and he was explaining the trip, and when he said, “And at the end, there’s this,” everybody was asking him for phone numbers or how to get in touch with them, etc., and he was trying to deflect everybody’s worries. "How close is the hospital?" He said, “Hey, hey, hey, look, on the last day, on the overnight stay, we make a big bonfire.” And everybody was like, "Bonfire?!" You could just see them speed-dialing their lawyers and he said, “Wait, no, let me explain, the bonfire, the children will be 20 feet from the fire and there will be a row of benches,” and I’m assuming these are non-flammable benches, “between them and the fire.”
So that’s childhood today, preparing for any kind of a terrible eventuality, the way lawyers always think back and say, “Why was she so close to the fire?” So we’re always thinking to the courtroom and stopping something, even a bonfire with kids around, roasting marshmallows, before it begins. And I just have to tell you one roasting marshmallow story. Girls in Girl Scouts are not allowed to roast marshmallows unless they have one knee on the ground.
Question: What is a free-range kid?
Lenore Skenazy: A free range kid is a kid that grows up sort of in an old-fashioned way. I mean, I don’t think there’s anything radical about a free range kid. A free range kid is somebody, probably like you or me, who gets walked to school a couple times and then learns the route, if there’s a safe route that you can go to school, and gradually assumes responsibility for that. When they get a little older, maybe they have a paper route, maybe they become a babysitter. A free range kid can go to the park and on the way, knock at somebody else’s door and say, “Hey, come on, let’s go out and play.” All this stuff that sounds so unusual now.
In May, I declared it "Take Our Children to the Park and Leave Them There Day," and that was considered so insane that the media was jumping up and down, saying, “It’s a pedophile parade!” They were crazed with fear, and all I was suggesting s that we let our kids of ages 7, 8 and up, go and spend an hour, half an hour, they got me down to 10 minutes, 10 minutes at the park, with each other, trying to come up with a game, figure out four square, play handball, do hopscotch, without me telling you what to do, because that turns out to be a very important thing. Free range kids end up having to entertain themselves, something that it is very hard for me to get my own kids to do, and when they do, I am so grateful when they’ve plied themselves away from the screen, and they have to figure out, “OK, we’re gonna play foursquare this way.”
My son’s happiest day was when he came home from school and they had invented a new game, which was seven-square. He thought that was like discovering mercury or something, but they had come up with something on their own, something you don’t do if you are in travel soccer league, something you don’t do at your Mandarin lessons, something you don’t do, even when your mother is taking you to Gymboree. You don’t figure out the clap, you’re told how to clap.
Free range kids start to figure out things on their own, and this turns out to be extremely valuable. I hate to say, “You must have a good childhood because it is good for you,” but it is. It is, if you have to come up with a game with your friend, that’s creativity, right? You have to say, "Okay, we’re gonna run to the sewer, no, we’re gonna run to the tree, no, sewer, tree, sewer, tree, tree sewer." Whatever you decide, how about the thing in the middle, we’re gonna step on the cat. You come up with a compromise, okay? You have communicated and then the hot word right now in the child development circles is something called self-regulation. Self-regulation is what we call maturity. It’s the ability to not jump in when somebody else is talking, or not demand that everybody do it your way. It’s a give and take. And it turns out that the best way to develop self-regulation, here’s the best phrase for developing self-regulation. It’s called: “It’s not your turn!” It’s not your turn, is this triumphant phrase of childhood that lifts the child out of demanding, “It is, too,” and slinks them back to behind the start line, and waiting their turn. And it’s not fun, and everybody would like it to be their turn all the time, but you internalize that lesson when you’re with your friends, and you don’t internalize that lesson when your Mom says, “Ah, go ahead, we’ll do it five strikes and you’re out,” or when the coach says, “Okay, one more time,” or, “That was just practice, keep going.” When you’re with an adult, it’s a very different thing than when you’re with your peers and you’re working it out together. And free range kids work things out together. That’s why I want them to get back outside, playing with each other, without us hovering all the time.
Question: What can parents do to be less overbearing?
Lenore Skenazy: You can leave your cell phone at home and so you sort of wean yourself off of the idea that you must be constantly available to your child and vice versa, your child must be constantly reachable by you. Another tip I give in my book is simply, one of those hours that you’re gonna watch "CSI" with a body dredged out of the swamp, or "Law & Order" with the girl dragged off the street, turn off the TV and spend that hour outside. You know, walking around your neighborhood, preferable with your kid, to remind yourself that you live in the neighborhood, that’s where you live. You don’t live in "Law & Order"-ville and "CSI"-ville. And in fact, I started a correspondence with a guy who started writing on my Web site, who lives in a neighborhood, a nice, quiet Brooklyn neighborhood, where they’re always filming "Law & Order" and it’s so ironic because he loves his neighborhood, 'cause it’s nice and quiet and safe, but if you ever saw it on "Law & Order," you’d think that there’s a murder every week. So remind yourself about the real world, and also it’s safer. The more people you meet, the more neighbors you know, the more familiar you and your kid are to the neighborhood, everybody’s safer and connected. A lot of the "Free Range" message is about creating the community we think was lost. Well, it’s lost if you don’t go out there, but if you do go out there, you can connect again.
And that’s why one of the sort of offbeat ideas I also give, tip number three is, when you’re someplace with a bunch of parents, each of them hovering over their own child, the school gate hasn’t opened yet or soccer practice is about to start in maybe five minutes, or you’re at the bus stop, because a lot of parents now drive their children to the bus stop and wait for the bus to come because they’re so afraid of what might happen in that five minutes. When you’re with a lot of parents, turn to them and say, “You know what? I’ll watch them. I’ll watch your kids.” It’s this mind-blowing idea, because what you’re saying is two things at once. One is that we don’t all need to be here. We don’t think that wild banshees are coming, there’s not a twister in the distance that we’re all gonna have to save our kids from. I think one adult can watch over all these children and they’ll be okay. And what you’re also saying is, “I don’t think it’s a horrible burden for me to watch your kids.”
So many times, one of the things that we’re worried about is I don’t want to impose on anyone. If I’m at the park, I don’t want to ask another lady to watch my kids while I go to the car and get the sippy cups, because that’s too much. It’s good to ask favors of each other and to offer favors. So you offer the favor, and then if no parent takes you up on it, you say, “OK, well, listen, Mary is staying here and I’m going off to work.” And then you say, “I know she’ll be safe with you guys.” So either way, you are almost aggressively saying, "I trust you, I trust this neighborhood. I trust my child not to run into the street." And when you start reminding people that this is what people used to do, I think they used to watch out for each other, I think in a lot of other countries, people still do this. Maybe we can re-knit the kind of community that we all long to live in, and that we all feel is safer for our kids.
Recorded August 17, 2010
Interviewed by Andrew Dermont
Journalist Lenore Skenazy, who advocates for the free-range kids style of parenting, helps you learn to stop over-obsessing about your children.
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‘Designer baby’ book trilogy explores the moral dilemmas humans may soon create
How would the ability to genetically customize children change society? Sci-fi author Eugene Clark explores the future on our horizon in Volume I of the "Genetic Pressure" series.
- A new sci-fi book series called "Genetic Pressure" explores the scientific and moral implications of a world with a burgeoning designer baby industry.
- It's currently illegal to implant genetically edited human embryos in most nations, but designer babies may someday become widespread.
- While gene-editing technology could help humans eliminate genetic diseases, some in the scientific community fear it may also usher in a new era of eugenics.
Tribalism and discrimination
<p>One question the "Genetic Pressure" series explores: What would tribalism and discrimination look like in a world with designer babies? As designer babies grow up, they could be noticeably different from other people, potentially being smarter, more attractive and healthier. This could breed resentment between the groups—as it does in the series.</p><p>"[Designer babies] slowly find that 'everyone else,' and even their own parents, becomes less and less tolerable," author Eugene Clark told Big Think. "Meanwhile, everyone else slowly feels threatened by the designer babies."</p><p>For example, one character in the series who was born a designer baby faces discrimination and harassment from "normal people"—they call her "soulless" and say she was "made in a factory," a "consumer product." </p><p>Would such divisions emerge in the real world? The answer may depend on who's able to afford designer baby services. If it's only the ultra-wealthy, then it's easy to imagine how being a designer baby could be seen by society as a kind of hyper-privilege, which designer babies would have to reckon with. </p><p>Even if people from all socioeconomic backgrounds can someday afford designer babies, people born designer babies may struggle with tough existential questions: Can they ever take full credit for things they achieve, or were they born with an unfair advantage? To what extent should they spend their lives helping the less fortunate? </p>Sexuality dilemmas
<p>Sexuality presents another set of thorny questions. If a designer baby industry someday allows people to optimize humans for attractiveness, designer babies could grow up to find themselves surrounded by ultra-attractive people. That may not sound like a big problem.</p><p>But consider that, if designer babies someday become the standard way to have children, there'd necessarily be a years-long gap in which only some people are having designer babies. Meanwhile, the rest of society would be having children the old-fashioned way. So, in terms of attractiveness, society could see increasingly apparent disparities in physical appearances between the two groups. "Normal people" could begin to seem increasingly ugly.</p><p>But ultra-attractive people who were born designer babies could face problems, too. One could be the loss of body image. </p><p>When designer babies grow up in the "Genetic Pressure" series, men look like all the other men, and women look like all the other women. This homogeneity of physical appearance occurs because parents of designer babies start following trends, all choosing similar traits for their children: tall, athletic build, olive skin, etc. </p><p>Sure, facial traits remain relatively unique, but everyone's more or less equally attractive. And this causes strange changes to sexual preferences.</p><p>"In a society of sexual equals, they start looking for other differentiators," he said, noting that violet-colored eyes become a rare trait that genetically engineered humans find especially attractive in the series.</p><p>But what about sexual relationships between genetically engineered humans and "normal" people? In the "Genetic Pressure" series, many "normal" people want to have kids with (or at least have sex with) genetically engineered humans. But a minority of engineered humans oppose breeding with "normal" people, and this leads to an ideology that considers engineered humans to be racially supreme. </p>Regulating designer babies
<p>On a policy level, there are many open questions about how governments might legislate a world with designer babies. But it's not totally new territory, considering the West's dark history of eugenics experiments.</p><p>In the 20th century, the U.S. conducted multiple eugenics programs, including immigration restrictions based on genetic inferiority and forced sterilizations. In 1927, for example, the Supreme Court ruled that forcibly sterilizing the mentally handicapped didn't violate the Constitution. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendall Holmes wrote, "… three generations of imbeciles are enough." </p><p>After the Holocaust, eugenics programs became increasingly taboo and regulated in the U.S. (though some states continued forced sterilizations <a href="https://www.uvm.edu/~lkaelber/eugenics/" target="_blank">into the 1970s</a>). In recent years, some policymakers and scientists have expressed concerns about how gene-editing technologies could reanimate the eugenics nightmares of the 20th century. </p><p>Currently, the U.S. doesn't explicitly ban human germline genetic editing on the federal level, but a combination of laws effectively render it <a href="https://academic.oup.com/jlb/advance-article/doi/10.1093/jlb/lsaa006/5841599#204481018" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">illegal to implant a genetically modified embryo</a>. Part of the reason is that scientists still aren't sure of the unintended consequences of new gene-editing technologies. </p><p>But there are also concerns that these technologies could usher in a new era of eugenics. After all, the function of a designer baby industry, like the one in the "Genetic Pressure" series, wouldn't necessarily be limited to eliminating genetic diseases; it could also work to increase the occurrence of "desirable" traits. </p><p>If the industry did that, it'd effectively signal that the <em>opposites of those traits are undesirable. </em>As the International Bioethics Committee <a href="https://academic.oup.com/jlb/advance-article/doi/10.1093/jlb/lsaa006/5841599#204481018" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">wrote</a>, this would "jeopardize the inherent and therefore equal dignity of all human beings and renew eugenics, disguised as the fulfillment of the wish for a better, improved life."</p><p><em>"Genetic Pressure Volume I: Baby Steps"</em><em> by Eugene Clark is <a href="http://bigth.ink/38VhJn3" target="_blank">available now.</a></em></p>Lair of giant predator worms from 20 million years ago found
Scientists discover burrows of giant predator worms that lived on the seafloor 20 million years ago.
- Scientists in Taiwan find the lair of giant predator worms that inhabited the seafloor 20 million years ago.
- The worm is possibly related to the modern bobbit worm (Eunice aphroditois).
- The creatures can reach several meters in length and famously ambush their pray.
A three-dimensional model of the feeding behavior of Bobbit worms and the proposed formation of Pennichnus formosae.
Credit: Scientific Reports
Beware the Bobbit Worm!
<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="1f9918e77851242c91382369581d3aac"><iframe type="lazy-iframe" data-runner-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_As1pHhyDHY?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span>FOSTA-SESTA: Have controversial sex trafficking acts done more harm than good?
The idea behind the law was simple: make it more difficult for online sex traffickers to find victims.
- SESTA (Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act) and FOSTA (Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act) started as two separate bills that were both created with a singular goal: curb online sex trafficking. They were signed into law by former President Trump in 2018.
- The implementation of this law in America has left an international impact, as websites attempt to protect themselves from liability by closing down the sections of their sites that sex workers use to arrange safe meetings with clientele.
- While supporters of this bill have framed FOSTA-SESTA as a vital tool that could prevent sex trafficking and allow sex trafficking survivors to sue those websites for facilitating their victimization, many other people are strictly against the bill and hope it will be reversed.
What is FOSTA-SESTA?
<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="723125b44601d565a7c671c7523b6452"><iframe type="lazy-iframe" data-runner-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/WBaqDjPCH8k?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span><p>SESTA (Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act) and FOSTA (Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act) were signed into law by former President Trump in 2018. There was some argument that this law may be unconstitutional as it could potentially violate the <a href="https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-1/" target="_blank">first amendment</a>. A criminal defense lawyer explains this law in-depth in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoWx2hYg5uo&t=38s" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">this video</a>. </p><p><strong>What did FOSTA-SESTA aim to accomplish?</strong></p><p>The idea behind the law was simple: make it more difficult for online sex traffickers to find victims. FOSTA-SESTA started as two separate bills that were both created with a singular goal: curb online sex trafficking. Targeting websites like Backpage and Craigslist, where sex workers would often arrange meetings with their clientele, FOSTA-SESTA aimed to stop the illegal sex-trafficking activity being conducted online. While the aim of FOSTA-SESTA was to keep people safer, these laws have garnered international speculation and have become quite controversial. </p><p><a href="https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180321006214/en/National-Anti-Trafficking-Coalition-Celebrates-Survivors-Senate-Passes" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">According to BusinessWire</a>, many people are in support of this bill, including the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and World Without Exploitation (WorldWE). </p><p>"With the growth of the Internet, human trafficking that once happened mainly on street corners has largely shifted online. According to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, 73 percent of the 10,000 child sex trafficking reports it receives from the public each year involve ads on the website Backpage.com."</p><p>As soon as this bill was <a href="https://www.pivotlegal.org/sesta_fosta_censoring_sex_workers_from_websites_sets_a_dangerous_precedent" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">signed into law</a>, websites where sex workers often vetted and arranged meetings with their clients could now be held liable for the actions of the millions of people that used their sites. This meant websites could be prosecuted if they engaged in "the promotion or facilitation of prostitution" or "facilitate traffickers in advertising the sale of unlawful sex acts with sex trafficking victims." </p><p><strong>The bill's effects were felt around the world — from Canadians being unhappy with the impact of this American bill to U.K. politicians considering the implementation of similar laws in the future.</strong> </p><p>Heather Jarvis, the program coordinator of the Safe Harbour Outreach Project (SHOP), which supports sex workers in the St. John's area, <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/heather-jarvis-website-shutdown-1.4667018" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">explained to CBC in an interview</a> that the American bill is impacting everyone, everywhere: "When laws impact the internet — the internet is often borderless — it often expands across different countries. So although these are laws in the United States, what we've seen is they've been shutting down websites in Canada and other countries as well."</p><p>Jarvis suggests in her interview that instead of doing what they aimed to do with the bill and improving the safety of victims of sex trafficking or sexual exploitation, the website shutdowns are actually making sex workers less safe. </p><p>While <a href="https://gizmodo.com/the-uk-wants-its-own-version-of-fosta-sesta-that-could-1827420794" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">one U.K. publication</a> refers to FOSTA-SESTA as "well-intentioned but ultimately deeply-flawed laws," it also mentions that politicians in the United Kingdom are hoping to pursue similar laws in the near future. </p>Has FOSTA-SESTA done more harm than good?
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTUxMzY5Ny9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY2ODUyNDc4OX0.dSEEzcflJJUTnUCFmuwmPAIA0f754eW7rN8x6L7fcCc/img.jpg?width=1245&coordinates=-68%2C595%2C-68%2C595&height=700" id="69d99" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="734759fa254b5a33777536e0b4d7b511" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" alt="sex worker looking online for a job" data-width="1245" data-height="700" />Is this really going to help, or is this bill simply pushing sex work and sex-related content further into the dark?
Credit: Евгений Вершинин on Adobe Stock
<p>While <a href="https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180321006214/en/National-Anti-Trafficking-Coalition-Celebrates-Survivors-Senate-Passes" target="_blank">supporters of this bill</a> have framed FOSTA-SESTA as a vital tool that could prevent sex trafficking and allow sex trafficking survivors to sue those websites for facilitating their victimization, many other people are strictly against the bill and hope it will be reversed.</p><p><strong>One of the biggest problems many people have with this bill is that it forces sex workers into an even more dangerous situation, which is quite the opposite of what the bill had intended to do.</strong> </p><p>According to <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-anti-trafficking-activists-cheer-but-sex-workers-bemoan-shutdown-of/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Globe and Mail</a>, there has been an upswing in pimps sending sex workers messages that promise work - which puts sex workers on the losing end of a skewed power-dynamic, when before they could attempt to safely arrange their own meetings online. </p><p><strong>How dangerous was online sex work before FOSTA-SESTA? </strong></p><p><a href="https://www.beyond-the-gaze.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/BtGbriefingsummaryoverview.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">The University of Leicester Department of Criminology</a> conducted an online survey that focused on the relative safety of internet-based sex work compared with outdoor sex work. According to the results, 91.6 percent of participants had not experienced a burglary in the past 5 years, 84.4 percent had not experienced physical assault in the same period, and only 5 percent had experienced physical assault in the last 12 months. </p><p><a href="https://www.pivotlegal.org/sesta_fosta_censoring_sex_workers_from_websites_sets_a_dangerous_precedent" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">PivotLegal</a> expresses concerns about this: "It is resoundingly clear, both from personal testimony and data, that attacking online sex work is an assault on the health and safety of people in the real world. In a darkly ironic twist, SESTA/FOSTA, legislation aimed at protecting victims of and preventing human trafficking for the purposes of sexual exploitation, will do the exact opposite."</p><p><strong>Websites are also being hypervigilant (and censoring more content than needed) because they can't possibly police every single user's activity on their platform.</strong> </p><p>Passing this bill meant any website (not just the ones that are commonly used by sex traffickers) could be held liable for their user's posts. Naturally, this saw a general "tightening of the belt" when it came to what was allowed on various platforms. In late 2018, shortly after the FOSTA-SESTA bill was passed, companies like Facebook slowly began to alter their terms and conditions to protect themselves. </p><p>Facebook notably added sections that express prohibited certain sexual content and messages:</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;"><em>"Content that includes an implicit invitation for sexual intercourse, which can be described as naming a sexual act and other suggestive elements including (but not limited to):</em></p><p style="margin-left: 20px;"><em>– vague suggestive statements such as: 'looking forward to an enjoyable evening'</em></p><p style="margin-left: 20px;"><em>– sexual use of language […]</em></p><p style="margin-left: 20px;"><em>– content (self-made, digital or existing) that possibly portrays explicit sexual acts or a suggestively positioned person/suggestively positioned persons."<br><br> </em></p><p>Additionally, sections like this were also added, prohibiting things that could allude to sexual activity: </p><p style="margin-left: 20px;"><em>"Content in which other acts committed by adults are requested or offered, such as:</em></p><p style="margin-left: 20px;"><em>– commercial pornography</em></p><p style="margin-left: 20px;"><em>– partners that share fetishes or sexual interests"</em></p><p>Facebook wasn't the only website to crack down on their policies — the Craigslist classifieds section being removed and Reddit banned quite a large number of sex-worker related subreddits. </p><p><strong>Is FOSTA-SESTA really helpful?</strong> </p><p>This is the question many people are facing with the FOSTA-SESTA acts being passed just a few years ago. Is this really going to help, or is this bill simply pushing sex work and sex-related content further into the dark? Opinions seem to be split down the middle on this — what do you think?</p>Octopus-like creatures inhabit Jupiter’s moon, claims space scientist
A leading British space scientist thinks there is life under the ice sheets of Europa.
- A British scientist named Professor Monica Grady recently came out in support of extraterrestrial life on Europa.
- Europa, the sixth largest moon in the solar system, may have favorable conditions for life under its miles of ice.
- The moon is one of Jupiter's 79.
Neil deGrasse Tyson wants to go ice fishing on Europa
<div class="rm-shortcode" data-media_id="GLGsRX7e" data-player_id="FvQKszTI" data-rm-shortcode-id="f4790eb8f0515e036b24c4195299df28"> <div id="botr_GLGsRX7e_FvQKszTI_div" class="jwplayer-media" data-jwplayer-video-src="https://content.jwplatform.com/players/GLGsRX7e-FvQKszTI.js"> <img src="https://cdn.jwplayer.com/thumbs/GLGsRX7e-1920.jpg" class="jwplayer-media-preview" /> </div> <script src="https://content.jwplatform.com/players/GLGsRX7e-FvQKszTI.js"></script> </div>Water Vapor Above Europa’s Surface Deteced for First Time
<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="9c4abc8473e1b89170cc8941beeb1f2d"><iframe type="lazy-iframe" data-runner-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/WQ-E1lnSOzc?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span>What is the ‘self’? The 3 layers of your identity.
Answering the question of who you are is not an easy task. Let's unpack what culture, philosophy, and neuroscience have to say.
- Who am I? It's a question that humans have grappled with since the dawn of time, and most of us are no closer to an answer.
- Trying to pin down what makes you you depends on which school of thought you prescribe to. Some argue that the self is an illusion, while others believe that finding one's "true self" is about sincerity and authenticity.
- In this video, author Gish Jen, Harvard professor Michael Puett, psychotherapist Mark Epstein, and neuroscientist Sam Harris discuss three layers of the self, looking through the lens of culture, philosophy, and neuroscience.
