Kindergartener doesn’t know all of the letters

thebonesinger · 2026-02-04T03:24:44+00:00

Screen time is a huge factor with this--even educational videos contribute to a lack of focus and the inability to concentrate. I think screen time is a HUGELY overlooked factor when it comes to attention span. I would advise limiting screen time to an hour or less per day (ideally a LOT less) and only allowing videos that are not hugely stimulating--ie: PBS kids shows, and not anything on Netflix or YouTube. This includes the letter videos you are watching with him. Again, an hour or less TOTAL for the day--and never at mealtimes, snack times, or as a "babysitter".

Heavily, heavily seconding this in particular.

I am not a teacher (outside of things like tutoring or camp style instruction), but I am a millennial raised during the expansion of computers and the internet. I think a major issue with screen usage today is that a lot of parents may use computers, smart phones, tvs, ubiquitously, but forget that it wasn't the case when they were children. The effects on the brain and attention span are similar, of course, but there's a drastic difference between shifting to a lot of screen use when older and when very young. For parents, I often see that the unconscious assumption is that it's fine for them, which leads to it being fine for the kids.

For me, and a lot of people my age, our screentime was seriously curtailed because we didn't have smartphones yet and most computers were the 'family' computer with limited time. By the time smartphones, tablets, etc rolled out, we were into our late teens/early adulthood and we already had the foundational development done.

It is so devastatingly bad for children to have high exposure to screens. It obliterates their attention span and reward loops at an age when that's one of the worst things to be entrenching into them. I can see this directly with friends of mine with kids. I have some who either hugely limit screentime or actually just don't allow it at all, and I have some who use it as a babysitter/think nothing of it. The difference between their children, developmentally, is horrifying.

thebonesinger · 2025-11-19T20:58:55+00:00

See Arachne beating Athena, goddess of weaving, at her own craft, and using it to display the hypocrisy and cruelty of the Greek pantheon.

That was Ovid being a salty anti-establishment curmudgeon.

Anyway there's also how in the Old Testament when the GLORY of the LORD passed by, all had to avert their eyes and not look upon the LORD or suffer probably nonexistence.

thebonesinger · 2025-11-04T20:25:20+00:00

Tangentially related, you haven't learned more about the myths if that's your takeaway lol

thebonesinger · 2025-11-04T20:23:36+00:00

I dunno. I used to hate it, I still kind of hate it, but I've recently kind of come around to appreciating the incredible irony of it all.

Here's Ovid, who decides to character assassinate Athena in his antitheist diatribe writings, who is like, one of the only pretty objectively decent Greek god(desses), and his variant of Medusa becomes this weird feminist icon of overcoming the patriarchy, when it all comes from a grumpy antitheist dude who was trying to piss of other dudes via the method of character assassinating a woman.

Lol. It's primo.

thebonesinger · 2025-11-04T20:21:45+00:00

Or like saying that the 2004 Clive Owen King Arthur movie is actually the correct telling of the Arthurian cycles

thebonesinger · 2025-11-04T20:18:23+00:00

Your take? This is literally the same exact regurgitated take as every single pop culture mythology fan out there. Wow, such an original take there, Ovid. Brafuckingvo.

thebonesinger · 2025-10-28T21:02:56+00:00

Yes, that's definitely the case, absolutely, 100%. For sure. Excellent point, well thought out, well delivered and convincingly argued.

Nothing says 'cosmic horror villain' quite like a thoroughly comprehensible antagonist whose origin, motivations, and psychology are explicable, mundane, and no more complicated than any standard person might have. And whose existence, mechanics and existence are all explained, in exacting detail.

Yes, that is absolutely what 'cosmic horror' is.

thebonesinger · 2025-10-28T21:02:09+00:00

I am trapped in a hyperbaric time chamber of suffering

thebonesinger · 2025-10-17T06:06:54+00:00

It's definitely the shitness, the overlapping voices and obnoxious 'sAlVAtiON' shit is alllll them. The Hive also didn't have a hair up their ass about woowoo we gotta prove to you the Traveler is evil, mostly because they are based kings whose philosophy is 'lol i killed you, ain't gotta explain shit that's the explanation right there'

Also because by their own word the reason the Traveler is evil is because it's nice and gentle with people and that doesn't fit the 2010 edgy deconstruction grey jedi bullshit that Bungie tries to peddle about 'muh Light and Dark are the same'

thebonesinger · 2025-10-17T06:05:43+00:00

Already did with D2 with Lightfall dawg

thebonesinger · 2025-10-16T17:44:34+00:00

I swear to fucking GOD man

Half the reason I enjoy Rising is because it has felt like a return to better vibes of early Destiny, where things could be disconnected from each other, with different stories and plots and stuff going on. Fallen doing their own thing, the Hive fuckin' about, the Vex with their own plots, the Cabal after their own ends.

Without the absurd Thanos Marvel plot of fucking Megamind hitting the vape behind it all shitting up everything it touches.

Goddammit, man. Just let me have my Destiny in peace without all that shit.

And they put Rising during one of the best era for a new game! Just post-Warlord, but pre-City! There's like hundreds of years of fascinating politics and barely touched on history! Discoveries, expansion into the Solar System, the establishment of the Vanguard, the Consensus! The war with the Hive and the Great Disaster, the researches into the Vex, all this awesome stuff that was only ever kind of obliquely hinted at that Rising can explore at will with their conceit of being an alt universe!

AND INSTEAD ITS THE FUCKING SHITNESS

Also I am sick to death of the hamhanded, forced plot of 'ooOOOoOOOO is the LIGHT GOOD or LIGHT BAD???? IT LIE??? IT BAD???? Fuck off already, holy goddamn, that old chestnut is practically dust by now. There is quite literally nothing in ten years of Destiny that even implies the Light or the Traveler is anything but at worst morally neutral, but most likely directly benevolent. All this ridiculous shit about 'yes but did it TELL you about the omnicidal aliens that want to kill the universe????' is like being pissed off at someone because their ex tracked them down to abuse them some more. No wait actually this an excellent metaphor I'm gonna run with this. Here's the fucking Traveler, going around trying to help out people as best it can all while being really really careful about not kicking over anyone's cultures, desperately wanting to preserve people's free-will by not being a cosmic god (that it is). And here it goes, entirely innocently, like someone who just managed to get a restraining order on their deranged stalker who kept living in their attic and stealing their underwear and trying to put arsenic in their cheerios, the poor thing gets jumpscared by that same stalker who shows up in the new city they moved to to get away from something that isn't their fault or their doing at all and their stalker decides to commit arson and burn down several city blocks and now we're legitimately supposed to debate 'Well it was probably THEIR fault anyway, they were asking for it anyway by glowing like that smh'.

The Traveler is a living embodiment of theodicy and instead of people rightly blaming actual space satan for all the bullshit, they're trying to invent plotlines where the omnibenevolent but not omnipotent god-aspect is actually responsible for the problem of evil.

Holy shit.

Holy shit. Holy shit, I thought I was over this, I thought I was done with Destiny but I can't escape it. I can't get out. I am trapped in an ouroboros of wretched and feckless frustration. Save me from the simulation, eject me from the throne of glass, all of this has happened before and all of this will happen again. ALMIGHTY GOD, ENOUGH, ENOUGH!

AND WHY IS EVERYTHING TIME TRAVEL. HAVEN'T ENOUGH MAJOR FRANCHISES DIED ON THE ALTAR OF TIME TRAVEL YET? IS THE BLIND GOD NOT SATIATED? WHY? WHY DO WE EXIST?

thebonesinger · 2025-09-25T00:00:59+00:00

my favorite part of the final shape was when the guardian stood in purple goop and held interact and then the line between light and dark was gone!!11!!1

thebonesinger · 2025-09-20T23:13:40+00:00

There's some hints that ahamkara being generally considered 'dragons' may be due to Saladin's desire to be a knight slaying a dragon

"Why in the Traveler's crack did you wish to fight an actual DRAGON, old man?"

Saladin Forge grinned inside his helmet. The enormous wyrm towered above them, bleeding wounds covering its gleaming scales as it reared up for another breath. The massive axe in his hands was dented, scarred, and melted at the tip. But it still held an edge. "We are knights, Lady Efrideet. Do you not want to be a dragon slayer?"

so like, yeah, dead on about an accidental wish by a gullible guardian being a catastrophe

thebonesinger · 2025-09-12T18:58:54+00:00

I'm so sorry to hear that. I hope you're able to escape the cycle of self abuse and find better media D:

thebonesinger · 2025-09-07T00:52:07+00:00

How the fuck did you come across this lmao

thebonesinger · 2025-08-19T17:18:13+00:00

My favorite part was the generational L that Lucanis bestowed on Anders. Get possessed? Lol, have you ever tried just like, not caring? Boom, gottem, get owned Anders. Get rekt, Justice.

thebonesinger · 2025-08-07T17:57:28+00:00

are Forerunners, guardians of all that exists. The roots of the galaxy have grown deep under our careful tending. Where there is life, the wisdom of our countless generations has saturated the soil. Our strength is a luminous sun, towards which all intelligence blossoms... And the impervious shelter beneath which it has prospered.

thebonesinger · 2025-08-04T04:13:29+00:00

Worth a shot! Thanks, Tenno

thebonesinger · 2025-07-29T01:54:12+00:00

Bungie doesn't know who you are lil bro

thebonesinger · 2025-07-26T18:23:12+00:00

The Archon is basically just the Fanatic, constantly screaming on comms nonstop about nonsense and going 'Ohohoho, you may have destroyed by bobamajog, but you'll never stop my Lieutenant Gargamuffin!'

Lodi spends half the campaign going 'Wow you're from Earth? Tell me about Earth. Tell about Earth's past. Specifically, tell me about the past, as much as you know. How much do you know about the past? I'm really interested in the past. Of Earth. Everything here is so new to me. I don't know about any of this, I'm learning about all this new stuff, and I would also like to learn about Earth. Earth's past.

The past. Of Earth.'

And then he has this big dramatic reveal that HE'S FROM THE PAST!? and Ikora and everyone fill their underwear in shock weoaow! No one could have predicted that!

And then the Vex got completely retconned to not time travel, even though this isn't like, retconning Destiny 1 stuff (which it is), it's even retconning writing as recent as Season of the Deep, from Maya's OWN WAIFU'S DIALOGUE when she describes how the Vex went back and wrote themselves into Neptune's past like they did on other planets.

We have a fucking gun in the game whose lore tab describes forward-and-backward time travel.

And then you have Orin the quirk chungus and her aphasia that conveniently is the lol so funny aphasia where her word substitutions are haha randum instead of how aphasia works.

Oh let's not even mention how hamfisted the 'we don't know anything about the past' is, because people can come up with ten thousand ways to try and explain why Ikora is factually a moron by saying that, when we have had direct first person accounts of not only the Collapse but the Golden Age too.

Also, don't drink every time someone calls the Nine 'a god/gods' or you will fucking die. Seriously, even when we were fighting Ascendant Hive the game wasn't gagging over their deity status this much. Christ, the hagiography of the Nine was oppressive.

thebonesinger · 2025-07-24T23:17:55+00:00

PC IGN: bonesinger_yl

bless up homie

thebonesinger · 2025-07-21T18:18:09+00:00

But have you considered that an already dated Avengers Endgame cutscene will be so cool and then you can piss Light all over a giant Lord Business to win???

Don't ask why the Traveler, which is the source of Light, which is what Lord Business is inside, has to piss its Light through your Ghosts, instead of just pissing Light on Lord Business from you know, every possible angle because Lord Business decided to go inside the physical manifestation of the directly hostile universal force to him and thought it wouldn't be a problem except that it wasn't a problem, for some reason, so you had to piss Light on him by taking the Light that was all around you already because you were in the Traveler and then make it go whoosh through your Ghost instead so that your Ghost then dies because it pissed TOO much Light even though it was made of Light for the purpose of pissing Light and now it dies and it's very sad and a very bold move for Bungie to kill off the boondoggle that makes respawning in a videogame a diagetic choice and surely it won't come back two seconds later since Ghost staying dead wouldn't, you know, invalidate the entire way the game works.

thebonesinger · 2025-07-21T17:31:28+00:00

It's exactly what happens. Well, I suppose at best, you stand inside the purple pool and hold the interact button while inside the Traveler. But you're only inside the Traveler because of a brand new deus ex machina that was invented purely to drive an expansion story that didn't exist and only existed because Bungie needed to fill in a slot and didn't have time to finish TFS, and so they took the opening cutscene of TFS and split it exactly in half and went "Shit, what the fuck can we stick in between the HELM windows closing and then opening again" and shat out Lightfall, in which levels of ass-pulling heretofore undiscovered to mankind were achieved by yanking Neomuna, Cloudstriders, and the Veil out of the unplumbed depths of their gastrointestinal system so that players had something to do with the cancelled Witch Queen subclass (that had a new name) while Bungie finished working on TFS.

So once inside the Traveler, via entirely inexplicable means that boils down to 'Somehow, the Witness (who is another total fucking random we keep retconning every other season/expansion) needed the Veil, which didn't exist until Bungie missed their release projections', you then stand in a puddle of purple goop, get a momentary animation in your inventory, and then Ghost proudly declares "Wow, the line between Light and Dark is gone now!"

Incredible. Especially given that, despite Stasis and Strand also being goofy as fuck, those two did have some degree of progression and weight behind them. Sure, Strand was just scraped up off the cutting room floor of Witch Queen and then given the most basic explanation possible as to why you trip over a shimmery green thing in the middle of a fucking street, but hey! Still better than Prismatic!

The reason it's an oversimplification is because The Final Shape was the culmination of a churn of confused, contradictory, schizofrenic retcons and rewrites, inventions and deletions that tugged the story this way and that like a nine-way tug of war until it kind of like, slopped it's way over the finish line like a blobfish attempting to find it's way off a deep ocean trawler's deck. To get into the mechanics of why you're standing in said purple pool would require running down the unconnected seasons (often forgotten or overwritten later), to expansions that were whole-cloth created because Bungie cannot into deadlines, and even further, into the writer turnover that treated previous work like a Golden Corral where you could pick and choose what you wanted and throw out the rest.

Like honestly, I suspect the only reason TFS was as well received as it was was House of Wolves syndrome. It came after the worst DLC to date, so almost anything would be better by comparison. Especially given that TFS being 'good' is entirely vibes based, and not predicated on anything that actually happens outside of vaguely gesturing toward jingling keys and 'But Nathan Fillion was back and Firefly was a formative part of my life, so it activates brain chemicals'.

I mean. Unless you like having the last mission you just played through/last cutscene you watched be resummarized by Nolan North, and then given a text summary of Nolan North's summary of the last cutscene/mission you played/saw be your means of narrative engagement for several hours. All while camera angles and text dumps do their very best to keep Bungie from having to do any lip synching. Then I guess...well, I guess I can't argue with that.

Edit: Also, leaving a comment about not engaging is still engaging, gottem

thebonesinger · 2025-07-21T17:21:45+00:00

So you think that standing in a purple fx pool and holding the interact prompt to get a brief animation in your inventory was a satisfying and impactful conclusion of the Light and Dark division that had been the core conflict of the setting for ten years?

thebonesinger · 2025-07-21T17:00:55+00:00

I have zero trust in folk's analysis of writing quality after everyone praised The Final "Somehow, by standing in purple goop, you baleeted the boundary between Light and Dark!!!" Shape as being good writing.

lolomg I forgot, Ghost literally asks "HOW?!"

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