This, and standardizing what “this Thursday” and “next Thursday” mean. These terms have become functionally useless (to me) because of how they’re used differently by different people. Whenever someone uses these terms to try to intimate a particular date to me, I just ask for the exact calendar date rather than the day of the week to avoid ambiguity.

Yes, I’m an American. Are you speaking from personal experience, or going off of what you see online? Because the horror stories you see online are not representative of the whole of society. The scary and outlandish stories make headlines and get shared around by people. Nobody shares links to videos or writes articles about “Father goes to park with kids, everybody is chill and nobody panics”.

Don’t buy too much into all the ragebait on the internet. I take my kid to the park all the time and no one has ever so much as looked at me sideways. And no other fathers solo-parenting their kids at the park have ever been accosted during the many, many hours I’ve spent there.

Yes, some idiots foolishly assume man+kid=danger, but this is not a typical reaction at all. People who react negatively and make a scene are an extreme minority.

Watching Dragon Ball reruns is legitimately hard for me some days since Toriyama’s passing. His death hit me harder than any other I can recall. The global outpouring of grief and camaraderie was a sight to behold. It was comforting to know so many other people loved him and his work and were mourning together.

I remember I was driving when the news about MJ’s sudden death broke over the radio. I was on my way to grab some lunch before meeting up with some friends to see a movie. I think we were gonna see the “Transformers” sequel.

I pulled into a fast food joint and they had the news on TV. I felt bad cause Farah Fawcett died the same day but her death was entirely relegated to the little news ticker at the bottom of the screen.

The scientist is a hipster who uses the 2155-equivalent of a flip phone. Through a lifetime of grit and determination, he’s extended his attention span to 6 entire seconds (the global average is 4) so he could complete the time machine and save the world (by asking someone else to do it)

its not. Its mediocre and needs time travel to work.

This mentality misses the point, IMO. Even if the Harry Potter books were written in such a way that made even the staunchest critic go, “Wow, these books rival the works of of J.R.R. Tolkien and Shakespeare,” that should have zero bearing on whether or not any given individual makes the decision to boycott an author’s work on idealistic grounds.

I like plenty of art that could be classified as schlock; not everything we enjoy has to be masterpiece theatre. I’ve boycotted all HP content ever since Rowling became a professional asshole, but I won’t pretend I didn’t enjoy the books and the films as a teenager.

Here’s a hard pill to swallow: shitty people can make good art. We can condemn bad people unequivocally without simultaneously needing their art to be bad. Michael Jackson was my favorite musician for many years, but hearing his music in 2026 always leaves a bad taste in my mouth. But I won’t pretend that it wasn’t my jam and I certainly won’t suggest that the music was mediocre.

Edit: And although it goes without saying: this decision is always up to the individual. I have trans friends who don’t concern themselves with Rowlings’ sociopolitical views and continue to enjoy HP content. I don’t begrudge them for that; we all have different, if arbitrary, boundaries.

You could also go with Blue’s Clues, cause they can hop not just into books, but also pictures, paintings, and each others’ dreams/reveries.