i disagree on a technicality.

i also think the idea of gdpr is good in principle but if a legislation is unenforced and/or unimplementable then it is effectively useless. and gdpr is a case of mostly unenforced because it is practically unimplementable.

for example no company can reasonably implement the right to delete users data (one pf the core principles) when requested... at least not in the extent as it is defined in gdpr (i work as a data engineering manager and trust me, we tried, in every company i worked for...). it is a similar task in scope as if an author of a typesetting font suddenly had the right to revoke your permission to use random letters from their font... and when they did it you would be expected not only to stop using it immediately, but somehow remove it from all of your existing documents including printed copies and copies you sent out to your clients and suppliers (dear supplier, could you, please, replace the invoice we sent you last year with this attached copy add shred the one we sent you originally? we replaced all instances of letter "a" with different font...).

do accelerator and brake pedals count?

for some people it is simply easier to deal with hard things when there is a higher power as external authority to lean against. this can be misused for bad but also used creatively for good. mind has its ways of shaping itself. you can delude yourself into depression (or addiction) or out of it. when there is nothing inherently good or bad in the world the world can become quite meaningless, don't you think?

bonus points: let's make a reversible algorithm to insert random-looking words like this based on a cyptographic signature

well if childcare as an option is fantastic and all you are angry about is the childcare as an unaffordable necessity then we are totally in agreement...

the way you wrote your original comment didn't entirely hit me that way though. it definitely gave me more of an impression that you consider childcare as bad (see the quote) and your solution to people struggling is traditional family values and housewives.

“Parenting as a Service” is peak capitalistic hellscape…

bullshit

these are some strong opinions right there without much substance

i called my childcare guardians "comrade teacher" and i gladly pay half of my salary for a childcare in the "capitalist dream" now. neither has anything to do with the real reasons why we have childcare nor why it is expensive somewhere or free somewhere else.

childcare enables parents to do more with their life than just have kids and as such is good both for parents and for the society in general. it also enables children to access early childhood education and community that their parents wouldn't be able to provide otherwise so - if done right - is also great for the kids.

but of course, as with everything with life, things can be messed up by the people. parents or teachers can screw up in many different ways or even the whole childcare might be organised for an entirely wrong reason... that doesn't mean childcare is a bad idea in general.

this number is so far off that it makes me doubt your whole story...

quick estimate: if we assume your teacher had a rather new car with good fuel economy (6l/100km) and was using only the least polluting fuel (e85 with 15% ethanol that produces some 1.6kg of co2 per liter) we would have to assume it was a really heavy car made entirely out of the stainless steel (1500kg of the most poluting steel that produces over 6kg of co2 per kg of steel, other materials have comparatively small contribution) to come anywhere close... about 10 tons of co2 from car production and from burning the fuel.

from these crazy assumptions you can easily see that most normal vehicles under normal circumstances will produce way more (like order of magnitude more) of co2 by driving than is produced by making them. for example a smaller car made from 600kg of normal steel (1.8kg of co2 per kg of steel) and fuel efficiency of 8l/100km (still very good) will produce more co2 than was produced in its own production after roughly 5000 miles of driving and is just adding after that...

the US is not this way because he is the president. he is the president because US is this way...

one big city is fine as long as you don't want to have city where you work separate from the suburbs where you live. this is one completely artificially created expectation that only exist in america due to a century of car lobby and propaganda. if your work, doctor, pub, park and shop are all within 5-15min walk from your home and you can get everywhere else by public transport it's ok if the city stretches wide and it is actually quite pleasant to live in (ymmv).

years ago a colleague of mine used to say: could you, please, unplug your book from my computer? i need to charge my cigarette.