Good lord, I hope you never have children, and if you do I really pity the life they'll lead.
the growing sentinment amongst parents that video games should be banned for everyone under age 18
Where are you getting this from? I've literally never heard of anyone trying to do this. I don't believe this is a thing.
More like Prime Day or Black Friday.
While Valentine's Day is heavily marketed and focused on consumer materialism now, it was actually celebrated as a religious holiday for well over a thousand years. It's more an example of an existing celebration that got turned into something commercialized by capitalism.
Where as the NFL Draft, Prime Day, and Black Friday are "celebrations" wholly invented for the purpose of commercialized consumerism.
I wouldn't say "unaccepting", but I really just did not like kids at all. I didn't enjoy playing with them, or even being around them because I felt I had to moderate myself due to their presence.
Then I had kids and now I really enjoy being around kids, playing with them, and talking to them, even ones that aren't my own.
The NFL preseason to Super Bowl lasts about 6 months. That means they were going about 6 months after the Super Bowl with no significant events or anything else to draw revenue. So the people who run the NFL wanted to do something that could drive revenue during that half-year when they aren't playing games.
So they marketed the hell out of the draft. They turned it into a big media event so they could sell sponsorships and put it on TV so they can sell ads.
It's entirely a manufactured event to drive revenue.
I think you have a much higher opinion of French political culture than is warranted.
I’m generally curious why people get married beyond the “because I love them” when it costs so much money.
Getting married doesn't have to cost virtually anything. Really just the application fee to get a marriage license. The specific price will vary by state, and even by county (within the US, not sure how it works outside). Where I live, you can go to a courthouse and get married for $35.
If you plan to have kids, there are a lot of legal reasons why it's just a lot simpler to be married. The same applies without them, to a lesser degree, but with kids it's just so much more of a hassle to not be married.
You're right that you can achieve most (maybe even all?) legal benefits of marriage through trusts, wills, etc. But that's a hell of a lot more work, and the lawyer fees, filing fees, and application fees are almost certainly going to cost you more than a cheap courthouse marriage. Not to mention the added work for yourself.
Beyond all that, though, the single biggest reason I wanted to get married and have a wedding with lots of friends and family was to stand up in front of everyone and profess my love for my (now) wife, let her do the same for me, then have big party with all our friends and family to celebrate it. There's nothing wrong with spending money to throw a party for something you want to celebrate.
It entirely depends on the specific company's policies.
The company I work for hires people through a temp-to-hire program. As a temp, you are not eligible for benefits. The moment you get hired full-time, though, you are.
I've also worked for companies where you have to be employed for 6 months or a year before you are eligible for benefits.
It entirely depends on the company. This is not an question anyone here can answer. You need to talk to HR.
The idea of 'trades', as in construction trades like electricians, plumbers, carpenters, etc, has become pretty popular recently. The idea that you can get into a trade and make a good living without going to college has taken off as a response to the "forgive college loans" push. The right will often talk about trades as "real jobs" in contrast to people who go to college, rack up a ton of debt, and get degrees in fields that aren't high paying or don't directly translate into jobs right-wingers can easily understand. So talking about trades is a dig at 'college educated liberals'. Among certain segments of the right, even just mentioning trades will illicit images of big burly men working with their hands doing manual labor raking in gobs of cash and lording their superiority over unemployed, highly-educated Democratic voters with liberal arts degrees and huge college debt. It's become a meme they can use to quickly and easily convey that idea.
This is totally separate from the type of factory work they talk about trying to bring back to America by boosting domestic manufacturing. There's really not a lot of construction trade work in factories. The type of factory work they're talking about are typically unskilled jobs that pay much lower than skilled construction trades. But they also promised their voters they'd be creating high paying factory jobs. As much as they enact policies which suggest the opposite, the fascists running the government can understand simple economics. They know that an iPhone (for example) isn't going to be built in the US by workers getting paid $30/hour. They know any factory manufacturing jobs their policies might create will be as close to minimum wage as possible with no benefits, ridiculous working conditions, and extremely high turnover. But they also know they have to promise the moon to maintain their sycophantic cult.
So they just words like "tradecraft" when talking about factory jobs because it illicits the idea of high paying skilled trades, but doesn't actually outright say it. They want people to think electrician, plumber, carpenter, HVAC tech, etc, but also the deniability to say "I never said that." If they came out and said "trade jobs" a bunch of industry and labor people would be like "uh... there are no electricians or plumbers working on factory floors." Instead, if they get pushback they can just say, "I didn't say that. I said 'tradecraft'."
It's just Orwellian nonsense to obscure lies.
(Note: when I say 'unskilled' or 'skilled' here, I don't mean to imply that factory work doesn't require specific skills that can be honed and improved. I don't mean to imply that any rando with no experience could do the job just as well as someone with a lot of experience. I'm using the terms to refer to the amount of formal training/licensing required to do them, and their relative pay levels. 'Unskilled' jobs typically require no formal training outside the workplace or licensing, and typically pay lower than 'skilled' jobs.)
This is entirely incorrect
I mean, you see the same kind of thing with scripted television where there's no kayfabe at all. We recently got the season finale of Daredevil Born Again, and there were all kinds of posts/comments/etc talking about how satisfying/bad ass it was to see Daredevil and Punisher beat down a bunch of cops. We all know it's scripted fiction, but it's still fun to watch.
Because both Houses of Congress are controlled by Republicans who are 100% in support of everything the regime is doing.
Where are you getting this from? I have several friends who have or currently do teach grade-school aged kids in China. Their school day is 7-8 hours with usually a 90 minute break for lunch. This is also what you find if you search for the length of a Chinese school day.
This is only about an hour longer than in the US, which has an average school day between 6-7 hours. Although American lunch breaks are shorter than those in China, so actual classroom time is virtually identical.
The school year is longer in China, running from September-July where US is usually August/September-May/June. But the actual school day is pretty much the same as the US.