It's 12 in the US for agricultural jobs. That's when I started corn detassling and tree trimming and filed my first taxes.

Don't forget acting too. There are babies and toddlers acting and working for pay.

RFK Jr. is now in charge of the department that handles voter licensing requirements and sets the criteria for "capable of thinking objectively". Yikes, and he's not even the worst person for the job I could conjure up in 5 seconds of thought.

Similar, I had one declare rivers flow towards the equator. Which is slightly better than claiming they all flow N to S, but still inaccurate.

Rivers flow downhill. That's it. In case anyone else needs to check their mental model of the world.

No one's fighting for teens to be recognized as adults at 16, and they will all have the right to vote in two more years, so I don't see the parallel at all to the women's suffragist movement who couldn't ever expect to vote, married or not, and were part of a broader campaign for women's rights. If there was momentum to make 16 the age of legal adulthood, it would make sense that voting would be a part of it.

16 is arbitrary. Not linked to any legal status. Not linked to the age at which one can work and pay taxes. Not linked to any milestone being identified. Like I said, open to arguments but it needs to be better than "younger than 18, set it at an aesthetically pleasing number... 16 will do."

The most convincing arguments I see are about being able to vote for the president who could draft you, so theoretically voting at 14. But my preferred condition, and where I would throw any activist energy, would be to get rid of the draft entirely.

I'm also against compulsory voting. Absolutely against it in current state with all the access issues we've agreed upon. Even with perfect access though, declining to vote can be a political statement in itself.

If I could wave a wand and fix something about voting in the US, it would be to improve access for already qualified voters.

Kids would vote similarly to their parents in general, so lowering the age means people from groups/locations that have good access would have more votes (not a bad thing) but groups/locations with poor access would still have poor access, possibly even worse access because of the increase in voters. So yeah, fix access first or it only exacerbates what I consider to be a larger issue in need of addressing.

Assuming good access to voting though, 18 makes sense to me as the time a person is an adult and legally responsible for themselves. I would be open to arguments for younger, it's just not something I ever felt passionate about, even when I was under 18 years old.

Was each time a different religious organization and did they require a baptism into their religion specifically?

I was raised and baptized into one flavor of Christian. They taught baptism in any other flavor of Christian was all good, no need to be baptized again to switch churches though the pastor might want to say an extra conversion prayer.

Drugs: anything not prescribed by a doctor will lead a person to being a homeless crack addict. Marijuana is such a powerful gateway drug, don't try it even once.

Sex: is for reproduction within the bounds of marriage. And even then, women won't enjoy it unless they're promiscuous sinners.

RSS feeder pulling articles from sources of my choosing, mostly primary sources like AP and Reuters.

I subscribe to podcasts for opinion and commentary on that news, and just find stuff that mostly aligns with my values and philosophies.

I've been trying dragonboat racing lately and I got to steer at last practice. There's a lot of momentum to those boats and I fell off my path a couple times but no crashes and no one fell out.

Many of them are weekly questions to drive engagement. As long as they keep getting comments, they're serving their purpose.

Personally, I like the Pets Sunday thread and read it every time.

Woman, not girl. I'm an adult and expect to be treated as such.

I feel no pressure to respond to aggression with physical violence. I recently sat through two friends (men) talking about how they feel too old to fight but if a strange guy were to roll up to them under certain conditions, they would have "no choice" but to physically fight them. I have never felt the need to physically fight a woman who disagreed with me. I would consider it a win and a good reflection on me if I could deescalate or remove myself from the situation.

Most other things I can think of are a double edged sword. Like being seen as a "girl" instead of a fully functioning, self-sufficient woman is usually a negative, but I can twist it in my favor to avoid things sometimes. I see other people commenting about women being able to interact with children without being seen as a potential pedophile, but that only comes because society expects women to do all the child-carrying.