I remember the privacy concerns for sure. I can’t find anything about any grift though, nor do I remember ever hearing about it. If true, that’s pretty significant.

For example, when body scanners became a thing at airports, it was reported that one of the major contractors in the effort was a personal friend of Barack Obama.

I can’t find anything on this. Can you point me towards a source?

How do they treat those that are “beneath” them? Customer service workers, pets, kids, etc. Anyone that they should have some sort of authority over.

25 years is pretty extreme, it’s not like we need to wait decades for whole fields of research to occur before we have our own opinions–we’re not academics with a responsibility to not spout random bullshit. Being randos on the internet, spouting bullshit is actually one of our primary activities.

4 years is probably sufficient to keep the volume reasonably balanced.

When you put it that way, it is kinda sad.

Pretty simple. Resist the urge to see people based on their membership in this or that group, and instead focus on each individual. People are not responsible for the actions of other people that may seem outwardly similar to them, they are only responsible for their own. Life is harder when you remember this, but it’s the honest truth.

If you’re not used to winter driving conditions, keep your speed to about half of the posted speed limit, AND allow about double the normal distance for any braking you have to do. Give yourself a little over twice the normal amount of time it’d take you to drive somewhere.

This is generous, and will generally keep you safe on the road even if you’re unaccustomed to the conditions. Ice can still cause (sometimes unavoidable) problems even with these extra allowances, but if you’re going slowly and giving the extra distance, any accidents will be at low speed and very minor.

Agreed.

I would also be curious if she has any areas of interest where she is actually very quick and knowledgeable. If not, that might be cause for concern, but for all we know she just hates the humanities and is actually a wizard at higher mathematics. Especially since she’s young, there’s no real way to gauge whether it’s a lack of general intelligence or just a symptom of complete and total disinterest in a particular subject.

Also let’s not forget that pretty people can often get away with more than average looking people can, so they don’t have quite the same degree of pressure to perform in areas where they’re uninterested. If a quick, dazzling smile can unlock the ability to copy someone else’s homework or get the teacher to grant extra time on an assignment, well, school might be a little easier.

It’s a pros and cons thing. The pros in this case are our upright posture with narrower hips that let us cover long distances more efficiently than most of the rest of the animal kingdom. We can even do things like carry food to eat while walking, which something like an antelope would struggle with. Then a second pro is the whole big brain thing. These two factors did let us take over most of the planet over the course thousands of years, pretty quick work, really.

Then the cons are high mortality in birth, and taking something like 10 years after that risky birth to become even semi-functional at a practical level.