Influencing no-one.

Reader. Terrible guitarist. Boxing fan. Inoue fan. I support Ukraine.

[Influencing no-one. @DavidShah4]

@KaterynaLis You can't be a true leader without humility & well - this is what real humility looks like. It's unthinkable, for instance, that Putin would ever allow such tenderness to be expressed on camera - even assuming he knows what it feels like.

[Tony Iommi @tonyiommi]

When you think you're getting a speeding ticket and receive an MBE instead 🖤

[Influencing no-one. @DavidShah4]

@__Injaneb96 I think diet is at least one part of it. It's harder to develop the same physical stature common in elite athletes when you are constrained, as a Hindu, to a vegetarian diet.

[Influencing no-one. @DavidShah4]

@hanumabhakta @__Injaneb96 Last time NZ (pop 5.3m) played India (pop 1.45b) in test cricket, in India, NZ won 3-0. How do you account for this catastrophic failure?

[Influencing no-one. @DavidShah4]

@ChurchillFella

[Anish Moonka @anishmoonka]

Fred Rogers met with a child psychologist every week for 22 years to build his show. She shaped everything: every script, prop, and song. The whole point was to give a child's nervous system time to slow down. In 1984, a single regulatory decision ended all of it.

The psychologist was Dr. Margaret McFarland, who co-founded the Arsenal Family and Children's Center alongside Benjamin Spock and Erik Erikson. She and Rogers understood that the prefrontal cortex in children, the part of the brain that controls impulse, emotion, and attention, takes decades to fully develop. At the start of every episode, Rogers tied his sneakers and changed his sweater while children settled in. Those pauses were intentional, designed to help a child's nervous system shift into a calmer, more focused state.

What ended it had nothing to do with child development science. In 1984, Reagan's FCC chairman Mark Fowler abolished the advertising limits that had protected children's programming from commercial pressure. Toy companies moved within months. Between 1984 and 1985, cartoons tied to toy lines increased by 300%, from a handful of shows to more than 40 animated series. In almost every case, the toy was designed first. The cartoon was built to sell it.

Researchers later put numbers to what parents were already noticing. A 2011 study in Pediatrics from the University of Virginia tested 60 four-year-olds across three groups: one watching SpongeBob, which cuts scene every 11 seconds; one watching a slow PBS show, which cuts scene every 34 seconds; and one drawing. Nine minutes later, all three took tests on attention, impulse control, short-term memory, and problem-solving. The SpongeBob group scored significantly worse across every measure.

In the 1970s, children began watching television around age 4. Research from pediatrician Dimitri Christakis found that by 2009, the average age of first screen exposure had dropped to 4 months, as the content got faster and the audience got younger. Researchers separately found that each additional hour of daily screen time at ages 1 or 3 raised the risk of attention problems at age 7 by 9%.

[Influencing no-one. @DavidShah4]

@KaterynaLis Russians are afraid of beauty.

[Far Side Fix @farsidefix]

#TheFarSide

[Seen on the Internet @FunnySight]

Just wait for the ending pls 🤭🤣🤣

[Influencing no-one. @DavidShah4]

@ChuckPfarrer Bummer. I was looking forward to the Ukraine - sponsored fireworks display.

[Influencing no-one. @DavidShah4]

@BohuslavskaKate Unless they ejected - no-one's surviving that.

[Influencing no-one. @DavidShah4]

@maria_drutska That they are '"complete idiots" is not in question.

[Influencing no-one. @DavidShah4]

@JPLindsley This will be accounted for. Of this I have no doubt.

[‏ً @omgsidewalks]

Dear restaurants,

Bring back the physical menus. Nobody wants to be scanning QR codes when they're hungry.

Regards: The whole world.

[Influencing no-one. @DavidShah4]

@ChurchillFella Truly pitiful.

[Steve Boxman @SteveBoxman]

Bam Rodriguez ⭐️

The left hand is dangerous 💥

#boxing

[Influencing no-one. @DavidShah4]

@BohuslavskaKate ...and about time too.

[Influencing no-one. @DavidShah4]

@FredFellaIMO Tbf, at least there's no strippers...so far.

[Influencing no-one. @DavidShah4]

@JayinKyiv Russia is morally & spiritually bankrupt.