#child monitoring and tracking app

[kids-worldfun]

Msafely Review 2024: Is this Parental Control App worth buying?

Parents care about keeping their children safe online. But with smartphones and tablets becoming more common, the need for a good parental control application has become necessary. If all you want is to watch what they are up to or that they stay safe on YouTube, a good parental monitoring app can be very important. That brings us to Msafely, which is one of the highest-rated parental control…

[melanated-writersblock]

⋆˙⟡♡₊˚⊹.Lunch Rush.⊹˚₊♡⟡˙⋆

[CEO!Husband!Yunho x BlackFem!Exec!Reader]

‧₊˚ ☁️⋅♡𓂃 ࣪ ִֶָ☾. Where you and Yunho wanted to start trying for a baby, and with a long lunch break in your schedules, you decide to pay him a visit to try your hand at conception.

content: car sex, semi-public sex, thigh riding, cloth-ripping, piv, unprotected sex (wrap it up irl pls), just a dollop of spit, cowgirl, doggy, full fledged backshots, like 2 creampies?

word count: 3.4k

a/n: This fic cost me 5 FUCKING DOLLARS TO MAKE?!?!?! I had to pay to use a fake text generator, so if any of you have a site or app that I can make fake text messages FOR FREE then PLEASE let me know😭. This was self indulgent but I wanna dedicate this fic to all my fellow Hotteoks🫶🏾 And the bitches that fantasize about getting nutted in and getting it poppin’ in the back of the parking lot (in theory of course)! WwaBRiM (if you can’t tell from the fact the reader is rocking soft locs😛)

‧₊˚✩. ˚. ♡ ☁︎

To this day…you and Yunho’s BIGGEST regret in your relationship…is and ALWAYS WILL BE….agreeing to go to the christening of your friends’ 6-month old baby boy.

Everything was beautiful. The ceremony, the cathedral, the way the baby nestled into Yunho’s arms so naturally, and reached out to play with your bangles with such curiosity and wonder. It altered both of your brain chemistries, and you weren’t sure if it was for the better or not.

Your friends didn’t help either, saying things like “Parenthood would look so good on you two!” and “I can’t wait for your baby shower invitations.”.

How could they…….

After you pushed your meetings back to later in the week. After Yunho gave his team a free day when they could’ve been in the office perfecting the play-through on his new game before its release. Two very busy people with very busy work schedules, and you carved out time to come support your friends and their son, and they pay you back with…….

BABY FEVER?!?!

You and Yunho planned your futures out to a T. Go to university, get your respective degrees, join a company that you interned with, work your way up, become the boss, get married, honeymoon in The Maldives and spend your paid vacation days in The Swiss Alps.

Starting a family was definitely in there somewhere, but everything fell in line so well that it got lost. You’re at the top of your games…Yunho, figuratively and literally, with his gaming company being the best in the country and all…and you became the creative director for a top cosmetic brand. It really was all good. But it was lacking. And you both felt it. Ever since that christening.

You felt it every time one of your work partners went on maternity and paternity leave. Every time there were children in the offices on ‘Bring Your Kids to Work Day’. Every time Yunho saw posts or videos of kids around the world dressing up as characters he helped create. Every time your homegirls would send you milestones of their babies taking their first walk, or biting into a lemon for the first time. You two worked hard and accomplished everything you wanted to, everything except starting a family. It resonated for days after that christening.

For Weeks.

Months, even.

The energy around the house shifted. Yunho would steal glances at you as you did the simplest of routines, imagining your belly being round as you sip your favorite tea in the kitchen, waddling from room to room barefoot and pregnant. And you’d watch attentively as he’d play his video games, envisioning a child full of joy as he teaches them how to defeat their first villain. After a while it got to a point where neither of you would hide it. It became all too real, too wanted. And why not? What was stopping you two?

Everything was green lit once you and Yunho put it into the atmosphere and finally discussed it. You both were just about ready to start baby proofing the house and nothing even happened yet, becoming more proactive than you already were. Tracking apps were monitored, routines were tweaked, and everything seemed to be doable…but your work schedules…your jobs were the biggest obstacle. Just when could you slip away for a bit to see each other? When would be the right time to make a ba-

“Hey, I’m picking up my kid so we can go to lunch. I’ll be back in 2 hours!”

Your Editor in Chief pops their head in your office briefly before heading down the hall to the elevator, snapping you out of your rambling thoughts.

…………..Lunch Break.

‧₊˚ ☁️⋅♡𓂃 ࣪ ִֶָ☾. ‧₊˚ ☁️⋅♡𓂃 ࣪ ִֶָ☾. ‧₊˚ ☁️⋅♡𓂃 ࣪ ִֶָ☾.

‧₊˚ ☁️⋅♡𓂃 ࣪ ִֶָ☾. ‧₊˚ ☁️⋅♡𓂃 ࣪ ִֶָ☾. ‧₊˚ ☁️⋅♡𓂃 ࣪ ִֶָ☾.

You reverse your sedan into the space next to him before hoping out and swishing towards the driver’s door, knocking softy. Your ears perk up at the sound of r&b playing and a silent laugh escapes you. The dark windows of the door lower, revealing Yunho in the driver’s seat, fully reclined with the top buttons of his shirt undone and the silver crucifix you adorned him with for your anniversary gleaming.

“For a second I thought you were backing out on me.” He smiles at you, his voice deeper than usual, evidence of a brief stolen nap. “Traffic was hell, I would’ve been here in half the time otherwise.” The door unlocks and you climb in, grazing over Yunho’s body as he adjusts the driver’s seat sitting up slightly, he grabs ahold of you to help you straddle him and closes the door back behind you. And like clockwork, you lean in, beginning your onslaught of abuse on his lips.

Snaking your hands into Yunho’s hair, he moans, deepening the kiss, his tongue dancing ever so eloquently with yours. “I missed you.” He says breathlessly between kisses, “You saw me this morning before I left boo!” You tease him, fixing his glasses back up the bridge of his nose that slid down in the midst of your passion, “That’s too long.” He pokes his lips out, and you console him with light pecks to ease his playful angst. “You’re so needy, you know that right?” “And you love me for it.”

Yunho starts to undo his shirt more, a sinister smile on the corner of his lips as he looks you over. “Come here,” You lean into him, your hand placed against his bare chest, the rock on your wedding band a flashy contrast to his skin. “Lift up for me baby.” You lift off of Yunho for a second as he helps you readjust yourself, now straddling one of his thighs. The pinstriped black skirt you wore for work today riding up your thighs. You let out a huff, immediately feeling the pressure of Yunho’s toned thigh on your bundle of nerves. Your black tights and panties not serving as any sort of buffer to the sensations. Your pussy lips spread apart feeling the course texture of his slacks. You let out a staggering sigh, reality finally setting in what you were about to do. “That’s right, you’re gonna ride me and cum all over my thigh, and thennn~” Yunho begins to rock your hips back and forth on his thigh. You lurch forward, your right hand immediately planting on the interior wall of the Rover, “Damn, feels good right?” “Yeah, yes it does. Fuck.”

You place your other hand on his shoulder, stealing support as you rock onto him quicker, a few front strands of your freshly done soft locs coming undone from the high pony you put them in this morning, to his delight. Yunho enjoyed the sight of you working yourself on him, he loved how neat you looked before you climbed in the suv with him, and is obsessed with the thought of how disheveled and fucked out you’re gonna look when he’s done and you climb back out. Fuck, it’s all he’s thought about since you mentioned it in the texts. He couldn’t wait to get his hands on you, to touch you, to feel you, to fuck you, to ruin you, to caress you, to make love to you, to put a baby in you……finally.

You watch Yunho as he closes his eyes, deep in thought, mindlessly guiding your hips against him, as if he’s immediately feeling all of the pleasure that you are in that moment. You begin to rock against him quicker, an impending climax moments away. Yunho opens his eyes, watching you as your moans get louder, less polite, more shameless. You lean your head forward trying to compose yourself as much as you possibly can in this situation, and he smiles at the sight. “I’m close………..fuck, I’m close.” Your hand now caresses his face as you lean your head on his shoulder, hunching him like a bitch in heat. “You’re close?” “Yeahhhh~” “Fuck, you’re gonna cum all over my thigh like that?” “Yeah!” “Yeahhh, just like that?” “Yes! Yes! Just like that!” Yunho bounces his leg softly as you continue to rake against it, riding out your high as a warm dampness spreads on his designer slacks. He moans at the feeling, damn near coming untouched just from witnessing your pleasure unfold before him.

You steady your panting for air. Embarrassed, you pat at the wet spot you left on your husband, “I did not expect that I-“ “I did, you’re ovulating.” Yunho caresses your cheeks fully heated with shame, and kisses you, laughing into the kiss. “I don’t think you understand how hot that was, don’t apologize my love.” He gestures to the passenger seat, helping you off of him and guiding you there to sit tight and catch yourself for a second. He then leans the drivers seat back fully again, stepping over it to sit in the spacious middle seat. He unbuttons his shirt the rest of the way before removing his glasses, tossing them somewhere far in the back seats. He holds one of his hands out to you, patting his thigh sharply with his other, ordering your immediate presence.

You crawl over the front armrest and take Yunho’s hand as he helps you towards him. You start to kneel down in front of him and he stops you, “Nooo no, no, none of that today.” “But I really want to.” “I knowww, and you do it so well, but we’re kind of on a fixed schedule.” Yunho gestures behind you to the time on the soft glowing screen on the dashboard. You sigh in agreement, “I wanted to get you ready too.” “Oh babe,” He begins to undue his belt buckle and pants, his fully hard cock slapping against his lower abdomen as he slides his pants down lower freeing him. “Does it look like I need to get ready?” Your mouth waters, his cock glistening as precum trails down the tip, and you moan at the sight. “Oh my God.” He laughs at your eager demeanor, “Come here baby,” he pats his thighs again signaling you to straddle him once more, your legs on either side of him cushioned by the materials used to adorn the luxury car seats.

Yunho hikes your skirt up higher, sliding his hands underneath to trail down your sheer-tights-clad inner thighs and up to your panties. Your breaths were short, shallow, hesitant. You closed your eyes as Yunho felt you up, getting you worked up again in the process, unbeknownst to himself, or was this all part of his plan? “These weren’t too pricey, right?” He pinches at your tights, “No they weren’t, why?”

****rrrr-rrrrrr-rrrrrrriiiiippp!****

You gasp as you feel the force from Yunho ripping your tights right down the middle, smacking his shoulder. “They weren’t pricey but they were my favorite!” “Shhh, I’ll buy you 10 more.” You lean your head on his shoulder, pouting…until you feel his slender hands move your panties to the side. Your breath begins to get shallow again, feeling his warm tip slide up and down your wet folds. You moan involuntarily, “Awww, come on baby I haven’t even put it in yet.” “I knowww, I don’t know what’s wrong with me today.” “I do,” You feel him slowly push into you, leaning your head back as you cry out. “This cunt was just waaaiting to get fucked, because today is a little different than the other days,” He picks up his pace, fucking up into you steady but firm, “Today your pussy is a little bit more needy for me,” the recoil of your ass sending vibrations through your lower body as Yunho’s movements are relentless. “Today you’re gonna let me get you pregnant.”

And there it was. Your brain immediately shuts off. “I’m gonna fuck you so good, and so hard-” “Unnnnhhhhhooohhhh my Godddddd!” “Yeahhhhh, yeah let me hear you baby,” You grip the disheveled collar of Yunho’s shirt, completely at his mercy, taking what he gives you. “I’m gonna cum all in this pretty fucking cunt and get you pregnant, I’m gonna make you a Mommy.” “Yunho Please! Pleaseee~” “Please what my love?” Yunho lifts your chin up to meet his gaze, your dark brown eyes staring several miles into his own, communicating beyond a frequency that sound couldn’t even capture in that moment, and he understood every bit of it…but figured it would be fulfilling just to hear it fall from your lips, “Pleaseeee? What.” “Please make me a Mommy~” In seconds, he snakes an arm around your waist, pulling you flush against his chest as he drills into you. “Ahhhhhh!!!!” The sound of your screams, bounce off the interior of the car, and you pray that the seats absorb it all.

“Yesss, yes! Let me hear you Mama. Fuckkkk let me hear you!” “Fuckkkk!” “Uh huhhh~ Fuck! You sound so good taking my dick like this! Ughhhh~” You both were a mess, fully enraptured in pleasure and no longer prisoners to time. You place your forehead against Yunho’s now eye to eye as he continues to lean into you with force, your breathing syncing with his, both chasing your highs. “You’re gonna cum, aren’t you.” He asks you with dark eyes, almost as if it wasn’t a request. Suddenly you’re whimpering against his lips, “Yeah you are gonna cum, you’re close, so close for me.” “I’m-“ “I’m gonna-“ He mocks, imitating your whines, “You’re gonna what, cream around me and take this cum like a good little wife?” All you could do was gasp at his sharp remarks, “You’re gonna cum for me like a good little wife? Hm?” “Yeah!” “Yeah? You’re gonna take my fucking cum like a good fucking wife?” “Yes! Yes! Ye- Yes! Yes! Yes!” You gush around him, repeating your words like a mantra against his ear. He returns the favor, “Good Girl” replaying in his surprisingly vulgar vocabulary as he finishes inside of you. You collapse against him for some time. Aligning your heaving chest with his as you both come down. Clammy from the altercation. You swivel around some assuming it may help with the progress, and he moans a little.

“What are you doing?” Yunho laughs at you endearingly, watching you be an unintentional menace. “I don’t know I just thought it might do something.” You giggle some, lifting off of his softening length with your combined messes drooling out of you and down your inner thighs. Yunho takes it all in, shaking his head in amazement at the fucked out state of you. Just as he imagined it, better than he imagined, even. Staring him down, you study his body language, how he looks subtly exhausted but not TOO drained. Almost as if on a bodily timer, your temperature starts to rise again, “You’re plotting.” you narrow your eyes at him. Sucking in a sharp breath between teeth, Yunho helps you up, only to place you over the front armrest.

You squirm as your stomach and breasts make contact with the cold leather. “See I KNEW you were plotting!” “Oh hush, don’t act like you’re not excited.” Yunho makes light work of your tights, pulling off and discarding what was left of it, and sliding your panties off of one of your legs in order to spread them further apart. Your breathing catches at the gust of air that hits your pussy. Yunho’s cock inches away as he works his hand over it. He reaches his hand around holding it out to your mouth, “Spit.”, and you oblige him. He continues to work himself hard again, one hand bunching your business skirt up your waist, exposing your bare ass. His hand slides down to caress it, before landing a harsh smack, resorting back to soothing over the stinging spot. All marks undetectable on your brown skin, he lands a few more smacks on both cheeks, knowing he’ll be safe. You jolt and whine at the barrage of sharp pain and he leans down to pepper the side of your face in kisses, rubbing your attacked spots to soothe the pain.

“Don’t forget to breathe my love.” You didn’t realize you weren’t until he mentioned it, immediately offloading a heavy breath. Yunho clicks his tongue as he braces one hand on your shoulder to hold you in place, fiddling with the bunched up hem of your skirt. Your body stiffens as you feel him use his fingers to collect your cum and push it back into your pussy. You shudder in pleasure, still recovering from your last high, not too far from another if touched too much. You feel him shift behind you again as his cock teases its way past your entrance one more time. “Mmm, You wore this skirt on purpose Mama?” He glides into you with ease, bottoming out effortlessly, and you sink into the armrest, your moan resembling that of a pornstar’s. “You knew you were gonna see me to get this pretty pussy filled, Hmm?” Yunho immediately picks up the pace, keeping his hand firm on your shoulder, guiding you back onto him. “Ooooohhhhh~” “Yeahhhh? You wore this skirt because you knew you were gonna get knocked up with my babies? Huh?” Yunho’s words started to slur as they turned into shameless moans, “Yeahhh~ keep moaning for me, it’s just us here, keep going, I wanna hear youuu~” even he started sounding pornstar-like, it was music to your already ringing ears.

He began to pound into you with fervor, your tits now hanging over the armrest, bouncing violently as you grip the seating of the driver’s and passengers seat to avoid going headfirst into the dashboard. “Oh fuckkkk I’m gonna cum again, shit- shit- shittttt~” Yunho plants a foot on the flooring of the suv to steady himself as he leans flush against your back, engulfing you. “Yes, yes, yessss~ come inside of me pleaseeee~” Your final plea sends him over the edge, ultimately setting off a chain reaction that makes you cum around him all over again.

You shudder with each thrust as he slows his pace gradually before coming to a complete stop, staying in the same position as he bear hugs you from behind over the dashboard. You laugh to yourselves as you match your breathing once more, an exercise you both had been doing since the start of everything. Thank God workers at Yunho’s job actually took advantage of leaving the facility for lunch, or else your windows definitely would’ve been knocked on. Sure, the 5% tint helps, but you’re sure the car rocking would’ve given enough away.

Yunho peels himself off of you and helps you up, sitting you down next to him in the middle seats. You lay your head on his shoulders as the both of you dwell in the backseat, visibly fucked out. Yunho’s shirt hangs open and off one shoulder with a button or two missing, crucifix chain crooked yet still sitting proudly on his chest, even after such a sinful act. Your soft locs were fully down by now, splayed and running down the side of Yunho’s torso. Your skirt and his pants still undone, neither of you bothering to bother with your surroundings just yet. Yet your blouse was surprisingly still somewhat presentable. You both sit in solitude and enjoyment of each other for a little while longer. Yunho looks down at you lovingly, watching as you pull your phone out to do something. “Are you doing what I think you’re doing?” “Letting the Editor in Chief know that I’ll be out of the office for the rest of the day? Noo, I couldn’t possibly…” “Oh well that’s a shame…” You look at your husband, waiting, “Because I told the team to take the rest of the day off.” THAT’S why the deck looked so lifeless. “I can’t believe you set me up!” He peppers your face in kisses one last time.

“Alright, let’s get out of here, we definitely need to change. We’re celebrating tonight.” “Tonight? Forrrrr?” “For theeee…..you know…..” Yunho gestures towards himself then your stomach, and you grin knowingly. “The lunch rush?” “Exactlyyy, the lunch rush.” He says before pulling you in for one last kiss. Yunho helps fix up your appearance before assisting you out of the Range Rover and back into your car. Kissing you for the last time yet again. “I’ll be right behind you.” He starts back to his vehicle, looking over to you, “Oh, feel free to put me in your schedule whenever you have an hour or two for lunch. Just to make sure it takes.” Yunho winks at you, getting back in the car as you both leave work for the day.

‧₊˚✩. ˚. ♡ ☁︎ If you liked what you read, please let me know, it gives me hope. Comments and Reblogs are always appreciated ‧₊˚✩. ˚. ♡ ☁︎

⋆˙⟡♡₊˚⊹.Masterlist.⊹˚₊♡⟡˙⋆

⋆˙⟡♡₊˚⊹.Blacktiny Writers Hub.⊹˚₊♡⟡˙⋆

[andromeda-pleiades]

Just Trust Me

WORD COUNT: 1,028

PAIRING: Simon 'Ghost' Riley x F!Reader

I've written the second part, but I want to break this into 3 parts. So the second will come out at night or tomorrow.

Part 1 | Part - 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5

Maybe you shouldn’t have dated Simon.

Lord knows he isn’t the most stable man. Between the night terrors and the need for constant reassurance that you love him, he was the poster child for red flags. But red flags are easier to ignore when they’re wrapped in soft smiles and strong arms, aren’t they?

So, it comes as no surprise when you notice an app you don’t recognize on your phone.

It sits there innocently enough, nestled between your email and social media apps, but you’ve never seen it before. The icon—a blank, generic symbol—seems deliberately nondescript, almost as if it’s trying too hard not to stand out.

Your thumb hovers over the screen.

The moment you tap it, a prompt appears: Enter Password.

Your stomach twists.

Jesus Christ, Simon. What do you think I’m doing?

You don’t need to be a tech expert to figure it out: the app is meant to spy on you. What it’s monitoring—your location, your texts, your app history—is the only mystery.

Deleting it would be the logical move, but that’s not an option. Simon would notice. He notices everything. And you know he could win an Olympic gold medal in jumping to conclusions.

So, what to do?

You close the app and lock your phone, your heart pounding. Maybe you’re being paranoid. Maybe it’s just a weird app you forgot you downloaded. Or maybe Simon has taken his possessiveness to a new level.

You decide to get out of the house.

The local sandwich shop isn’t much—a fluorescent-lit counter, a couple of mismatched tables—but it’s familiar, and more importantly, it’s public. Simon hates crowded places; the noise and chaos set him on edge. This is one of the few spots you feel like you can breathe.

You’re halfway through your order when someone taps your shoulder.

“Hey, long time no see.”

You turn to find Kyle. His easy smile and warm eyes are a stark contrast to Simon’s calculated demeanor. Kyle was a friend from years ago—before Simon, before everything. You’d lost touch, but here he is, as if no time has passed.

“Kyle? Wow, it’s been ages,” you say, surprised at how natural it feels to smile back.

“You look great,” he says, shoving his hands into his jacket pockets. “How’ve you been?”

You chat for a few minutes, the kind of light, easy conversation you’ve forgotten you’re capable of having. It’s a rare moment of normalcy—until Kyle glances at his watch.

“I’d love to catch up more, but I’ve got to run. Let’s not make this the last time we bump into each other, okay?”

“Sure,” you say, though the odds of reconnecting feel slim.

Kyle gives you a quick hug, his hand lingering lightly on your back, then heads for the door.

You smile to yourself, picking up your tray, when it hits you—your phone and wallet are gone.

Your heart drops. Frantically, you pat your pockets, rummage through your bag, even check under the table. Nothing.

Panic tightens your chest. Did I drop them? Did someone take them?

A man wirh the most ridiculous haircut brushes past you on his way out. You lock onto him, suspicion flaring, but he’s already gone.

Kyle’s gone. The phone’s gone.

The app. You didn’t delete it. You couldn't. That stupid app, the one Simon uses to track you—how much did he see? Was he checking on you now? Was it only a matter of time before you realized it was gone too?

And now, with your phone gone, you have no way of knowing what Simon might already know. No way of tracking where your phone is. No way of knowing if Simon has access to everything you’ve done. You clench your fists.

You need to get it back.

You stand frozen for a moment in the middle of the sandwich shop, still processing the absence of your phone and wallet. You glance at the door, trying to make sense of what just happened. Kyle is long gone, slipping out into the busy street, leaving you standing there, uncertain of what to do next.

A feeling of panic gnaws at you, but you push it down, taking a deep breath to steady yourself. It’s just a phone. You’ll find it, or you’ll figure something else out.

But when you check your wallet again, your heart sinks. It’s the second thing gone.

Your fingers tremble as you gather your things, scanning the floor one more time, but it’s no use. Your things are gone, and there's no point in standing here any longer. The unease creeps back in. What now?

You step out of the sandwich shop, pulling your coat tighter around you. The cold air does little to calm your nerves.

You don’t bother checking your watch or asking around. The last thing you need is attention right now. Instead, you slip your hand into your bag, fingers brushing the empty spot where your phone should be. Panic rises again.

Just as you’re about to walk down the street, hoping to retrace your steps, the sound of a car engine pulls you from your thoughts.

Simon’s car rolls up beside you, the headlights cutting through the dusk. The car slows as he rolls down the window.

"You alright?" he asks, his voice steady, though there’s something about it that feels too calm, too neutral.

You glance at the car, his face hard to read in the dim light. How did he know to come get me?

"Yeah," you manage to say, forcing a smile. "Just... was gonna walk."

He doesn’t press, just gives a small nod, the car idling in front of you.

“Get in,” he says. His tone is casual, but you catch that sharpness in his voice, the one that makes you hesitate for a split second before getting in.

You slide into the passenger seat, the warmth of the car a stark contrast to the cold air outside. Simon doesn’t say anything else, and neither do you. The silence feels heavy as you pull away, but your mind keeps circling back to one question: How did he know?

[mariacallous]

When the writer Amanda Hess was twenty-nine weeks pregnant with her first child, her doctor, looking at an ultrasound, “saw something he did not like.” He suspected a rare genetic condition; Hess underwent an amniocentesis and then an MRI. She sought out a second opinion—which augured catastrophe and, it turned out, was completely wrong—and a third, steadying one. Her son was eventually given a diagnosis of Beckwith-Wiedemann syndrome, which puts babies at higher risk for hypoglycemia and certain cancers and makes their little bodies grow fast; often, their tongues become too large for their mouths, requiring corrective surgery.

Extensive testing showed no genetic or environmental cause for her son’s condition, yet Hess felt somehow culpable. “I worried over what I had done to trigger it, over the dark secret of my body that had determined his suffering,” she writes in her memoir, “Second Life: Having a Child in the Digital Age” (Doubleday). Her apprehensions were reinforced by her medical chart, which logged ominous-seeming F.Y.I.s that included “Advanced maternal age” (she was thirty-five), “Teratogen exposure” (owing to a tablet of the anti-anxiety medication Ativan, taken at the six-week mark), and “Anxiety during pregnancy.” These facts revealed nothing about her baby’s prospects, yet they followed Hess around like a misdemeanor rap sheet. Immediately after her son’s birth, by C-section, a labor-and-delivery nurse turned to her—“the paralyzed, split-open, twenty-second-old mother”—and asked, “When did you stop taking the Ativan in pregnancy?”

“Second Life” is not mainly a medical odyssey but, rather, a mordant contemplation of the many screens—from ultrasounds and pregnancy-tracking apps to baby monitors and children’s TV—that reflected and mediated Hess’s experience of pregnancy and early motherhood. Through the porthole of her phone, she encountered the “freebirth” movement, made up of mothers who are skeptical of prenatal screenings and tests, hospital births, and pediatric vaccines, referring to conventional pregnancy care as “birth in captivity.” Hess developed a queasy fascination with these women. “If I had had a wild pregnancy, dismissed prenatal care as a scam, I never would have received that terrifying ultrasound,” she writes. “But I also would have denied myself the information that I needed to protect my child after he was born.” The diagnosis fortunately led Hess and her husband to a physician who specialized in Beckwith-Wiedemann syndrome, and to a hospital with a suitable NICU.

Hess’s book arrives at a historical moment—post-Dobbs, pro-natalist, techno-dystopian—in which both pregnant bodies and the stuff of reproduction itself have come under an extraordinary degree of scrutiny, judgment, and control. Some states routinely charge women with child neglect or endangerment for drug use during pregnancy (and even prescription medications have raised alarms). In Nebraska, a teen-ager and her mother both served time in prison after the girl took abortion drugs and delivered a stillborn infant. And many patients, including those who receive tragic prenatal diagnoses, cannot access abortion care unless they travel long distances out of state, often at great expense and even at legal risk.

Meanwhile, on the other side of what Hess calls the “reproductive technology gap,” a number of startups are touting their powers to select for maximally optimized offspring. Sam Altman, the C.E.O. of OpenAI, is an investor in the biotech company Genomic Prediction, which offers the LifeView Embryo Health Score® Test. It claims to evaluate I.V.F. embryos for a host of polygenic conditions, including propensity for developing diabetes, certain cancers, or schizophrenia; Stephen Hsu, a co-founder of Genomic Prediction, has said that the company’s technology can also predict I.Q., but that “society is not ready for it.” A similar company, Orchid, has backing from Anne Wojcicki, the co-founder of the genetic-testing company 23andMe. “Sex is for fun, and embryo screening is for babies,” Orchid’s founder, Noor Siddiqui, has said. (Creating true designer babies using gene-editing tools such as CRISPR is still largely forbidden.)

In recent years, the term “snowplow parenting” has come into vogue to describe a certain strain of affluent, vigilant child-rearing, one that works to smooth an offspring’s life path at every turn. Polygenic embryo screening may represent the snowplow driven to its logical extreme: the kind of parent who can drop six figures on Ivy-feeder preschools or comprehensive college-admissions counselling might happily intervene at the embryonic stage if she can boost her future kid’s I.Q. The ascendance of such technology, and its prohibitive expense, is a boon to the Nietzschean wing of the Silicon Valley overclass, which has long suspected that all its money makes it special. Perhaps now its genetically advantaged progeny can remove all doubt.

But most parents-to-be don’t breathe that rarefied air, which swirls with false expectations and, for some, carries a whiff of eugenics. Hess, who is a critic-at-large at the Times, takes an ambivalent view even of the more ordinary, in-utero technology that offered such widely diverging predictions about her baby’s health. Her prenatal diagnosis let her create a safe harbor for her newborn, yet the question of when or whether to receive such information remains an unsettling one. When a scientist tells her that, someday soon, a test that screens for Beckwith-Wiedemann and related disorders may be available much earlier in pregnancy, Hess writes, “I wasn’t sure that I wanted it to exist. I thought about the expectant parents who might jump, scared, at an early chance to prevent kids like my son.”

The “dark secret” that Hess ruminates on, one that can haunt the pregnant body and its progeny, hearkens back to a pre-Darwinian concept known as “maternal impression”—broadly speaking, the belief that a woman’s ideas, fears, and experiences during pregnancy leave an adverse physical mark on her infant. “Early modern medical manuals understood the mother basically as a psychic inscription machine,” the historian Hannah Zeavin writes in “Mother Media: Hot and Cool Parenting in the Twentieth Century.” “If she ate, thought, or did the wrong thing, it would be recorded in and on her developing child.” The maternal mind and body, Zeavin argues, was, historically, the ultimate transmission device, “the literal medium through whom the ‘message’ of the child had to pass into life.”

This idea, Hess writes in “Second Life,” “pitched forward through the centuries until it made its way to me.” She sees vestiges of maternal impression in how that single tab of Ativan—along with the anxiety it was meant to treat—was enshrined in her pregnancy records. “Teratogen exposure” refers to a substance that may cause malformation of an embryo; Hess notes, with dry horror, that the root “terato” means “monster,” and the suffix “-gen” is “thing that produces or causes.” “The online medical chart was supposed to be modern and scientific,” she writes. “But when I decoded its medical terminology, it said that I had created a monster.”

A largely unscientific hypervigilance about the blameworthy habits and behaviors of pregnant women is, as Hess discovers, a place of convergence for the medical establishment and the fringe-medicine crowd. At an outdoor retreat for freebirthers, she comes across a chiropractor-influencer who professes that most illnesses are created by “conflict shock”—some distressing life event that the patient has not resolved. When Hess later asks for “clues to why and how to treat” her son’s enlarged tongue, the influencer responds, in part, “The tongue is needed for speaking, sucking, and swallowing. During pregnancy did you experience a self devaluation related to one of these things? Did you need to ‘bite your tongue’?”

Although the reproductive-technology enthusiasts of Silicon Valley and beyond are not necessarily immune to such junk science, they are relatively sanguine about maternal impression. Elon Musk, who has fourteen-ish kids and has called declining birth rates “one of the biggest risks to civilization,” has fathered several of his children using surrogates and seems generally unfussed about where his sperm may roam. One of Orchid’s investor-clients told The Information that Siddiqui suggested she use a surrogate for her children, just because: “She was, like, ‘Well, this is nine months of your life, and it’s not that expensive.’ ” There is also the looming possibility of artificial wombs—which could eliminate the need for human labor altogether, bringing DOGE-like efficiency to the business of breeding.

It might come as a surprise that this tribe of biohacking control freaks is so blasé about outsourcing the work of gestating a human being to other, presumably less optimized vessels. And in fact the venture capitalists Malcolm and Simone Collins, who are the unofficial First Couple of American pro-natalism, have not used gestational surrogates for their children. Otherwise, though, they exemplify a hyper-rationalized faith in genetic determinism: that the message, in the form of DNA, trumps the medium. The Collinses have enlisted Genomic Prediction to run background checks on their embryos and another DNA-testing company to assess the data and then rank ideal candidates for onboarding according to criteria such as potential I.Q. and risk of developing anxiety or “brain fog.”

Within this paradigm of preselection, the work of raising children is, to some extent, completed upon implantation, and allows for what Malcolm calls “intrinsically low-effort parenting.” As depicted in a viral profile of the family in the Guardian last year, this parenting style accommodates unlimited iPad time at age two and the occasional smack across the face.

The Collinses demonstrate how advances in reproductive technology are resulting in unexpected political, social, and even aesthetic realignments. In many respects, they resemble the neo-Quiverfull, self-isolating, homeschooling families who populate so much of the Christian-MAHA sector of social media, and who overlap with the freebirthers who command Hess’s attention in “Second Life.” But the couple’s embrace of avant-garde science and medicine, Simone’s C-section births, and their autistic identities—Simone and two of their children have autism diagnoses—put them at odds with the same group, which rejects the medical establishment and fetishizes maternal impression and “natural” birth, and whose antipathy to vaccines is rooted in an irrational fear of autism.

The collision of these stridently individualistic ideologies is manifest in an online homeschooling platform that the Collinses developed, Parrhesia.io, which sounds like a disease in a Pynchon novel, and is, per an introductory video, “Using AI to Create a Free Alternative to the Education System.” The online marketing includes a few photographs of what we can take to be young homeschoolers using the platform, and, aptly, they all appear to be alone at their screen, as if they’d been programmed from conception for self-sufficiency.

As techno-oligarchs increasingly supplant the democratic state, its functions, and its elected representatives through undue influence and brute force, a Silicon Valley brand of carefully curated pro-natalism can begin to look like top-down social-genetic engineering, in which the children themselves are abstractions. In an illuminating suite of reporting on the frontiers of fertility for the Times, the journalist Anna Louie Sussman summed up the tech world’s view of family as one “in which children are often spoken of as a means to something else—staving off population collapse, an optimization project, a data-driven experiment—rather than an end in themselves.” But what should that end be, ideally? And what means, technological or otherwise, are allowed in reaching it? When you close your eyes and imagine your future children, what is it morally permissible to see? What should a person want when a person wants kids?

The vast majority of expectant parents in the United States don’t have access to the extreme-screening services provided by the likes of Orchid and Genomic Prediction, and thus don’t have to personally confront the ethical questions that the technology raises. But, in the last decade, first-trimester blood tests that screen for a host of chromosomal anomalies have become increasingly routine. These tests, when they detect lethal anomalies, can be a mercy for pregnant people. But Hess observes that, among the sunny promotional materials for the biomedical company Natera and its prenatal genetic-screening blood test, Panorama, “there were no pictures of babies or adults who appeared to have any condition screened by the test.” The unspoken assumption is that a patient who receives a positive test result will not want to become the parent of a child with a genetic disorder, however mild or compatible with a happy life it may be.

In “Unfit Parent: A Disabled Mother Challenges an Inaccessible World,” the disability activist Jessica Slice posits that embryonic testing is a eugenic practice, and that the decision to end a pregnancy owing to an in-utero diagnosis is often “strongly influenced by medical and social ableism and misconceptions.” Like Hess, Slice supports abortion rights, but she emphasizes the intertwined histories of the reproductive-rights movement and the early-twentieth-century eugenics campaign. Eugenics, Slice writes, is essentially capitalistic in its aim to eliminate those who are perceived as a drain on the collective; as she puts it, people with disabilities “are the weakest links of capitalism.” This framework applies to how companies such as Genomic Prediction and Orchid create futures markets for babies, helping prospective parents to manage risk and calculate return on investment.

From Slice’s line of reasoning, one might infer that fewer fetuses with serious anomalies are aborted in countries where the ruthless logic of markets holds less sway over everyday life than it does in the U.S. But that does not seem to be the case in Denmark, for example, which has one of the most comprehensive and generous welfare states in the world. It also provides universal prenatal screening for Down syndrome, and more than ninety-five per cent of patients who receive a diagnosis decide to end their pregnancies (in the U.S., it’s between sixty-seven and eighty-five per cent).

This silent consensus on Down syndrome, at least in some cultures and communities, might be seen as a consequence of “velvet eugenics,” a term used by the bioethicist Rosemarie Garland-Thomson to describe “the enterprise of genetic technology and other medical interventions aimed at bringing all humans to a standard, ‘normal’ form and function.” The coinage is vivid, useful, and flawed; deluxe I.V.F. for rich people and non-invasive prenatal testing for everyone else is a matter of choice, and not comparable to the legal violence of, say, Buck v. Bell, the Supreme Court case that, in 1927, upheld the state of Virginia’s right to forcibly sterilize people who were deemed intellectually disabled.

Perhaps inevitably, some critiques of velvet eugenics enfold a soft, muffled doubt about abortion rights. In 2022, a couple of months after the Supreme Court delivered its decision in Dobbs, Garland-Thomson published a paper with the philosopher Joel Michael Reynolds that seemed to endorse at least some aspects of “fetal personhood,” or the legal concept that would give a fetus constitutional rights under the Fourteenth Amendment. The co-authors’ nomenclature aligned with that of Clarence Thomas, who has written that abortions based on prenatal diagnoses “constitutionalize the views of the 20th-century eugenics movement.” By this logic, ending a pregnancy because of a prenatal test result might violate the Americans with Disabilities Act.

One can reject the supposition that establishing fetal personhood could be a boon to people with disabilities and still feel that there is something eerie and terribly sad about the near-unanimous verdict on Down syndrome in some countries, especially given the isolating and demoralizing effect it has on people with Down syndrome and their families. At the same time, the overwhelming result at least bespeaks equality of access to reproductive-health technology in those countries. The state of affairs in the U.S. is different. A rich mother-to-be may get to have exacting input on whether an embryo meets her standards for becoming a person; if a pregnant woman is poor or in the wrong state, she may have none at all.

Both the ancient dogma of maternal impression and the emerging ethos of Silicon Valley baby-coders offer the promise of control. But parenting is not a programming language, and a child is not an engineering problem or a structure to be built to exact specifications. If that’s what you want, you should design a night club or clone your dog. Becoming a parent, Hess writes in “Second Life,” does not comport with the desire “to control and optimize every aspect of life. Babies don’t work like that, and that’s part of what makes parenting meaningful: you do not get to choose.” What’s more, the higher and more narrowly prescribed their expectations for their children, the more unmoored parents will be once their children inevitably outgrow and defy those expectations.

The moral and emotional wreckage of these thwarted conjectures can be witnessed in Musk, who has repeatedly made the appalling quip that his daughter Vivian Wilson, who is trans, was “killed by the woke mind virus.” Most of Musk’s children are boys, which has prompted speculation that Musk is engaging in sex selection; Wilson was assigned male at birth, a designation that she likened to “a commodity that was bought and paid for” in a recent Threads post. “So when I was feminine as a child and then turned out to be transgender,” she went on, “I was going against the product that was sold.” The commodity was found to be defective, perhaps falsely advertised, but not eligible for return. The only option, it seems, was to discard it. Unfortunately for Musk, there is no genetic test to predict whether a fetus will become a trans person, or if she is at pronounced risk of contracting the woke mind virus.

Reproductive technology may assume the chrome-and-glass form of an existential time machine, zipping frictionlessly into the future to retrieve high-definition images of a premium-grade child. But we can only presume so much about a child who is not here. “Second Life” is foremost a mash note to Hess’s firstborn son, who is a complete and ongoing joy, and much of the book’s charisma is rooted in its mood of droll astonishment. “The act of photographing him was a compulsive expression of my wonder at his existence,” Hess writes. “It’s him: tap. He is here: tap. He remains: tap.” The wild fact of her son installs an epistemological brick wall between the before and after of his being, and hers: “Past-me saw a prenatal diagnosis as a tragedy; present-me knew that no tragedy had occurred.” Despite the oracular hubris of the genetic-screening vanguard, the story a parent wants has only one primary source, one reliable narrator. You have to wait for him.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Sara Boboltz at HuffPost:

Donald Trump has been working hard to distance himself from the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, a blueprint for a second Trump administration that would radically reshape the federal government and American life. Among other proposals, such as dismantling the U.S. Department of Education, the plan outlines how the government could keep detailed records on abortions and even obtain pregnant patients’ medical records without their consent.

As a whole, Project 2025 is highly controversial. Trump’s campaign leapt at the chance to disparage it once again on Tuesday, with the news that the project’s director, Paul Dans, was stepping down.

“President Trump’s campaign has been very clear for over a year that Project 2025 had nothing to do with the campaign, did not speak for the campaign, and should not be associated with the campaign or the President in any way,” Trump spokespeople Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita said in a statement. [...] But reporting indicates that the ties between Project 2025 and Trump’s campaign run deep. At least 140 people who worked in the Trump administration — including six former members of his cabinet — have been involved in the project, according to an investigation by CNN. At least 31 out of 38 people named as authors or editors on the 900-page plan are tied to Trump, USA Today reported.

[...]

The letter signed by Vance claims the Biden rule “unlawfully thwarts the enforcement of compassionate laws” against abortion and “directs health care providers to defy lawful court orders and search warrants.” “Abortion is not health care — it is a brutal act that destroys the life of an unborn child and hurts women,” the letter reads. A Trump-Vance presidency could see the Biden administration’s rule erased, allowing police and prosecutors in states led by Republicans to more easily go after people who decide to end their pregnancies. The rule also only goes so far — it doesn’t protect data from mobile phones, where many people track their menstrual cycles using apps. (The rule modifies the Health Insurance Portability And Accountability Act of 1996, known as HIPAA, which does not cover digital data.) “Donald Trump and his allies want to monitor people’s pregnancies in order to track and prosecute people for their pregnancy outcomes,” Jenny Lawson, executive director of Planned Parenthood Votes, told HuffPost.

Project 2025 indeed calls for such government tracking — under penalty of loss of federal health funding for states that don’t comply. “Because liberal states have now become sanctuaries for abortion tourism, HHS should use every available tool, including the cutting of funds, to ensure that every state reports exactly how many abortions take place within its borders, at what gestational age of the child, for what reason, the mother’s state of residence, and by what method,” it reads. “It should also ensure that statistics are separated by category: spontaneous miscarriage; treatments that incidentally result in the death of a child (such as chemotherapy); stillbirths; and induced abortion. In addition, CDC should require monitoring and reporting for complications due to abortion and every instance of children being born alive after an abortion,” the plan stated. The recommendations on abortion were written by a Trump-era HHS official, Roger Severino, according to Rolling Stone.

A potential Trump/Vance “Presidency” would be a disaster for pregnant people, as the Project 2025 document has endorsed the proposal of government-mandated tracking of abortion and pregnancy records.

[feminist-space]

"Just weeks before the implosion of AllHere, an education technology company that had been showered with cash from venture capitalists and featured in glowing profiles by the business press, America’s second-largest school district was warned about problems with AllHere’s product.

As the eight-year-old startup rolled out Los Angeles Unified School District’s flashy new AI-driven chatbot — an animated sun named “Ed” that AllHere was hired to build for $6 million — a former company executive was sending emails to the district and others that Ed’s workings violated bedrock student data privacy principles.

Those emails were sent shortly before The 74 first reported last week that AllHere, with $12 million in investor capital, was in serious straits. A June 14 statement on the company’s website revealed a majority of its employees had been furloughed due to its “current financial position.” Company founder and CEO Joanna Smith-Griffin, a spokesperson for the Los Angeles district said, was no longer on the job.

Smith-Griffin and L.A. Superintendent Alberto Carvalho went on the road together this spring to unveil Ed at a series of high-profile ed tech conferences, with the schools chief dubbing it the nation’s first “personal assistant” for students and leaning hard into LAUSD’s place in the K-12 AI vanguard. He called Ed’s ability to know students “unprecedented in American public education” at the ASU+GSV conference in April.

Through an algorithm that analyzes troves of student information from multiple sources, the chatbot was designed to offer tailored responses to questions like “what grade does my child have in math?” The tool relies on vast amounts of students’ data, including their academic performance and special education accommodations, to function.

Meanwhile, Chris Whiteley, a former senior director of software engineering at AllHere who was laid off in April, had become a whistleblower. He told district officials, its independent inspector general’s office and state education officials that the tool processed student records in ways that likely ran afoul of L.A. Unified’s own data privacy rules and put sensitive information at risk of getting hacked. None of the agencies ever responded, Whiteley told The 74.

...

In order to provide individualized prompts on details like student attendance and demographics, the tool connects to several data sources, according to the contract, including Welligent, an online tool used to track students’ special education services. The document notes that Ed also interfaces with the Whole Child Integrated Data stored on Snowflake, a cloud storage company. Launched in 2019, the Whole Child platform serves as a central repository for LAUSD student data designed to streamline data analysis to help educators monitor students’ progress and personalize instruction.

Whiteley told officials the app included students’ personally identifiable information in all chatbot prompts, even in those where the data weren’t relevant. Prompts containing students’ personal information were also shared with other third-party companies unnecessarily, Whiteley alleges, and were processed on offshore servers. Seven out of eight Ed chatbot requests, he said, are sent to places like Japan, Sweden, the United Kingdom, France, Switzerland, Australia and Canada.

Taken together, he argued the company’s practices ran afoul of data minimization principles, a standard cybersecurity practice that maintains that apps should collect and process the least amount of personal information necessary to accomplish a specific task. Playing fast and loose with the data, he said, unnecessarily exposed students’ information to potential cyberattacks and data breaches and, in cases where the data were processed overseas, could subject it to foreign governments’ data access and surveillance rules.

Chatbot source code that Whiteley shared with The 74 outlines how prompts are processed on foreign servers by a Microsoft AI service that integrates with ChatGPT. The LAUSD chatbot is directed to serve as a “friendly, concise customer support agent” that replies “using simple language a third grader could understand.” When querying the simple prompt “Hello,” the chatbot provided the student’s grades, progress toward graduation and other personal information.

AllHere’s critical flaw, Whiteley said, is that senior executives “didn’t understand how to protect data.”

...

Earlier in the month, a second threat actor known as Satanic Cloud claimed it had access to tens of thousands of L.A. students’ sensitive information and had posted it for sale on Breach Forums for $1,000. In 2022, the district was victim to a massive ransomware attack that exposed reams of sensitive data, including thousands of students’ psychological evaluations, to the dark web.

With AllHere’s fate uncertain, Whiteley blasted the company’s leadership and protocols.

“Personally identifiable information should be considered acid in a company and you should only touch it if you have to because acid is dangerous,” he told The 74. “The errors that were made were so egregious around PII, you should not be in education if you don’t think PII is acid.”

Read the full article here:

https://www.the74million.org/article/whistleblower-l-a-schools-chatbot-misused-student-data-as-tech-co-crumbled/

[trickstarbrave]

Have the parents putting tracking apps on their phones to see where they are every second of the day ever considered asking themselves why their kid might lie about where they are. And that maybe they should address that issue rather than obsessively trying to monitor their child’s every move

[financialcoachingvault]

Strategies for Financial Growth

Financial growth is all about increasing your wealth over time. This can happen through various methods such as saving, investing, and smart budgeting. When I think about financial growth, I consider not just how much money I have, but how I can make that money work for me!

To achieve financial growth, it's essential to have a clear goal in mind. Whether it’s saving for a new home, funding a child's education, or planning for retirement, knowing your objective will help shape your strategies. Remember, with the right approach, you can turn your financial dreams into reality!

Setting Financial Goals

Setting achievable financial goals is the first step toward growth. Goals should be specific, measurable, and time-bound. For example, rather than saying "I want to save money," you could say "I want to save $5,000 in the next year." This clarity can make a big difference!

Next, consider breaking your goals into smaller, manageable steps. This could mean saving a certain amount each month or cutting back on unnecessary expenses. I always find that tracking my progress keeps me motivated and focused.

Make your goals specific.

Set a timeline for each goal.

Break large goals into smaller tasks.

Budgeting for Success

Budgeting is a powerful tool for achieving financial growth. By creating a budget, I can see where my money goes and identify areas where I can save. It’s like having a roadmap for my finances!

To create an effective budget, start by listing all sources of income and all expenses. Categorize expenses into needs and wants. This way, I can prioritize essential spending while finding areas to cut back. Remember, even small savings add up over time!

Tracking Expenses

Keeping track of expenses is crucial for staying within budget. I use apps and spreadsheets to monitor my spending regularly. This helps me identify patterns and make adjustments as needed. Plus, it feels rewarding to see where I can save more!

Don’t forget to review your budget periodically. Life changes, and so do our expenses and income. By adjusting my budget regularly, I ensure that I stay on track with my financial goals.

Use budgeting apps for convenience.

Review your budget monthly.

Adjust your budget as your situation changes.

Investing Wisely

Investing is a key strategy for financial growth. While saving is important, investing allows my money to grow at a faster rate. I like to think of it as planting seeds – over time, those seeds can bloom into a bountiful harvest!

There are various investment options, such as stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and real estate. Each option has its own risks and rewards, so it’s essential to do my research. I always recommend starting with a diversified portfolio to spread out risk.

Understanding Risk and Reward

Understanding the relationship between risk and reward is vital for successful investing. For tools and strategies to help you manage investment risk wisely, visit https://www.financialcoachingvault.com/blog/wealth-strategies/master-your-finances-with-coaching. Higher potential returns often come with higher risks. I balance my investments based on my risk tolerance. This helps me feel more secure while aiming for growth!

It’s also a good idea to consult with a financial advisor if I'm unsure where to invest. They can provide valuable insights tailored to my personal financial situation.

Diversify your investment portfolio.

Assess your risk tolerance.

Seek advice from a financial advisor if needed.

Building Multiple Income Streams

Creating multiple income streams is another smart strategy for financial growth. Relying on a single income can be risky. I always think about how I can earn money from different sources, such as side jobs, freelance work, or investments.

Starting a side hustle can be a great way to boost my income. It could be anything from selling handmade crafts online to offering tutoring services. With determination, I can turn my passions into profits!

Passive Income Opportunities

Passive income is income that requires little to no effort to maintain. This includes investments like rental properties or dividend-paying stocks. While it might take some initial work to set up, the potential for ongoing income is worth it.

Researching passive income opportunities can lead to financial freedom. I find it exciting to think about how my investments can generate cash flow while I focus on other things!

Explore rental property investments.

Consider dividend stocks.

Look into creating online courses or content.

Continuous Learning and Adaptation

The financial world is always changing, and so should my strategies. Continuous learning is essential for staying on top of trends and making informed decisions. I enjoy reading books, attending workshops, and following financial news to stay educated!

Additionally, adapting my strategies based on new information can lead to better outcomes. Whether it’s changing investment strategies or adjusting my budget, being flexible can make a big difference in my financial growth.

Staying Informed

There are numerous resources available to keep me informed about financial growth. Podcasts, blogs, and webinars can provide valuable insights and tips. I make it a habit to allocate time each week to learn something new about finance!

Networking with other financially savvy individuals can also offer fresh perspectives. Sharing experiences and strategies helps me discover new ways to improve my financial growth!

Follow financial news and trends.

Attend financial workshops and webinars.

Connect with peers for advice and support.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What is financial growth? Financial growth refers to the increase in wealth over time, achieved through methods like saving, investing, and budgeting.

How can I set effective financial goals? Effective financial goals should be specific, measurable, and time-bound. Breaking them into smaller, manageable steps can also help.

Why is budgeting important for financial growth? Budgeting helps you understand where your money goes and identify areas for saving, acting as a roadmap for your finances.

What should I consider when investing? Consider different investment options, assess your risk tolerance, and start with a diversified portfolio to spread out risk.

What are multiple income streams? Multiple income streams refer to earning money from different sources, such as side jobs, freelance work, or investments, to reduce financial risk.

What is passive income? Passive income requires little to no effort to maintain and includes earnings from investments like rental properties or dividend-paying stocks.

How can I stay informed about financial growth? Follow financial news, read books, attend workshops, and connect with peers to stay updated on trends and strategies in finance.

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[lehighsee]

Arkangel Discussion notes

Here are some notes our e-board put together after our watch-through of Arkangel on Black Mirror to help guide our group discussion. What are your thoughts on the ethics behind Arkangel?

Sara won’t develop emotionally

Won’t learn to grieve

Won't learn to deal with stress

Never learns how pain can affect people, so she can’t recognize when she’s hurting people

This is mostly about emotional pain, but when she beats her mom up, that’s a physical representation of this

Also, when she was trying drugs for the first time, trying to steal and open the supply Trick needed to sell could’ve gotten Trick in a lot of trouble from his suppliers/buyers 

Her mom was spying in therapy, which isn’t illegal at that age, but clearly displays her lack of respect for Sara’s privacy

Cheating at hide-and-seek shows this too

Maybe no MRIs

How will Sara get through having her period (especially the first time), sex ed, history classes that look at violence, or even a stressful exam?

How did Arkangel feed into the mother’s paranoia and need for control?  Would she still have roofie-plan-b-ed her daughter is she wasn’t so used to having that control?

At first, she didn’t even want the filtering effect, but she gave in.

Are kids today over-monitored?

Kids with helicopter parents go to college and experience freedom for the first time and generally fall off the deep end because they crave more of it and didn’t learn how/when to set limits. Sara experienced this to the extreme.

Probably the biggest reason she’s involved with Trick, because he was able to show her that freedom.

She’ll never learn to solve her own problems if her mom is always stepping in.

Would Arkangel be ethical without the filtering effect?

Or without the camera?

Or just the vitals?

Or just a tracking chip?

Would it be better if features get taken away from the parents as the child gets older?

The process of putting in a chip is generally invasive.

It might not leave a scar or be painful, but it’s still an unnecessary procedure that stays with you forever. 

Arkangel could be hacked.

Then Sara’s location is always available to the wrong people.

They may know parts of her medical history.

All the recordings saved are now in a stranger’s hands.

Will lead to child porn.

Hypotheticals

How would the world change if the Arkangel became a standard procedure for children and parents? 

Having to redo much of early education, Eva mentioned a lot about sex ed and war history classes, but could also extend to “does the room disappear when you get called on in class and get anxious?” and how exams may have to be tweaked

Crime rates could change since there now exists a video/audio log of every moment in your life that hypothetically anyone can access. 

How would you change the device to make it more beneficial? Can also relate to certain apps and such we currently have (such as Life360) and how they work to remain somewhat beneficial 

Removing the filter feature or making it much less sensitive to stress spikes 

Giving the individual control over their Arkangel instead of an external (ie a parent/guardian)

[kidssmartwatchbypixbee]

The Future Of Kids Smartwatches: What To Expect In The Next Five Years.

Today's children are growing up in a world dominated by technology. From smartphones and tablets to smart home devices, technology is becoming an integral part of their lives. As parents, it is natural for us to want to keep an eye on our children's activities, and that's where kids smart watches come in. These wearable devices are specifically designed for children and offer a range of features to keep them safe and entertained. In this article, we will explore the future of kids smartwatches and what we can expect in the next five years.

Future trends in children's smartwatches

In the coming years, kids smartwatches are expected to witness several trends that will enhance their functionality while addressing the concerns of parents. Let's take a closer look at some of these exciting trends:

1. Safety

Safety has always been the primary concern for parents when it comes to their children. In the future, kids smartwatches are likely to incorporate advanced GPS tracking technology to provide real-time location monitoring. Parents will be able to track their children's whereabouts and set up safe zones, and receive notifications whenever their child leaves or enters a designated area. This feature will bring parents peace of mind, especially when their children are away from home, ensuring their safety at all times.

2. Health and Fitness Tracking

In an era where childhood obesity is a growing concern, kids smartwatches will play a crucial role in promoting fitness among children. Future wearables will feature enhanced Fitness tracking capabilities, such as heart rate monitoring, step counting, and sleep tracking. These features will enable parents to monitor their child's activity levels, encourage them to lead an active lifestyle, and ensure they are getting enough rest.

3. Educational Features

Kids smartwatches are not just limited to safety and fitness tracking. They are also excellent learning tools for children. In the next five years, we can expect to see more educational features incorporated into these devices. This could include interactive games, language learning apps, and even augmented reality experiences. These features will make learning fun and engaging for children, helping them develop essential skills while keeping them entertained.

4. Two-Way Communication

Communication is an essential aspect of any smartwatch, and kids' wearables are no exception. In the future, kids smartwatches will likely offer advanced two-way communication capabilities. Parents will be able to call or message their child directly from their smartphone, and vice versa. This feature will ensure that parents can stay connected with their children at all times, even when they are apart. It will also allow children to reach out to their parents in case of an emergency or any other concerns.

5. Customization

Children love expressing their individuality, and customizability will be a significant trend in kids smartwatches. In the future, these wearables will come in various colors, patterns, and designs to cater to different personalities and preferences. Kids will have the option to choose their favorite themes or characters, making their smartwatch truly their own.

Also Read: [Teaching Safety and Responsibility through Kids Smart Watches.]

Technological advancements in kids wearables

As technology continues to evolve rapidly, kids smartwatches will also witness significant advancements in terms of hardware and software. Let's explore some of the technological advancements we can expect in the next few years:

1. More Powerful Processors

As kids smartwatches become more sophisticated, they will require more powerful processors to handle complex tasks and deliver a seamless user experience. The future smartwatches for children will feature faster processors, enabling smooth multitasking and better performance.

2. Longer Battery Life

Battery life is always a concern when it comes to wearable devices. In the future, kids smartwatches will be equipped with more advanced battery technology, allowing them to last longer on a single charge. This will ensure that children can use their smartwatches throughout the day without worrying about running out of battery.

3. Improved Durability

Children can be rough with their toys and gadgets, so durability is a crucial factor to consider in kids smartwatches. In the coming years, we can expect these wearables to become even more rugged and resistant to water, dust, and accidental drops. This will make them more suitable for active and adventurous kids.

4. Enhanced User Interface

The user interface of kids smartwatches will also undergo significant improvements in the future. They will feature more intuitive touchscreens, voice recognition capabilities, and gesture-based controls, making it easier for children to navigate and interact with their smartwatches.

5. Integration with Other Devices

In the next five years, kids smartwatches will become more integrated with other devices and smart home ecosystems. They will be able to connect with smartphones, tablets, and even smart home devices, allowing parents to monitor and control various aspects of their child's environment through a single interface.

As we look to the future of kids smartwatches, it's evident that these wearable devices will continue to evolve and adapt to meet the needs of both parents and children. With advanced safety features, educational capabilities, and technological advancements, the next five years hold immense potential for kids wearables. Parents can look forward to enhanced peace of mind, while children can enjoy a fun and engaging experience with their smartwatches. So, buckle up and get ready for the exciting future of kids smartwatches!

[digitalrajnikantbamaniya]

How SWEEDU's Student Attendance Management System Ensures Accurate and Timely Attendance Tracking

Managing student attendance is crucial for any educational institution, and SWEEDU's Student Attendance Management System simplifies this process with precision and efficiency. Here’s how SWEEDU ensures accurate and timely attendance tracking:

1. Automated Attendance Capture

SWEEDU’s system allows schools to record attendance automatically through biometric devices, RFID cards, or mobile apps. This eliminates manual entry errors and speeds up the process, ensuring accuracy.

2. Real-time Updates

The system provides real-time updates, notifying parents, teachers, and administrators of attendance records instantly. It minimizes delays in tracking and enables timely interventions if a student is absent or late.

3. Customizable Attendance Policies

SWEEDU’s system allows institutions to customize attendance rules, such as late attendance or half-day policies. This flexibility ensures that institutions can accurately track and manage attendance based on their specific requirements.

4. Seamless Integration with Mobile Apps

Parents, teachers, and students can use SWEEDU’s mobile apps to monitor attendance. Parents get instant notifications if their child misses class, while teachers can easily mark attendance with a few taps on their phones.

5. Detailed Attendance Reports

SWEEDU generates detailed attendance reports for individual students, classes, or the entire institution. This feature makes it easier to spot patterns of absenteeism and address issues promptly.

6. Data Security

SWEEDU prioritizes data security, ensuring that all attendance records are securely stored and protected. This guarantees the privacy of student information while maintaining accuracy.

Conclusion

SWEEDU's Student Attendance Management System is designed to make attendance tracking both accurate and efficient. By leveraging automation, real-time updates, and seamless integration, SWEEDU helps educational institutions save time, reduce errors, and improve overall attendance management.

[kidfirstphone]

𝐇𝐨𝐰 𝐭𝐨 𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐭𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝐂𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐝𝐫𝐞𝐧 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐁𝐢𝐠 𝐓𝐞𝐜𝐡 𝐒𝐮𝐫𝐯𝐞𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞, 𝐎𝐧𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐀𝐝𝐝𝐢𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐀𝐛𝐮𝐬𝐞

Big tech companies like Google and Facebook constantly profile their users to sell personalized advertisements and influence decisions using both soft and hard power. Soft power involves subtle methods to convince users to act in ways that benefit the company, while hard power refers to tech companies imposing their will despite resistance (e.g., tracking your location despite opting out). These companies hook users to their apps and services, making it easy to spend hours on platforms like Facebook without intending to.

Google’s AdWords and AdSense initiatives, combined with DoubleClick’s capabilities, initiated the surveillance economy. They enable Google to follow users almost everywhere online, even if they don’t interact with any ads. Tech companies employ various strategies to keep you under constant surveillance, such as:

Data Collection: Google collects and analyzes your search queries, browser history, location data, device information, cookies, email contents, app usage, voice and audio recordings, YouTube history, and social media posts. This data is used to sell personalized ads and is often shared with third-party companies.

Ultrasound Beacons: In a bookstore, music could send ultrasound beacons to your phone, identifying it and tracking your interests and purchases.

Smart Devices: A Samsung smart TV, for instance, is connected to over 700 distinct internet addresses within fifteen minutes of use.

IMSI-Catchers: Also known as stingrays, these fake cell phone towers trick mobile phones into connecting to them.

Wi-Fi Tracking: Stores can identify returning shoppers through their Wi-Fi signals.

To protect children from such surveillance and its potential harms, consider the following steps:

Educate and Communicate: Teach children about online privacy, the dangers of oversharing, and the tactics used by big tech companies.

Use Privacy-Focused Tools: Opt for search engines, browsers, and apps that prioritize privacy, like DuckDuckGo for search and Brave for browsing.

Set Up Parental Controls: Utilize the parental control features available on devices and apps to limit exposure to inappropriate content and track online activity. https://www.kidfirstphone.com/ is the best parental control available for free

Limit Screen Time: Encourage offline activities and set boundaries for online usage to prevent addiction. https://www.kidfirstphone.com/ provides lots of control to reduce screen time.

Regularly Review Privacy Settings: Periodically check and adjust privacy settings on all devices and platforms your child uses.

Monitor and Discuss: Keep an open line of communication with your children about their online experiences and regularly monitor their activity for any signs of trouble.

Implementing these measures can help safeguard children from the invasive practices of big tech companies and promote healthier, safer online habits.

Kid First Phone is constantly updating and creating new ways to keep kids safe on the internet. To learn more, check out our website at Kid First Phone. https://www.kidfirstphone.com/

#KidFirstPhone#ParentalControl#ChildSafety#DigitalWellbeing #FamilyTech#KidsTech #SafeTech #ParentingTips #ScreenTimeControl #ParentalGuidance #locationtracking #SmartParenting#OnlineSafety#DigitalParenting#SecureTech #KidsSmartphone #TechSolutions #ParentalMonitoring#MobileSafety#FamilyFirst

[majorarc]

Something I find really concerning about the apps marketed towards parents to help them monitor and manage their children's activities, such as how much they spend using those specially monitored debit cards, or tracking in the phones so parents can see where the child is --- those things were pretty much used by a friend's parents to control and abuse her when she was already in her late teens.

The tracking apps? She couldn't go anywhere without their permission. Places like just going to the park to just get away from the environment at home for a while? She had to have the tracking on so that the parents could make sure she wasn't trying to run away.

If she went somewhere with someone, she had to tell her parents what she was doing, where she was going, and who with, and whether or not they would go anywhere else as well. If they suspected she was with someone of whom they didn't approve (like her boyfriend) they would follow in their cars.

The apps were also used to monitor who she was talking to, what she was doing on the internet, so she had to go to a trusted neighbor's house to use their phone just to communicate about what was going on at home. And because she was a minor, there wasn't much the police could do (she'd tried getting them involved so many times, and even once where they were causing a scene outside a supermarket, the police couldn't do anything but give the parents a warning).

It wasn't until she got to university, and lived in the dorms, that she's now able to break away. She ditched her phone for a new one, with her own phone plan, and got a new bank account, because her parents still had control of her old one. She was able to get a lot of her money out of the old account, but there's still some money left she's trying to get back.

[dahuatechnologyindia]

Dahua has recently launched a Home and Indoor series camera called Hero A1, which features a 360-degree view, auto-tracking, night vision, and two-way talk capabilities. This budget-friendly camera is a complete package. You can connect it with just Wi-Fi and power and view the live feed on your mobile device through the DMSS app. To access previous recordings, you need to install a 256 GB SD card. This camera is specially designed for home and indoor use. Suppose you are a working mother or father who wants to keep an eye on their kids while they are at work. You can also monitor your parents with this camera. When you are outside, you can see the live view and talk to them using the two-way talk feature. The camera supports auto-tracking, so if your child is moving around the room, it will automatically rotate to follow them. You can also restrict certain areas using the app, and if your child enters those areas, you will receive a notification. This feature can be applied to areas like the TV, refrigerator, or kitchen. The Hero A1 is also ideal for small shops, cafes, or other indoor places. If anyone tries to enter your premises at night, it will send you a notification on your DMSS app. You can immediately speak through the camera and even activate the siren.

[archiveofkloss]

karlie kloss recently shared some of her parenting and everyday must-haves with cnn underscored!

1. Lanolips, “The Original 101 Ointment Multipurpose Superbalm” - $16.95

"I use this balm every single day," Kloss says. "It keeps my lips and skin hydrated 24/7." Made 100% naturally with ultra-pure grade Australian lanolin, the 101 Ointment is aptly named: it serves 101 functions. This balm is excellent for anything dry or chapped including lips, skin patches, cuticles, elbows, and more. It is also safe to use during pregnancy, for nursing mothers, and with babies

2. Owala, “Kids’ Freesip” - $22.99

"Levi adores his colorful sippy cup, and it never, ever leaks," Kloss says. Made from triple-layered, vacuum-insulated stainless steel, the FreeSip is not only tough but also keeps drinks cold for up to 24 hours.

3. Coterie, “The Wipe: 4 Pack” - $30.00

"As a professional model, l've spent many hours on a makeup chair, so i've been through my fair share of makeup and baby wipes," Kloss says. "These ones from Coterie are my favorite! They're great for diaper changes, sticky hands and faces or any other daily messes. I even use them on myself, and I will be carrying them in my bag long after I have a child in diapers!" Up to 30% larger than most wipes, Coterie’s are chemical-free and made with purified water, skincare ingredients such as vitamin E and glycerin, and plant-based, plastic-free, biodegradable fibers.

4. Estée Lauder, “Turbo Lash High Powered Volume + Length Mascara” - $34.00

Kloss, who is an Estée Lauder global brand ambassador, says, "When I'm not working, I prefer to go for a more natural look, and this mascara is one of my staples for my daily routine. It gives my lashes that perfect lift for an easy, effortless look."

5. Doona, “Doona + Car Seat & Stroller” - $550

"I love this stroller because it's very new-parent-friendly and easy to fold, which really comes in handy when you're strapped for time and on the move," Kloss says. As the first fully integrated travel system, Doona’s car seat allows for travel with ease for parents on-the-go as it can transform into a stroller within seconds. Available in seven colors, the Doona includes a five-point harness, an adjustable handlebar, and removable and washable textiles.

6. Oura, “Heritage Ring in Gold” - $449

"I swear by the Oura Ring," Kloss says. "It helps track my sleep every day, giving me all the data I need to help improve my sleep quality so that I feel my very best the next morning." The Oura can track everything from sleep and fitness to stress and general health, all available to track and monitor on the brand’s app.

7. Nanit, “Nanit Pro Camera with Floor Stand” - $399.00

"I'm such a tech nerd, and this smart baby monitor is one of the best on the market," Kloss says. "It comes with its own app, so you can take a peek whenever, and it really does help take some of that stress away." Delivering 1080p HD video, the Nanit comes with built-in sound and motion alerts and has a split-screen feature that allows users to view and control two cameras at once.

you can read the article here

[datamakesthedifference]

VB-MAPP App: Streamline Assessment & Boost Efficiency

In today's fast-paced world, efficiency is key, especially in the field of early childhood education and intervention. The VB-MAPP (Verbal Behavior Milestones Assessment and Placement Program) is a widely used tool for assessing and planning interventions for children with developmental delays, autism spectrum disorder (ASD), and other special needs. However, manually administering and scoring the VB-MAPP can be a time-consuming and tedious process.

Fortunately, the VB-MAPP app has emerged as a game-changer, offering a digital solution to streamline the assessment and intervention process. This article will explore how the VB-MAPP app can help you maximize efficiency and achieve better outcomes for the children you serve.

Benefits of the VB-MAPP App:

Reduced Time Commitment: The app automates many of the time-consuming tasks associated with the traditional paper-based VB-MAPP, such as scoring and data entry. This frees up valuable time for professionals to focus on what matters most – interacting with children and providing individualized support.

Improved Accuracy: The app's built-in scoring algorithms eliminate the risk of human error, ensuring accurate and reliable assessment results. This allows for data-driven decision-making and personalized intervention plans.

Enhanced Data Accessibility: The app provides instant access to assessment data and reports, allowing professionals to easily track progress, share information with other team members, and collaborate effectively.

Offline Functionality: The app allows you to download assessment data and work offline, ensuring continued productivity even when internet access is unavailable.

Accessibility and Portability: The app can be used on various devices, such as tablets and smartphones, making it convenient to administer assessments and access data anywhere, anytime.

Streamlining the Assessment Process:

The VB-MAPP app provides a user-friendly interface that guides professionals through the assessment process step-by-step. Features include:

Preloaded assessment items: The app comes preloaded with all VB-MAPP items, eliminating the need for manual entry and saving preparation time.

Interactive prompts and scoring tools: The app provides clear instructions and scoring guidelines, ensuring consistency and accuracy in assessment administration.

Real-time data visualization: The app displays data in real-time, allowing professionals to immediately identify strengths, weaknesses, and areas needing further assessment.

Enhancing Intervention Planning and Implementation:

The VB-MAPP app offers valuable tools for developing and implementing effective interventions based on individual needs:

Personalized goal setting: The app helps professionals set individualized goals based on each child's specific skill levels and developmental needs.

Data-driven intervention strategies: The app provides access to evidence-based intervention strategies tailored to address identified areas of need.

Progress monitoring and reporting: The app allows for easy monitoring of progress towards established goals, enabling professionals to make timely adjustments to interventions as needed.

Collaboration and communication: The app facilitates communication between parents, educators, and therapists, ensuring everyone is working together towards shared goals.

Conclusion:

The VB-MAPP app is a powerful tool that can significantly improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the assessment and intervention process for children with special needs. By automating time-consuming tasks, ensuring data accuracy, and providing valuable insights, the app empowers professionals to maximize their time and resources, ultimately leading to better outcomes for the children they serve.

Additional Resources:

VB-MAPP Website: https://datamakesthedifference.com/

The VB-MAPP App: https://www.vbmappapp.com/

Let's embrace technology and maximize efficiency to ensure every child has access to the support they need to reach their full potential.