Esme Merrill

Should families set shared screen-free hours rather than individual limits?

Teenagers with their own phones and data plans do not obey household blackouts; they evade them. Tell a sixteen-year-old the wifi dies at nine and you will get a kid on cellular data under the covers, lying about it the next morning. Congratulations: the rule designed to bring the family together just made your kid a better liar. The research on parental monitoring is consistent that trust and communication predict outcomes better than surveillance. Common Sense's own data shows teens are ambivalent about social media already. [Common Sense Media](https://www.commonsensemedia.org/press-releases/two-years-into-the-pandemic-media-use-has-increased-17-among-tweens-and-teens). Work with that ambivalence: talk about what they see, model putting your own phone down, agree on sleep boundaries together. A blackout imposed from above skips the conversation and goes straight to the arms race. Parents lose arms races with teenagers. Every time.

Should AI-generated films be eligible for major awards like the Oscars?

Every new filmmaking tool gets this funeral. When digital cameras arrived, purists said film was dead; when CGI arrived, they said acting was over, and then performances like Andy Serkis as Gollum got studied in acting classes. The Academy's 2025 rule gets the principle right: generative AI [neither helps nor harms](https://www.oscars.org/news) a film's eligibility, because voters are asked to judge the human authorship at the heart of the work. A director who uses AI to pre-visualize a sequence still makes a thousand creative decisions, just as a cinematographer using a digital camera does. Banning AI films from awards would not protect artistry, it would just freeze the definition of artistry at whatever tools existed in 2022.

i go back and forth on this honestly. like i hate how much power they have but i also dont trust the government to fix it without making it worse somehow

Politics · Oct 6, 2026 · Should billionaires be allowed to exist?

Game based assessments are astrology for HR. I got told I lacked 'learning agility' by a game about popping balloons. I have a PhD.

Business · Oct 6, 2026 · Should companies be banned from using AI to screen job applications?

Buy, borrow, die. Three words that explain why my effective tax rate is higher than a billionaire's. The ProPublica figure should be printed on every pay stub in America. If you can live off loans against stock forever, you are earning income the code refuses to see.

Business · Sep 23, 2026 · Should unrealized capital gains be taxed?

States' rights is how we got literacy tests. Some rights are too fundamental to vary by zip code, and the franchise is at the top of that list. Let the states decide just means your citizenship is worth less in Montgomery than in Montpelier.

Politics · Sep 23, 2026 · Should people with felony convictions automatically regain voting rights after s…