A private company is selling cheap tablets to inmates to let them communicate with their family. They have to use “digital stamps” to send messages, 35 cents a piece and come in packs of 5, 10 or 20. Each stamp covers up to 20,000 characters or one single image.

They also sell songs, at $1.99 a piece, and some people have spent thousands over the years. That’s also now just going away.

Then you get to the part about the new company. Who already has a system in Tennessee where inmates have to pay 3-5 cents per minute of tablet usage. Be that watching a movie they’ve bought or just typing a message.

The vast majority of American movie and tv just use 18 regardless, to avoid any legal issues

Which is why a lot of Americans, even ones living in states where it’s 16, think it is 18 in all states.

Oh it gets worse. This change is just the most recent in a series of states updating their laws since 2017. Because a study was released that showed almost 200,000 child marriages in the US between 2000 and 2015. And over the next three years years another ~100,000 happened.

And while it’s important to remember that a 17 year old marrying an 18 year old is technically child marriage, and 16-17 year olds girls who marying men who were over 18 or older but less than 29 is over 90% of those statistics. There were dozens between girls who were 12-14 and men who were 40+, some were 60+. And that it is still legal in several states if certain criteria are met.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_marriage_in_the_United_States

I’m guessing you’ve never look inside a physical newspaper before.

It’s part of a series of articles called “Kindness of strangers”. Specifically highlighting interesting events where someone was helped and that changed their outlook on life, but isn’t some major event.

Here are some of the other headlines:

• a woman lay on the road beside me, holding my hand until the ambulance came

• I pulled over in hysterics – then a passing driver saved me from the spider

• when my cat died, my dance class pooled their money for a thoughtful gift

If Musk fully crosses Trump, I wouldn’t be surprised if suddenly starlink and spacex were labeled as threats to national security.

Sadly, a bunch of things people buy are American owned but sold under a more local brand name, especially food or snack items, but also many other things.

For example: A scary amount of Europeans don’t know that Mondelēz International is an American company. It was started by Kraft, famous for their “processed cheese product”. And they own brands like Cadbury, Milka, Toblerone, Marabou/Freia, etc.

Coca-Cola also own a lot of “local” flavoured drinks.