We call that trauma an anecdote, that's orthogonal to whether modern American culture is conducive to children roaming. Anecdotally I also grew up in the 90s and I wonder how playing cops n robbers feeling 100% safe before curfew shaped me, my kid never will. We had cars as well but I don't have the equivalent to your story re: fast traffic;save that we had it nearby as well and roamed far with parents telling us to avoid it.
Anyway, sorry for the injury and the carelessness.
My perspective is that we went from trains being novel and a radio unheard of to handing toddlers iPads in a few centuries. Biology doesn't evolve that fast. It makes me wonder what an alien looking in would consider closer to child abuse given your comment. Unfettered iPad access or teaching a kid fast cars and roads are dangerous so going outside is bad.
He has shown time and again that his backbone's strength depends on how loud the public noise is. Kiwifarms most recently. You can dislike them(kiwifarms etc) and there is a case for them to be taken offline imo, but it is the governments job.
Exactly what you do _not_ want protecting the neutral internet. They've done better being neutral than some might have, but that's in reality more insidious because clearly there are points they will bend on and those points will change over time and almost certainly continue to erode.
It's nothing in isolation of your single act. Maybe. In aggregate it of course deprecates the library(they have e-checkouts already but you're talking untracked piracy). I like libraries; I think they're mostly performative in small towns and providing social services in cities rather than functioning as actual libraries. Kinda sad.
I pirate all my books btw, just saying if everyone did it ofc there'd be(already is) impact. Easily smartphones+kindle is worse though.
Inverted union jack(any flag really) is a longstanding distress signal. It really wasn't that jarring of an aside, given this is someone who researched on the topic we might assume in good faith they have a reason for adding the detail tbh. It's a weird quibble.