Some people who are utterly tech ignorant and unwilling to actively parent their children might feel better about handing their kid a device so they don’t have to deal with them.

However, this is primarily the end game of both targeted advertising and those who want wholesale surveillance of the population (who are often the same people). Tying the whole of your online presence to your unique offline identity.

I’m listening…

It would take forever though.

Neither has the stamina to choke the other out, and both would be wheezing after a few punches. After two minutes we’d be forced to sit through ages of them limply clawing at one another’s adams apples and throwing limp-wristed, weightless punches in the general direction of each other’s groin until random chance decides the winner via myocardial infarction.

I recall reading an anecdote from a track and field coach who said his discus throwers got better performance when he asked them to throw about 70% as hard as they could on a full strength throw. I wonder how that would fit into this model, because rather than probability, it’s more about not letting your brain get in it’s own way when executing a technique.

My wife listens to audiobooks out loud when she’s alone and has left a more than few playing absent mindedly. Most of them seem to do pretty well in terms of both variety of acts and how they’re described. But there are only so many euphemisms that manage to straddle the line between overly dry and patently rediculous.

She did have one book where the author over used the word cock enough that I swear the VA reading it was pronouncing it differently each time just to keep things interesting. It was kinda like: my Cock, MY cock, my coCK, my COCK, mY Cockkkk… my? cock? for a solid five minutes.

You can make your own meaning, an act that is also inherently meaningless but often satisfying, or you can just relax and enjoy the things that are enjoyable.

I used to try and explain it in more detail, but I’ve failed to get the point across often enough that I wonder if it really can be explained. I think people just have to sit down and think about it until it snaps into focus for them.

To some degree, what is important, enjoyable, and satisfying to each of us is determined by something immutable, but if we apply ourselves many of us can examine, reason, and then understand things to a degree that we have broad control over what we let matter to us.

Focusing on what we choose to let matter to us is key to living without meaning. But we must also embrace the other parts of life, because without them, the things we believe matter most would lose their meaning.

Without the contrast of suffering, we would struggle to understand joy. I think that’s the hardest thing to accept for most.

Anyone who is passionate about what they see as a moral cause will be insufferable to at least a few people. Passionate Linux and FOSS advocates are insufferable in the eyes of WIndows fans, for example.

It’s not just vegans, it’s just how human minds work.

I’ve always joked that marriage is a lot like sharing your house with someone… so you should choose that person wisely.

But in a lot of ways it can be that simple. It’s making an effort to understand the commitments and courtesies that your partner needs to share a life with you that separates a marriage from a love affair. It’s an intentional commingling of your lives with the intent of mutual benefit, sharing affection, and having the grace to allow one another small mistakes in the process.

If the people in question have an understanding, then I don’t think that legal status, civil or religious ceremonies, permanent cohabitation, or even monogamy are essential, as you’ll find relationships that remain stable despite lacking one or more of these things from time to time. But, entering into and honoring that commitment to each other is.

Boiler room is slang for a room filled with shady stock brokers using high-pressure tactics to sell crappy stocks for fraudulent reasons.

When fund raiser time came around, his band teacher told everyone to take out their phones, call relatives, and try to get them to commit to buying x number of candy bars. It was like a little boiler room full of kids begging grandma to shell out $50 for mediocre chocolate.

• Susanne Vega’s cover of the Story of Issac is somehow more Cohen than Leonard Cohen’s version.
• Motorhead does Sympathy for the Devil the way it always should have been done.
• Briana Buckminster and Billy Moran made a pretty much perfect acoustic cover of Carry on Wayward Son.
• I have always loved the original, but the Jerry Douglas / Mumford and Sons version of The Boxer has replaced it.
• Clutch now owns Fortunate Son IMO, no one else should play it.

Our policy was supervised / filtered only until early teens. Kids sites, educational stuff, games we purchased and approved of, etc. We were also late to give them phones, our son got his first because in his freshman year of high-school his band teacher set up a boiler-room to sell worlds finest chocolate and he was the only kid who didn’t have a cell phone.

When we had “the talk” we discussed masturbation and porn, why porn is popular, and all the negatives that go with it without condemning it outright. We talked about online predators and not sharing things with people you didn’t know, especially pics, addresses, etc.

My wife and I are firm believers that kids need space to discover who they are, so as they became teens, things went to semi-supervised. We paid attention to them more than their devices, but we had rules such as adding one of our emails as a recovery address to any socials they set up, so we could check up on them if we thought something bad was going down. Never had to use that, and I think just having it there made them think about what they did online.

Around sixteen/seventeen, no filter and no more backdoors into their accounts. Just a couple of long heart to hearts about how shitty things can be on the internet and how we’re there to talk with no judgement if they need us.

Exactly, and i didn’t mean to hijack your comment. It’s just that it’s something that bugs the hell out of me, but that I completely understand at the same time.

I’ve started heading it off with stuff like, “I don’t watch the news, that’s how they send out the subliminal messages.” You have to be careful with those though, you could start a micro-relationship that goes on far longer than you want it to.

Maybe no one needs anything anymore,

I’m guilty of dreading small talk myself, but no, this isn’t the case. Damn near everyone would be better off with more micro-relationships, more empathy, and more community support these days.

Problem is you never know if you’re going to have a nice chat about the weather, or get to listen to gramp’s reinterpretation of a talk radio political screed aimed at yourself or someone you love. And since so many things try to divert a large fraction of our attention to rage baiting political blurbs with no actual content, celebrity gossip, and outright propaganda, it’s not unreasonable to be wary of the possibility of getting more of the same from a source you can’t easily filter, turn off, or click away from.

People, especially those who are more introverted, seem exhausted by it all even while still responding to it. The psychological hooks are set pretty deep.

I’m enough of a conspiratorial thinker to believe this is by design. An attempt to move us away from empathy and community and teach us to rely on corporations and products for the kind of support you’re describing. Don’t wait for a kind stranger to help you change that wagon wheel, get a trail-side assistance package at the trading post before you set out…

Zugzwang strategy. You have to make move, there’s not even an option not to play.

It’s not just about capturing the mobile phone market and punishing alternate ROM developers, it’s also pushing people into the market that might otherwise choose to have a dumb phone, no phone, do things in person, via mail, etc. No android/iPhone? Good luck with online shopping, communicating with medical providers, checking your kid’s grades online, paying utility bills, taxes, etc. etc.

As the boomers die off, and fewer people do things the pre-internet way, there’s no incentive for governments, businesses, and so forth to maintain those processes and systems. Why would we have a receptionist take appointments by phone if she’s just typing them into the same web interface? Why print report cards when we can post them online? Why maintain a storefront and not just warehouses like Amazon?

Opt-in to surveillance or opt out of necessary parts of life, all under the guise of “convenience”.

Exactly, there’s that sweet spot where they’re holding some milk but are still a little crunchy that’s just amazing.

It’s the only way I eat oreos.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. If you’re lonely and hurting, don’t fall in love with anything that doesn’t have a pulse. It’s only going to fuck you up worse in the end.

I don’t need AI to write and email for me, I can do that myself.

I don’t need AI to add typos for me either, I’ve got that handled as well.

I’m a cis man, so maybe take this with a grain of salt, but if I get encourement from a random person like this, I absolutely kick my effort up a notch and remember it for months-years.

I’d like think people might be able to tell the difference between “keep it up” or “you’re doing great” and a full on catcall, but I’ve never been catcalled so… ¯\(ツ)/¯

I used to feel like I had this all figured out, then I got older. All I know for certain is that I’m not often certain these days.

I’m an apatheist, if God exists, they made the universe how it is. If they don’t exist, the universe just is how it is. All we can truly know is what we experience while we’re alive. So the unanswerable and unsolvable question of God or God’s will isn’t worth debating. Just do your best, try not to hurt other people, and find what peace and joy you can while you can.

We are the adults in the room. If God exists, they don’t interfere with their creation in ways we can observe. Laws and moral codes only have the power we give them. If we don’t hold people to them they’re worthless. There’s no provable divine wrath, so it’s up to us to make things just.

Everyone understands this on some level, but it scares the snot out of some folks. The idea that every individual human is in some part responsible for the fate of the species is just too damn BIG. Everyone rationalizes and fantasizes this away to some degree, much to our detriment.

Randoml stuff:

There’s nothing shameful about an ordinary life.

Organized religion is rarely done right. Most often, it’s simply a way for people who fear being unexceptional to feel better about themselves. Far too often, it’s about control.

If you want people to join your movement, temper your moralizing with practical demonstrations of how it’s in their own interests.

Helping people support themselves wins more goodwill and loyalty than charity.

Garbage men, utility workers, health care, and teachers do far more for your quality of life and the success of the nation than police and military and we should treat them like it.

A progressive and inclusive civic-mindeness is what seems to be missing in so many areas of our lives. Be proud of your community and work to improve it.

So, so many problems are solved by letting go of the idea that we must be productive members of society and just giving people homes and food.

Offline and analog skills have real value in the present, not just in the apocalypse. Learn them, share them, and teach them for their own sake.

Literacy is the life’s blood of human progress. The measure of how great we are is our wisdom, not our technology.

Violence should never be necessary, but some people will force your hand. What you do at that time is up to you. But you should try your best to prepare for it ahead of time.

Everyone’s a saint until the rent’s due…

I’m currently working on making a graceful exit from a position I’m no longer comfortable with, so it’s hard to say what I’d do if offered a massive salary to put myself back into a similar situation.

I suspect that there are few ethically pure jobs out there, and very few alternatives that don’t feed into the orphan crushing machine somehow. So in my mind it comes down to striking a balance between what impact your position has, what level of control you exercise over what the company does, and what you can do outside of work to try and improve the system.

Are you willing to campaign and vote against the interests of your employer even if it means the possibility of being laid off or fired? Does supporting yourself financially provide a benefit to marginalized people by making the scarce aid they can find more available to them? Are you designing products or processes to increase other’s misery or just mopping the floor? If you quit, what impact would it have on the org as a whole?

I don’t think there’s a simple answer to this, and I’ve long felt that we allow our occupations define our identites to an unhealthy degree, so I’d rather judge and be judged based on one’s beliefs and actions outside of work than for participating in a system designed to force our participation.