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Comment by Teever | Hacker News Reader

I totally support the phone-free bar and restaurant experience and encouraging people to socialize verbally instead of online but the thing is that I like to eat breakfast alone.

It's a meditative process to me. There's nothing better than sitting in a greasy spoon looking out at a rainy day eating bacon and hashbrowns while sipping coffee and reading the newspaper. Just watching the world and gthe people go by while flipping and folding the pages of a large newspaper. That's bliss.

Now that newspapers aren't really a thing anymore I like to read the news on my phone, or a paper about a topic that interests me.

It's good to promote socializing as long as it doesn't come at the expensive at reflective processes.

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> I totally support the phone-free bar and restaurant experience

If you then expect an exemption because your phone use is different then I challenge that you don’t actually support the experience.

If you want to read news in a phone-free environment: bring a newspaper, a kindle, etc.

What experience are you expecting in a phone-free breakfast joint if you are there by yourself? Interupting other patrons meals to randomly talk to them? That sounds kind of like hell.

Boredom and being alone with your thoughts is not, as popularly believed, fatal.

Of course not, but its also not an exclusive experience you can only get at resturants.

And quite frankly noisey busy resturants are a subpar place to have that sort of experience. Most people who want to do that sort of thing go to a park or somewhere quiet with nature.

Then don’t go. No idea what the issue is, here.

> It's a meditative process to me. [...] I like to read the news on my phone.

I don't think reading news, especially on the phone, is meditative.

With paper you might pause & reflect while turning a page, with phone even that is lost.

> Just watching the world and the people go by while

Why not do that without looking at the phone?

I knew someone was going to pull on that little thread.

So let's use a dictionary definition: meditative -- of, involving, or absorbed in meditation or considered thought.

In that context I have for decades now enjoyed sipping coffee, reading the news, and watching peope go by, smiling at the waitress, and considering how it all fits together. The cream in my cup, the man crossing the street, the price of tea in China -- it's all connected. Sometimes do this without a phone or a newspaper or a book. Sometimes I don't.

This is just how I like to spend my Sunday breakfast. Alone. Not talking to people. Watching them and the world.

Beautifully said, thank you.

I'm glad I pulled on that thread :)

Thank you for the kind words.

I agree that a phone provides a suboptimal experience for this kind of thing.

I loved seeing the pile of newspapers that have already been rifled through by previous patrons who have finished their morning meal. Picking the exact paper or sections that I want, perhaps grabbing a finished section from an old man who has already sat down and made it half way through his morning breakfest ritual.

thumbing through the pages, holding the paper up to fold it over, putting it down on the table and pressing that edge of the with your thumb to make a sharp edge and then sipping your coffee.

There really is nothing like it.

But you can buy newspapers in lots of places and read them. And magazines!

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