dividefuel

I go with the flow. Usually I can't take the full workday off (meetings that I should be at, etc.), so I try to focus on doing a task that I don't feel friction towards. If I feel like I can't get started on something or that it's just not going well, I try to do something else until I find something that I can make progress on. Maybe that means going through my email backlog or making a nice todo list. Maybe it means exploring a low priority side project that sounds fun. Often I find that making progress on a low priority task can reframe my mood and bring me back towards working on the important goals for the day.

Some days, though, it's just a lost cause, and it's best to then focus on using the day to recover. You'll feel a lot better the next day if you recover than if you spend 8 hours struggling and failing to be productive.

In my experience driving (in the US), I don't think I've ever seen an attentive driver going consistently 5-10% above the speed limit as a prime safety issue.

Far more often the issues I see are (1) distracted drivers (e.g. on their phone) or (2) aloof/aggressive drivers (e.g. abrupt lane changes, tailing cars, switching lanes without checking blind spots, blatant speeding, driving significantly slower than surrounding traffic, etc).

I do think a warning system for exceeding the speed limit can make sense, but it needs to have the right threshold and mitigations to avoid being ignored, a distraction, or (worse yet) putting the driver in a more dangerous situation. The right threshold is clearly not at 1km/h above the speed limit. I think a more reasonable one would be 10mph/15km/h over the posted limit.

EDIT: I'll add that I think a looser threshold would still hit the low hanging fruit of egregious speeders, but without burning public goodwill towards car safety features. Let the features demonstrate value first, then discuss whether the thresholds should be tighter.

If you've passed a car before, it feels pretty clear that minimizing your time spent in the same lane as oncoming traffic is a much bigger priority than minimizing how much you go over the speed limit.

What are some changes that we could make that would discourage it?

Sure, to an extent you can buy freedom with money, but I think you'd need a lot of money to really be free. Even in the scenario in your comment, you're presumably still the one driving them around between these activities. Unless you have money to pay someone else to do that for you, which would require quite a bit of money. I don't think that's what most people have in mind when they bring up money concerns -- they're likely much more concerned about affording housing, medical care, clothing, etc for a child.

I think the thing with 'freedom' is that they don't want to take on another big responsibility, at the expense of what they already have in their life.

I think people simply do not want to have kids as much as they used to.

Usually these topics emerge with the same three major factors for why people aren't having children:

1. Can't afford to raise a child

2. Concerns about the future state of the world, e.g. climate change

3. A huge loss of freedom

Anecdotally, I personally feel like #3 is by far the biggest reason why people aren't having children. Every time someone in my peer group (mid 30s) announces that they are having a child, there's widespread acknowledgement that we are going to see MUCH less of them from now on.

This is a tradeoff, and those who really want children will still choose to have children. But for those who are deeply engaged in something else -- hobbies, social life, career -- or simply enjoy a low-stress life, having children would upend that. Modern living gives a lot of opportunities to go really deep into a few different facets of life, but most people have to limit that depth once they have children. It doesn't help that modern child raising seems to be endlessly shuffling children from one structured activity to another, with little help from a broader social circle.

Plus, there's less social pressure than ever to have children. If many of your peers aren't having kids, you're not the odd one out anymore.

So I think many people of childbearing age today see a much higher cost in childraising than what people saw in the past. If they aren't especially enthusiastic about raising children in particular, is it a surprise that many are choosing not to?

I spend a lot of time listening to music and have a large collection of MP3s. I never found a piece of existing software that works exactly as I want it, so I created my own web app for hosting my library during the pandemic.

It works great! Over time I've added all the features that I care about (powerful playlist rules, easy methods for shuffling my music, detailed stats about my listening, tools for managing the MP3 library, etc.). I've learned a lot on the way. As I'm sure everyone here can relate to, it's quite freeing to build something that's only for you. So many concerns go out the window.

I just got a new MacBook Air a couple of days ago, and a couple weeks before that I helped my mom set up a new Win 11 laptop.

The Macbook's setup is definitely a bit faster than Windows, but it's not way faster. I still had to turn off a lot of the things it suggests, and I still was prompted to update the OS. However, the Macbook was less pushy and I felt the features at least seemed to offer some user value.

I don't disagree that urban planning is a factor, but I think there's more to this.

A very common theme when talking to people in the US is "this neighborhood used to have so many more kids out and about!" Even in the neighborhood I grew up in, where my parents still live, there are far fewer kids around, even though the neighborhood's design and car traffic haven't changed at all.

Where are they? Are their parents driving them from place to place? Are they staying inside staring at screens? Or are there simply fewer kids due to falling birthrates?

What's the argument for file sharing ruining music? I would think more the opposite, that it improved distribution and discovery for lesser-known artists, and so helped diversify music.

This is a good point too. Areas that are really touristy start to converge on a shared "vibe". I don't know if this is always how it's been and I finally realized it, or if it's a consequence of the more recent boom in travel.

I think there's a huge mix of things:

1. People who don't travel because they can't afford it 2. People who don't travel because they're intimidated by it 3. People who don't travel because they don't see it as important

These groups definitely have some overlap -- you may not be able to afford it because you don't prioritize it -- but I think most people wouldn't self-identify as being part of Group 3.

I don't think it's that people don't care, it's that the hurdles of traveling feel high when you have no experience.

How do I plan logistics, like flights, hotels, transportation, and activities? How do I get around when I don't speak the language at all? And, of course, how can I afford this trip for my family, reaching a balance between comfort and cost?

Sure, anyone can learn to do these things, but it's definitely intimidating to do it the first time.

Happy to see progress here, but days like today seem like easy targets for meeting demand with renewables: Most of the state seems to be between 55-75°F (low demand), cloud cover seems light, and the days are reasonably long (high supply).

Again, progress is nice. But I'm still skeptical how well the state's grid can handle another major statewide heatwave, to say nothing about the transition to EVs.

This is pretty accurate to my experience. Weed makes many relaxing activities more enjoyable. On nights when I had nothing planned and wanted a chill night at home, weed would make that more enjoyable. But then it became easy to justify smoking every night that I didn't have anything going... which is most nights. So, soon I was smoking basically every night.

That said, I feel like I drifted between the two categories you describe. Sometimes I'd chill on the couch and do nothing but consume. Others I'd feel inspired to do something productive, like work on a side project, clean the house, go for a walk, or practice guitar.

This is a great way of putting it, and I think about this a lot.

My wife's ancestors had kids at younger ages, and my ancestors had kids at later ages. Her grandparents are all still alive, mine have all been gone for more than ten years.

My spouse and I are on track to have kids in our mid/late 30s. My wife's parents are both in their mid 50s, and realistically they'll probably have 20 years of overlap with our children.

My parents, though, are in their mid 70s. I have to hope they have at least another 10 years of good health so that they can forge a bond with our children. Even with good health, though, the way a 75-year old interacts with a young kid is going to be very different from the way a 55-year old does.

I made the same choice as my parents and will likely face the same future, where I may have little or no overlap with my grandchildren. Since my generation has delayed childbearing for so long, I think this is something we'll see largely as a mistake in about 20-30 years.

This sounds horrifying to me. If everyone has their first child at 40, then grandparents are always 80+ years old, leaving little (if any) overlap in time and rarely good overlap as those usually aren't high quality of life years. I think many people find the grandparent relationship very important, and diminishing it so strongly seems pretty harmful.

I see the effect most with friends/family who aren't that technical wondering what to do when their phones run out of space. I don't think they expect that the most effective way to free up space is to delete a handful of apps, and instead they go through hundreds of photos trying to free up 5 MB at a time.

I don't have LinkedIn installed, but it's hardly the only app guilty of this. My phone has probably a dozen apps or so that take up much more space than I would expect (400 MB for the iRobot app that runs my Roomba? 250 MB for Firefox Focus which is now the same size as 'full' Firefox?)

For many of these apps, I use them frequently enough that the space tradeoff is not a concern.

For many others though, they're in that awkward middle zone where I use them once every month or two. But because the apps are so large, I don't want to have to waste a quarter gig of data to download them on the fly, so instead I keep them on my phone. And collectively they take up 5-10 GB of space.

The app may do a lot of things, but what fraction of users use all of the things? Even if I use 10% of what an app is capable of, I still have to store 100% of the app on my phone.

I grew up in one of the towns near the Sutter Buttes. They serve as a backdrop and are a key geographic feature of the area... but since they're privately owned and access is so limited, very few people have ever interacted with the area in any way.

I can count on one hand the number of times I've been into the interior of the area (most/all via the Middle Mountain Foundation), but they've all been fun experiences. I especially recommend the North Butte hike -- on a clear day you can see pretty far!

I don't think Shasta is considered part of the valley -- there are 20-30 miles of hills/mountains separating it from the northern end of the central valley (Redding).

Is this something fairly unique to the US or do other countries do this too? that is, having a city boundary that's relatively small compared to the metro area.

Totally agree. I think there's a deep sense that "things are getting worse" across the board, and there doesn't seem to be much hope that the trends will reverse anytime soon.

Ah, Costco isn't the only grocery store I go to. Roughly, I grocery shop once per week, alternating between Costco and other grocery stores where I buy fresh foods or smaller items that don't make sense from Costco.

My personal feeling is being able to stock up in bulk is a net timesaving benefit of car-centric living, BUT the tradeoff comes when you only need a few things from the store. On the one hand, it's only about once or twice a month that I need to go to the store because I need just 2-3 very specific things. However it's a major annoyance, and it'd definitely be nice to be able to walk a short distance to get them.

Door-to-door, a Costco trip usually takes me about 90 minutes. I go to Costco probably once every two weeks.

Just a data point. I'd love to hear how often urbanites go to the grocery store and how long each trip typically takes.

I think these preferences just aren't universal is the problem, as shown by the disagreement in this thread. For me, many of these things I'd rather enjoy in my own home because the additional comfort and privacy is something that I highly value. That is, I'm willing to pay more not because my community doesn't offer it, but because I value being able to define my own experience.

That said though, I do agree that community options are missing in many American towns/cities today, and I wish people at least had the choice.

Agreed, I like to go in the first ~20% but not actually first. That gives you a chance to quickly make any changes from good qualities you noticed in the first ones, but get it done before fatigue sets in. And it's just nice to have it out of the way so you don't have to stress!

Underpowered in terms of RAMs, storage, and possibly GPU. Agree that M2/M3 are faster and have better battery life. Weight/heat to me fall under build quality, not specs.

My opinion is you can pick two: low cost, high build quality, good specs.

No one matches Apple's build and screen quality. But their base models are pretty underpowered, and it's not until you're spending closer to $2k that you get specs that feel appropriate for 2024. On the Windows side, there are lots of cheaper options, many of which have beefier specs, but the build quality pales in comparison.

The right tradeoff depends on your budget and what you really need out of a device.