dividefuel

The other end feeds into itself too. Someone who posts something like that also is over-exposed to content enforcing that narrative. When you see your 50th video of the day of (e.g.) a man behaving in a way you don't like, you eventually conclude that men are all bad, and your reactions begin to become more and more pronounced. You're not reacting to that man, you're reacting to every man!

Nowadays there's the risk that someone will record you, put it on social media, it'll go big, and suddenly you have a large amount of people weighing in on your personal life without having any context. If that happens, it's likely to trickle back to you directly from other people seeing it or whatever.

The conclusion was made from a 30s clip, and no amount of evidence can overturn that. New theories will be created to support the original conclusion to avoid any amount of critical self-reflection.

I had my first kid a couple years ago and found myself spending a ton of time holding my kid while he slept, since it's the only way he'd reliably sleep. I spent a good amount of that time browsing various parenting and new baby subreddits.

One very common pattern I saw is that the conclusion is always that the dad is useless. Any provided facts are downplayed. Any omitted facts are imagined in the most negative light possible. And to be fair, there really are LOTS of cases where the dad is useless. The issue is more that posts needed to contain a mountain of evidence to return a neutral ground where the dad is no longer seen as a piece of garbage, rather than starting from neutral ground.

I feel for moms, who in addition to giving birth and having their lives upended to raise a baby, are now told that not only are most men garbage, but their man is garbage too. I feel for the dads, who even if they work hard are told how useless they are, and have to combat a stream of negativity fed to their spouse. It's a divisive wedge thrown into a new family, one that social media algorithms are only happy to encourage for engagement.

When I see instances like the one in this topic, I can see how the default narrative has been applied here. The radio announcers surely aren't aware of the storm they're creating, but it suddenly thrusts two average people into the social media spotlight, where people are happy to assume any missing details to fit their narrative. Everyone is going to apply the default story without taking any time to consider the possibility of other context.

EDIT TO ADD: I know there are manosphere spaces that are toxic too. As a man I've had no problem avoiding them, so this is one of my first extended exposures to this type of content, which is why it stuck with me. Probably also because I felt personally unwelcome as a dad.

I agree a lot with this. Some folks really do hoard pointless things, but for most people a lot of their stuff really consists of things you'd expect to be in a household, but rarely use. It doesn't usually make sense to get rid of these things pre-emptively because you're still likely to use them as long as you're in that living situation, even if it's infrequent.

Then when you pass away and other people have to go through it all, they don't need those items because their household already has those items. I don't need 3 more flashlights and a kitchen table because I already have my own!

I agree a lot with your point on Minecraft. The farther you explore and the more you see, the higher the bar feels for what's worth your interest.

When you first start playing the game, a medium sized mountain is exciting. Then the bar raises towards more interesting features (a deep canyon or a village), and then towards really interesting features of land. Finally, you look for obscure biomes (e.g. badlands or ice spikes). By the end, you can go thousands of blocks without seeing something that feels worth exploring.

Luckily Minecraft has other aspects beyond just the exploration.

There are different ways to take it.

There's the Kerbal Space Program approach, where space exploration is tough and you need to learn a LOT to succeed at it. The tradeoff of this is a high sense of accomplishment, where simply landing and returning from another body feels like you did something incredible.

There's also the Outer Wilds approach, where the story carries it. Moving around isn't hard at all, but you have specific goals to accomplish that move you towards a final ending. Diversity in how you accomplish those goals makes it feel fresh.

Mass Effect is similar, where you have some freedom to explore, but it's again in the pursuit of this broader story. So exploration feels like a rich side quest more than the main point of the task.

I agree with this. People buy a place to live usually because they like the qualities of that place. Changes to those qualities affect their day to day experience, whereas changes to their primary residence value usually only materialize when they need to access that value.

To me the issue is that densification (in the US; can't speak to other countries) usually comes with more downsides than upsides.

Mainly this is because of the US's focus on cars: the biggest downside is usually increased traffic. Unfortunately it feels towns in the US do the bare minimum to address it, like adding some traffic lights and maybe a lane or two.

Instead I wish the US had more good examples of densification for existing residents, where along with the increased housing larger steps were made to improve the community. E.g. significantly expanded mass transit, bicycling infrastructure, community third places, etc. And I get it, these things are really expensive and hard to do. But turning densification into something that more clearly benefits the day-to-day experience of existing residents would do a LOT to combat NIMBYism.

As a physics major I agree a lot with this.

Most of my courses were very "Point A" to "Point B". You're given a set of formulae, then a problem, then you use some combinations of those formulae to solve the problem. Most labs were the same way: you're given an exact script to follow without any explanation of the experiment design. It felt like both were optimized for easy instruction / grading and not for learning new skills or concepts.

Only two of the courses I took were substantially different. One was an upper division lab that actually was more open-ended, where we were given a goal and some equipment and had to figure out how to use the equipment to meet the goal. Another was a more conceptual course where we explored how to approach broad problems to come up with rough estimates for a wide variety of questions. Both were much more engaging, but I saw many students good at the typical course type struggle with how open ended these courses were.

Thinking more about this, I feel a good solution might be to let students decide whether they want to keep the first semester letter grades once they receive them, or simplify them down to a pass/no-pass.

That way there's still an incentive to do good work, and students who do well still get to receive the benefit of keeping the letter grade. Students who do poorly receive the letter grade as feedback, but have a one-off chance to reduce the impact and try again the next semester.

I'm not sure how to feel about this.

On the one hand, this is good for people who need time to adapt to college. It's a big change, especially for young people who are living apart from family for the first time. You have to adapt to living alone AND an entirely new social environment AND a much more independent/rigorous academic environment all at once.

On the other, it may just delay the same result. If someone knows their first semester doesn't really count, they may not put in the time to adapt, then crash out anyway in the second semester when it becomes real. I also feel our society tries a little too hard to insulate young people from failure, and I wonder whether that means people avoid learning important lessons earlier.

I guess the biggest advantage is it lets someone spread the growth out over a little more time rather than getting railroaded at once. This approach is probably most useful for someone who is genuinely trying and struggling, rather than for someone who is not really putting in any effort. It's probably better to help the former, so overall it's probably a reasonable approach.

Small clarification: the post's screenshot is of the News mode in Search, and not news.google.com. I think the latter is what people think of when they think "Google News". Whether the same problems are there as well, I don't know.

I also notice in the screenshot that the query isn't visible, it's on page 4 of results, and there seems to be a banner saying that the search is expanding beyond the set filters. I agree it certainly shouldn't ignore the date filter, but otherwise depending on the query we might already have exhausted useful results by page 4.

I have a family member who's a lobbyist. When he talks about his job, a common theme is that a huge amount of his work is trying assess the impacts of policy on businesses (albeit mainly big businesses) and make sure lawmakers are able to take that into consideration. I don't know how well that represents lobbying as a whole, but that part always made sense and didn't seem like a bribe.

Several million dollars, as mentioned in the article, could easily be the cost of paying, e.g., 20 people to perform and communicate an assessment, as opposed to a direct "donation" to a politician. It's not said where that money was spent.

Does this really demonstrate what the author thinks it does? Other than menus, none of this was really easier before technology.

- Parking meters: you'd have to remember when yours would expire and manually check your watch (if you brought one!) regularly. If you needed more time, you'd have to leave the table to go to the meter to extend it... or leave your event early.

- Splitting a bill: this is notoriously difficult with medium groups [0]. Servers generally dislike split bills, even if you go to the trouble of listing the exact amounts to charge per card. It's also not just a tech problem, but a social problem as well.

Yes the technology involved could be better -- ideally you can easily extend a parking meter from your phone, ideally the app for splitting the bill works well and supports more complicated (but common) scenarios.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4p8mhQ9wINI

I agree it's primarily cultural. I wonder whether there's anything that a non-totalitarian government can do that would significantly change the cultural side of it.

How people feel about having kids doesn't seem to be a uniform thing. The majority of parents certainly seem to love their children, but I do see a lot of mixed opinions about whether they love being parents.

In my peer group, it's been about 50/50 between people who seem to really enjoy parenthood and others who are struggling. There are many reasons for struggling, like how they or their spouse handle the stress and how much help they have or pay for. But the biggest one is that kids largely take up a lot of time and energy.

It's hard for someone to expect that they'll enjoy parenthood when they look around and see many parents who are unhappy.

I agree a lot with your hypothesis. Most people in my demographic (mid 30s American) that aren't having kids are choosing not to primarily because they don't want to really interfere with their current lifestyle. Money seems to be a part of it, but secondary to the high opportunity cost of children.

There are also social effects. When half your friends have kids and half don't, you can compare the lives of each and decide which you want to live. You won't be as isolated now if you choose not to have kids... in fact the trend seems to be that having children is the isolating choice.

Coming back a few days later, but here's my current todo list:

- Lawn care

- Pool care

- Trim back trumpet vine in side yard

- Fix a leaking drip irrigation adapter

- Prune dead branches in liquid amber tree

- Repair / replace squeaky dryer parts

- Replace washing machine seal

- Trim back ivy near maple tree

- Cover sprinkler valves that are in the sun

- Replace dining room light bulb

- Trim trees off the fence

- Pull privet stalks

- Paint bare spots on front patio

Most of these are probably 30-120 minutes of work.

In my anecdotal experience in a FAANG, weak junior hiring started during the hiring freezes in mid 2022, and was made worse by the layoff cycles that began soon after. Once you know headcount is going to be extremely tight indefinitely, you want to use your precious few slots to hire someone that can deliver value pretty quickly, rather than take years to coach up.

It personally seems hard to connect that to remote work as that had been going for 2 years and in between was the largest hiring burst we'd done, which included many junior folks. Though admittedly I'm biased as a remote worker.

Beyond financial costs, I was caught off guard at how much time home ownership took up. House maintenance and projects have taken up most of every single weekend of mine for the past few years.

Part of it is simply that I bought a house with more space than the places I usually rented. More to clean, more to maintain, more things that can go wrong, etc.

But the biggest thing is that I'm the only one in charge of maintenance. There's no one person I can call for every single problem. Keeping track of regular maintenance, performing that maintenance, and learning how to DIY things takes a lot of time. And even if I want to pay someone to do it for me, I still have to research contractors, coordinate estimates, and schedule the project. And I still need to learn enough about the project to determine whether they're doing it right!

Home ownership is definitely a lifestyle choice first and foremost more than a financial one.

Born in 1990. In the 1990s and the first half of the 2000s, many of my friends lived in the same neighborhood. That's how we became friends in the first place: you'd see each other outside and gradually become friends.

By the time I was 14 or so, many of them had moved to other parts of the town, typically 2-3 miles away. By this age I was comfortable riding a bike or walking to visit them, though equally as often we'd ask our parents for a ride just to save ourselves time or because we were bringing heavier stuff with us.

I did have a few friends that were farther away, about 4+ miles, and I rarely if ever made it out that far on bike or foot. That was a mix of the distance and the type of roads I'd have to take or cross to get there.

Yes, I often wonder this too: It's said all the time that communities are much safer than they were, so why restrict kids? But that raises the clear possibility that those preventative measures might be why it's safer now.

Whether we've hit the right balance of freedom VS safety is still very much worth discussing. But it certainly feels possible that the preventative measures we take have led to safer outcomes.

I think walking VS driving is also about convenience.

In the example we're replying to, the shared suburban street has a marked median (implying medium traffic), minimal shoulder, and no sidewalk. While the houses and foliage are very nice, it feels a little unsafe to walk on. Presumably the train station has nice parking, so driving is quick and easy to do. Choosing to walk in this case is more for leisure or for exercise.

In the city though, driving is a whole other thing. Storing a car and finding parking just to go 1 mile is a huge pain: it's much simpler just to walk it. Walking in this case may be for leisure and exercise, but it's also for convenience.

I know the discussion of urbanism vs suburbanism is a common topic on HN, but I don't think suburbs themselves are the root issue here.

When I was growing up in the suburb, there were kids outside all the time. Yes, some friends lived across town in another suburb, but we just biked there instead of walking.

Now when I visit that same suburb, there are no kids in sight. I still see adults of parenting age, so I assume there are still children in the neighborhood, but they're just indoors. The density of the town didn't change, but rather people's attitudes towards where kids can and can't be seem to be what changed. I also suspect the declining birthrate and having fewer kids is contributing to the problem too.

The opinion polls cited here show people thought the force was unjustified/inappropriate at about 2x the rate of those who thought it was justified/appropriate.

https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/14/politics/minneapolis-ice-shoo...

My take is the shift to mobile is what really caused the biggest change in the Internet.

By the mid/late 2000s, the UX for surfing the Web was mostly pretty good. Navigating to another site was as easy as typing in its URL or issuing a quick search.

Navigating the Web on mobile is much more difficult -- even 15+ years later simple things like browser tabs are a nuisance on mobile. Typing URLs is still a pain. Etc. That extra friction for more traditional Web browsing led to users preferring simpler apps that they didn't have to navigate from, including content that was less interactive. And social media companies were quite happy to exploit that and create endless feeds of content. People who create content followed suit and went were the eyeballs were.

Also, before mobile, using the Internet largely meant sitting down at a computer and browsing the Internet somewhat interrupted for a period of time. With mobile, Internet use became more far more disjointed. You might browse for a series of 2 minute spurts in between other activities, rather than having a dedicated sitdown browsing session. This also rewarded the 'feed' that instantly provided you something to do, without you having to put in effort to find it.

I do think that once an elderly person loses the ability to drive, it's often a big tipping point towards their decline. I would suspect that losing the ability to drive usually (but not necessarily) comes before losing the ability to navigate public transit.

But I don't immediately believe the link that 'car culture' -> 'earlier cognitive decline'. Car culture, for example, is usually associated with living on larger plots of land, which comes with its own set of tasks and chores that can keep someone older occupied. A smaller apartment requires much less ongoing work.

I think a lot depends on the individual and how they best stay active. More dense living probably provides easier opportunities to do things, whereas less dense living sort of forces you to perform ongoing tasks.

I think you have a point: many men work hard to provide stability for their family, and are effectively sacrificing family time to provide that. This kind of hard work feels undervalued in modern parenting discourse, which seems to put most value on time directly spent with children or on direct day-to-day tasks (dishes, cooking, etc).

An example anecdote: my friend works construction. Lots of long hours of hard labor. His wife is unhappy because he doesn't do more childcare, but left unanswered is how he could do more. He can't work fewer hours or move to a new job without a giant income hit. His wife can't earn enough to offset daycare costs. They already live on a fairly thin budget. From the outside, I can see how he'd feel unappreciated.

That said though there are definitely also men who aren't doing childcare OR working hard, and they're happy to have their wife do everything.

Do you have a source for this? What threshold is needed for it to be 'dense'?

Agree with this. I'm a little more sensitive to the idea of horrible things happening to small children (e.g. sad news stories), but for the most part I didn't find kids to be a major shift in my beliefs.