Every Place is the Same Now (theatlantic.com) 88
With a phone, anywhere else is always just a tap away. From a column: Those old enough to remember video-rental stores will recall the crippling indecision that would overtake you while browsing their shelves. With so many options, any one seemed unappealing, or insufficient. In a group, different tastes or momentary preferences felt impossible to balance. Everything was there, so there was nothing to watch. Those days are over, but the shilly-shally of choosing a show or movie to watch has only gotten worse. First, cable offered hundreds of channels. Now, each streaming service requires viewers to manipulate distinct software on different devices, scanning through the interfaces on Hulu, on Netflix, on AppleTV+ to find something "worth watching." Blockbuster is dead, but the emotional dread of its aisles lives on in your bedroom.
This same pattern has been repeated for countless activities, in work as much as leisure. Anywhere has become as good as anywhere else. The office is a suitable place for tapping out emails, but so is the bed, or the toilet. You can watch television in the den -- but also in the car, or at the coffee shop, turning those spaces into impromptu theaters. Grocery shopping can be done via an app while waiting for the kids' recital to start. Habits like these compress time, but they also transform space. Nowhere feels especially remarkable, and every place adopts the pleasures and burdens of every other. It's possible to do so much from home, so why leave at all?
This same pattern has been repeated for countless activities, in work as much as leisure. Anywhere has become as good as anywhere else. The office is a suitable place for tapping out emails, but so is the bed, or the toilet. You can watch television in the den -- but also in the car, or at the coffee shop, turning those spaces into impromptu theaters. Grocery shopping can be done via an app while waiting for the kids' recital to start. Habits like these compress time, but they also transform space. Nowhere feels especially remarkable, and every place adopts the pleasures and burdens of every other. It's possible to do so much from home, so why leave at all?
First world problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: First world problem (Score:4, Insightful)
PSYCHOLOGICAL CASTRATION (Score:2, Interesting)
The problem here is that men are PSYCHOLOGICALLY cutting off their dicks.
Recent statistics show that staggering numbers of young men [into their thirties] have never experienced PIV sexual intercourse [urbandictionary.com].
That's part & parcel of the associated "Pareto Distributions" which are coming to dominate all of the Socio-Economic data now that the Fra
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Between sky high cost of housing, alimony, and child support, sitting around staring at our iPhones is about all we can afford in the "developed world" any more.
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And a decline in overall world population is a good thing at the moment.
The problem is that the decline is happening in the wrong places.
We need more educated intelligent people to work on solving the world's problems.
Yet the country with the highest fertility is Niger, one of the world's poorest and most illiterate countries, located in the war-torn and over-grazed Sahel region of Africa.
Re:PSYCHOLOGICAL CASTRATION (Score:4, Informative)
The problem is that the decline is happening in the wrong places. We need more educated intelligent people to work on solving the world's problems. Yet the country with the highest fertility is Niger, one of the world's poorest and most illiterate countries, located in the war-torn and over-grazed Sahel region of Africa.
From what I've read that's been the case for much of recorded history, for the poor more kids means more workers to support them but for the rich that's more children to split their wealth. You might think the wealthy could afford to have more children, but in practice they've been content to secure their line of succession. That effect is dwarfed though by the general rise in education, in the last 70 years global literacy has gone from 55% to 85%+, youth rates are much higher than adults and child labor is in steep decline. The repressive forces that want to keep women uneducated baby machines are losing ground, the worst shitholes are still shitholes but the middle 5 billion or so has seen a huge uplift. Extreme poverty, electricity, sanitation, expected lifespan it doesn't matter what variable you look at the world is on the right track - unless we're heading for eco-doom, but that's not directly relevant. Some won't like the ethnic mix of the future, but it's not like we need more white men to rescue the savages.
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The thing with Niger is due to the high death rate they are only 6th in population growth,
https://www.statista.com/stati... [statista.com]
Charles Darwin will have the final word. (Score:1, Troll)
Growth rates are off-the-charts in Israel, the muslim states of the middle east, the ebony continent, and throughout greater India [to include Bangladesh & Pakistan].
Even China is starting to have children again [which surprised me - I didn't see that one coming].
Sub-replacement-level fertility is largely unique to Europe, North America [which does not include Central American states such as Mexico], Japan, the Koreas, Australia & New Zeala
Re: Charles Darwin will have the final word. (Score:2)
>Even China is starting to have children again [which surprised me - I didn't see that one coming].
Did you make that up? I recently read the opposite.
https://www.npr.org/2020/01/17... [npr.org]
No, I didn't make it up. (Score:2)
http://data.un.org/Data.aspx?d=PopDiv&f=variableID%3a54 [un.org]
But here is a comparison of China, Hong Kong and Macao from 2000-ish to 2020-ish:
2000-2005, Hong Kong: 0.95 TFR
2000-2005, Macao: 1.116 TFR
2000-2005, China: 1.61 TFR
2015-2020, Hong Kong: 1.326 TFR
2015-2020, Macao: 1.2 TFR
2015-2020, China: 1.69 TFR
That's a stunning rebound in the Chinese TFR, and the longterm UN projections now
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All of which are still below the 2.1 that is needed to maintain population.
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Recent statistics show that staggering numbers of young men [into their thirties] have never experienced PIV sexual intercourse [urbandictionary.com].
And this just confirms the headline, with any amount of pr0n just a tap away you don't need PIV sexual intercourse. Or PIM. Or PIA. Or PIArmpit. Or PISheep (mustn't forget the Australians).
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That's the Welsh and the New Zealanders.
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Or PISheep (mustn't forget the Australians).
That's the Welsh and the New Zealanders.
Ah, good point, should have included them alongside Australians. And at least in Wales it's soggy enough that their sheep won't all be on fire.
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Isn't it PIFire for the Ozzies? (Too soon?)
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Absolutely, travel the world, open your horizons
Indeed. And if you can't afford the airfare, just get some 3D-goggles and take a virtual tour instead.
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How about, accept the reality, every place you travel to, to escape people are leaving to travel elsewhere to escape. I can understand living for a few year in an overseas location to experience a different life style and learn different things but holidaying, you are just experiencing the hotel, it's qualities and fabricated tourist attractions themed on the locale. You are not experiencing a different life style, live, work and play.
I go with, for each month you spend overseas on a quality holiday, you ca
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those less fortunate than us
as if chance was the north star toward achievement.
Every THOT is the Same Now (Score:1, Interesting)
As part & parcel of the ubiquitous iPhag & Scrotial Media addiction in our Anti-Culture, increasingly every THOT [urbandictionary.com] is now the same.
They all lather exactly the same porn-star pancake makeup all over their faces, pencil the same fake eyebrows on their foreheads, wear the same metal sticking out of their ears & noses & lips, wear the same fake fingernails, etc etc etc.
I suppose the THOTs could counter with the observation that all the endocrine-disrupted Soy Boys
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Well, every country is becoming the same too.
People wear the same clothes, drive the same cars, eat the same food, and they are all stuck to their smartphones. Not just first world countries, developing nations are becoming like that too.
I generally like globalization, making things accessible all around the world, but it makes travelling a bit less exotic.
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Video stores (Score:5, Funny)
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it's kind of funny.. we went from video stores with an assortment of movies, video games, snacks, etc. To 11 different streaming services each with more content than you could ever hope to watch. The amount of choice is almost paralyzing (to say nothing of the actual quality of most of it). As a kid it was a bit of a treat going there with the parents and finding a movie to watch on a Friday night.
Now thanks to netflix and/or streaming -- now there are no more video stores*. But! wait, what is that? Is t
Re: Video stores (Score:2)
Quantity is not quality.
There is more to watch, but most of it is total shit. Finding something worth watching is way more work than it is used to be because now you have more garbage to wade through.
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Entertainment is not the only activity in life. These days I mostly spend my entertainment time watching YouTube lectures at University channels. Last night I learned how the tides work and how the intertidal zone may have encouraged fish to grow legs. I still enjoy the odd film and the relentless garbage we call news, but not as my main diet.
Re: Video stores (Score:2)
It is true. Besides entertainment, there is also work, sleep, eating and raising children.
Not all entertainment needs to be provided by media companies, including YouTube.
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And people used to know the difference between then and than, but here we are.
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There is a youtube vid (can't find it now) about why all the video stores disappeared. Begins by individuals recalling the 1980s of various video stores, shows some stills of places in shopping centers (I recall those days, some were good, some not so good). It continued on where stores promote to many independents can rent or sell their productions (I cannot recall ever seeing indy movies myself). Stores mention they couldn't offer them much of a cut (i.e. store expenses of lease, wages, etc) but they prov
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Asimov saw this coming (Score:4, Interesting)
A society where things are so convenient that people became shut-ins? Didn't Isaac Asimov have a book about that [wikipedia.org]?
Re:Asimov saw this coming (Score:5, Informative)
A society where things are so convenient that people became shut-ins? Didn't Isaac Asimov have a book about that [wikipedia.org]?
An older story: https://www.ele.uri.edu/facult... [uri.edu]
There is nothing new under the sun... (Score:2)
Bedroom? (Score:2)
Most people watch TV in the living room, you insensitive clods!
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Meh. It's all the same, either way.
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Most people watch TV in the living room, you insensitive clods!
There is a different kind of emotional dread in his bedroom.
Incoherent nonsense (Score:3, Funny)
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Silly People Problems (Score:2)
His article lists a bunch of things that are not problems. Then chooses to highlight something that was a problem: having to physically relocate to a shitty, crowded theater, buy tickets in advance, and see what turned out to be a very mediocre movie that I would otherwise have put in the background if at home. A movie I only saw because my son was excited about it, but even he, at 11 had already accepted that it was likely going to be a mediocre installment. If it were not Star Wars, I would totally have i
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Similarly infrastructure (electricity, water, sewage, sanitation, and of course internet) have very real and significant costs as people spread farther out, but technology has not really improved this any and certainly companies providing these services aren't anxious to encourage it.
Starlink is coming. Solar panels and home batteries exist. Wells and septic systems are ancient. They all cost more money and require more upkeep than living in the cocoon of a city, but it's worth it for many in terms of independence and quality of life.
Antisocial (Score:3)
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You are missing the point.
No one is making you, or anyone else adopt the shut-in lifestyle. The article is making the point that people are choosing to do this for themselves, en masse now that they have the choice to do so. While it is true this is the lifestyle I wanted before it was even remotely achievable, evidently many others wanted it but didn't realize it until it became an option. Or they're doing it because they're not finding any value out of doors that makes sense.
The problem he presents is see
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Mine has a few more things. A pair of 200 amp electrical services. The tractor is only 57 years old, so you've got me beat on that one.
But it does have a big pole building where I can tinker to my hearts content.
Cell coverage is there and I've got a cell phone (flip phone) in my pocket turned off if I need to call 911. But that's the limit of connectivity.
Like you, I work on a lot of high tech things (lab equipment in my case), but I want a break from it.
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"My uncle has a country place
That no one knows about
He says it used to be a farm
Before the Motor Law
And on Sundays I elude the eyes
And hop the Turbine Freight
To far outside the Wire
Where my white-haired uncle waits"
The Good Doctor was right (Score:2)
We sit in our homes in our underwear, order stuff via Alexa at Amazon while the vacuum robot sucks around, the wet wiping robot runs after it, the lawn mower robot runs outside until the watering computer turns the water on.
Welcome to Solaria.
View (Score:2)
until one day...
Oh, wait, the "Uber" car already thinks you are not a person...
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nope, all this stuff means I have time to go out and do stuff
no need to waste my time cleaning or running around to different stores for stuff.
Only for the digitally assimilated (Score:4, Insightful)
The more things you own, the more those things own you. In the digital age, that includes the services to which you are subscribed (paid and free).
Try to have just a few good things that are worth owning in meatspace and cyberspace. Then focus on living life through experiences. That may not make you happy, but it will make you happier.
Geo-fencing could be useful (Score:2)
For instance, if I could write a tweet that would only be visible in New York state.
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No worry. The break up of the Internet is underway. All too soon, you will need a digital visa to visit foreign websites.
The summary left out something very important (Score:3, Interesting)
The summary sounds like a call to stay at home all day.
That misses the whole point of the article.
Here's some quotes that get the point across that we should NOT be treating every place as if it was equal to every other place, well, because it's not:
Over the holidays, my family trekked to a suburban Atlanta mall to see Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. It's the closest theater to offer Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos, and we decided that increased color gamut and floor-rumbling sound justified the 25-mile sojourn.
Seeing new movies is one of the few entertainment activities left that you really can't do at home (unless you're wealthy, of course).
Refreshed from site specificity after the Star Wars screening, my family longed to extend that sense of freedom. So we idled for a couple hours at the Dave & Buster's, an unholy fusion of suburban bar-grill, video-game arcade, and kiddie casino. In the din of Dave & Buster's, we found our devices already waiting for us: large-scale renditions of mobile games like Candy Crush filled the place, reimagined at arcade scale. At one time, this would have seemed like a perverse joke. But any reprieve from superspace feels earnest now. We happily paid to idle there, tapping and swiping giant versions of the apps already in our pockets, rather than returning to the minivan, and then the highway, and then home, where everyone would recede again into the dense expanse of a smartphone.
More pretentious blathering (Score:2)
How does rambling bleating like this make it on to Slashdot?
This is sad. Do a little more than computing. (Score:2)
Stick it (Score:2)
You can stick your first world problem up your first world ass.
Not a boomer but... (Score:5, Interesting)
Pros:
-Actually got you out of the house
-You could pick up snacks/drinks (albeit overpriced)
-Scanning what was available could be as quick as it is today (as long as everything was laid out logically)
-That video store 'smell' - could market it as a car scent
-Could rent games - didn't have to shell out an arm and leg just to find out you didn't like a game
-Might bump into friends/family thus being able to 'catch up' in a more genuine way than just interfacing via Facebook like we do now
-Interaction with friendly clerks
-The building excitement of knowing you were about to rent a hot new move/game (if you could find them in stock).
-If looking for something to do, 'going to the video store to see what was new' was always a good options, even for dates!
Cons:
-Actually having to get out of your house (twice, once to rent, once to return) often in bad weather
-"Be Kind Rewind'
-Late Fees (aargh!)
-Finding out the movie/game you got was utter shite
-All the good new releases were often rented out by the time you got to the store on a Friday night.
-If a sequel or reamake was coming out in the movies, good luck finding any prequels or the original movie in stock to rent as everyone had the same idea as you.
-Judgmental counter clerks - someone always knew what you were watching/playing.
-Losing a game/movie and having to pay full price.
-That judgmental look you got from the person standing next to you as you picked out a copy of Space Jam
-Having to get a membership card
I'm sure there are many others, but that about sums up my experience.
I must be doing it wrong (Score:2)
I don't do any of that. On the toilet? Read a book.
Watch a movie? Pick one from the DVDs I have or, on rare occasions now, pick up something worthwhile to watch again and again (picked up a sweet deal on the first two Battlestar Galactica sets at GoodWill), or watch one of the Gundam series. No Netflix/Hulu/whatever to pay for.
TV? Gave that up years ago because couldn't justify the costs.
Bedroom? That's for sleeping.
Email? Only at work.
Grocery shopping? I go out and do it myself. I go early to beat th
It's true (Score:2)
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We garden, and I say "Hello" to everyone who passes. A disappointing percentage of kids shy away like I'm about to attack them, even though I'm on the other side of a bed of irises. It took me a while to figure out why, but I've realized that their parents were the first generation weaned on 'Stranger Danger' and have passed their paranoia on. Kind of sad.
Say someone told you 20 years ago... (Score:2)
That there is now a transporter that can instantly whisk you away from home to work, shop or movie theater. Would you whine about how your lack of personal discipline keeps you from paying attention to your family? The only issue I see is a 1st world problem where helicopter parents didn't teach millennials enough discipline to put the phone down. We should have some kind of right of passage bootcamp to toughen kids up and get them to stop equating convenience with not needing a backbone.
Isolation makes us less and less human (Score:2)
"'Cause I know I'm going nowhere ... (Score:2)
... and anywhere's a better place to be." ~ Harry Chapin "A Better Place To Be"
Everybody knows this is nowhere (Score:2)
I think I'd like to go back home ...
And take it easy
I gotta get away from this day-to-day running around,
Everybody knows this is nowhere
Well what's your point Vanessa...? (Score:1)
What's your point Vanessa?
Is It? No (Score:4, Interesting)
If this were correct, movie theaters would be out of business. And the premise that this was all some horrible nightmare walking through Blockbuster...really? You need to find a safe space snowflake.
Not at all! (Score:1)
Life is what you make it (Score:1)
Get out into the world. Leave your computers, phones, tablets at home. Grand Canyon, Orlando, Miami, Dallas, New York NY. New Orleans. Visit. They can be incredible places.
Used to be a character called Glum. It'll never work, we're doomed, etc. People seem to be real life Glum.
Will this post inspire someone? It'll never work.... Mankind is doomed.
It might just be you! (Score:2)
Pretty much (Score:1)
Put Down Your Phone (Score:2)