Dad of 2 girls. 8 and 4. Not saying that life couldn’t have been equally great without them, but they are amazing. Rewired me in best way possible: to appreciate non-work life as much as anything else (perhaps more).
Becoming another individual’s whole world changes your own, for better or worse.
I was a “such is life” type of person when experiencing tragedy, and fairly ho-hum during joyous moments. With kids, something changed, or “rewired”. I tear up at Bluey episodes and lose sleep due to irrational fears of an early death and not witnessing moments in my kids’ lives.
Right there with you on unexpected tear-stream moments, fears, but also all those happy moments you can't anticipate.
In past year I've watched my older (8) start competing on a cheerleading team. Immense tear-streaming joy watching her light up in front of a crowd and build confidence. I was immediately overcome the first time and always feel a strong swell of emotion.
I canceled mine; I thought it would be a good way to stay updated on tech news without having to read other news, but then they over-extended the service to a bunch of other things instead of just focusing on the one news letter.
I don't care about a twice a week podcast about the NBA and national parks, or the other 5? podcasts about random stuff.
The podcast I listened to the most: Dithering. Primary reason? 15 mins. Sometimes listened to Stratechery Interviews if/when the guest intrigued me outside of the Stratechery ecosystem.
My problem is part style, and part content. Stratechery reads like it's written to be narrated - rather than exist first as writing. There's verbosity, pauses, long sentences, etc. And then you listen to the narration it makes sense.
But that complexity makes reading harder. Not saying everything needs to be 5th-grade-level, but complexity isn't required. Paste a Stratechery article into Hemingway Editor to visualize my point.
The stats below:
Readibility - Post-Graduate (aim for 9)
26 of 44 sentences very hard to read
8 of 88 sentences hard to read
31 weakeners
6 words with simpler alternatives
What a chore to cover, and that's without commenting on the ideas/concepts in the content.
I'm sure some folks like this writing style but I don't. And try hard to write my newsletter and other prose with far less complexity.
I don't think of Show HN as quite the same. Nor Ask HN. I know that otherwise there is plenty of "advertising" within posts/comments/etc.
Where I think the argument that it's not social falls down is aligned with some of your comments. The feeds, upvotes, downvotes, etc. Let's not forget the spam.
Those mechanisms are pervasive across many social platforms, so why are they so different here? Don't think they are.
I assume parents. Not actual schools. Same situation here on East Coast. School uses ParentSquare but so much coordination is over iMesssage and WhatsApp.
I'm probably not alone in this: feel caught (somewhat) in a vicious cycle where I favorite many GenAI posts thinking I'll come back to comments and posts to learn and build more AI skills.
That happens, but the system is not balanced. Way more saving than practical use, similar to other platform like the socials where you save posts for ... what?
I'm also thinking that I could use AI to summarize all this AI stuff! How fitting.
Curious how many folks subscribe to external calendar feeds? My school system publishes a calendar feed. I don’t see any for her various other activities, all with their own apps and ways of organization (or not).
Right now I feed everything to one shared Google account and then have AI do work on invites, reminders, etc.
That said, my view is now (not novel, or unique) that I am not the customer in so many cases. Any app or platform with the slightest hint of an advertising end-game restructures my usage as the product.
The customer is instead the sender (or advertiser). So, I can't expect ideal app behavior and usage based on my intentions because I'm sold (as the product) rather than the other way around.
Maybe a cynical view, and there are exceptions, but don't think I'm far off.
The scene has always been overrun with recreational substance use, dawg. Partake or not as suits your vibe and life goals, but get ready for it to be a prominent thing among others.
"Influencer types" are new; social media has been corrosive even to this scene as well. A number of clubs in the UK and elsewhere are implementing no-phones policies as a result, so you can dodge some of it by picking venues.
Not sure what part of the world you're from but I'm sure you can find some decent authentic gigs around where people aren't doing it for the likes and follows :)
Honestly, going to a rave with a dancefloor and cool people is kind of lifechanging. It's kind of the environment that a lot of (most?) dance music is made for. Have a great time!
Varies heavily by venue and subgenre. All of the shows that I can remember offhand I saw absolutely minimal phones / videos / picture taking. It was usually me (briefly) because I love going back through a decade plus of videos and reminiscing, usually 1-3 per show depending on how important the show was to me.
There’s a sampling bias that occurs if you rely on social media to inform you how rampant “influencing” is - of course shows with more influencers will be the ones that show up in your feed, because they’re the ones with the influencers!
None of us really know what to do!
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