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The authorities have no reason to be involved. It's 20 minutes, and children can take care of themselves.

At least 99.9% of my voicemails are a couple second long robocalls, but in the rare event of it being a genuine phone call, I get the google transcription of someone saying 'please call me back' on my watch and then I do so. Just because I'm willing to glance at notifications on my watch of incoming voicemails for an instant, doesn't mean I'm willing to talk to hundreds of robocallers per month. Its just too expensive.

Voice phone calls are dead, kid discussion would usually be handled via text or email. I don't really get phone calls about my kids. I believe the more corporate-type environments enjoy the written documentation provided by text/email as opposed to unrecorded undocumented phone call.

The era of always-on low-fi audio connections was very short. Just 30 years ago, parents certainly had no electronic tether and had a home phone number, maybe with an answering machine in later years. And now that technology is completely dead and unusable.



> Voice phone calls are dead

I am amused by this blanket assertion. It really depends on the age/type of people involved and the kinds of interactions they are involved in. I am 50 years old and work in both software consulting and run a tugboat company. I had to take over the tugboat company two years ago due to a death in the family. For 30 years prior to that, I was working almost exclusively in software. During the last couple of years before taking over the tugboat business, I had my phone set to do-not-disturb almost all of the time. In the tugboat business, that does not work at all.

For dealing with software people in purely technical matters, text/Slack/Teams is fine. I respect the needs of others who don't like real-time conversations. For doing business deals in software, I often end up having phone calls with decision makers.

For the tugboat industry, it is too fast paced and too much money is on the line in quick deals to screen phone calls.

Don't assume that everyone works the same way.


My kid is in CA, I am selling a house in AZ, and my wife is buying a house in GA. Most of my friends are out of state. Voice has immense emotional bandwidth advantages over any form of text. It definitely helps everyone in the stress pool maintain levity. I do prefer all business to be conducted through text formats (email preferred) though.

In the case in the GP, maybe a message would have worked too but I don't see the problem with calling.

That said, I get a lot of spam calls on my Fi phone but I simply don't answer if I don't recognize the number. Fi asks me if the number was spam and it's simple to give a brief scan of the transcript if there is one and tell it yes or no.




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