My problem is time and being in the right headspace. Between family, work, and a plethora of other hobbies that get neglected, not to mention often crippling anxiety, it is astoundingly difficult for me to work up posts on my project blog simply because I am either too busy or not where I need to be mentally to write due to general and pervasive exhaustion. I have been trying to kickstart a space where I can talk about my projects and repairs/restorations for years, but never quite found the secret to balancing life and writing.
I have the Bangle.js V2 and can confirm, it is a slimmer and slicker overall design, feeling more like a Fitbit Versa. Honestly, it's been a boredom breaker since it's relatively easy to dump new code on to it. My only complaint is the vibrating motor is almost too weak for me to feel when sleep, and as such, is not a reliable silent alarm, so I swap back to my OG Pebble at night.
People with a lot of money can "fight," at least in terms of throwing everything medical science has to offer at it. I suspect that's where the narrative originated, then took on the mythos that it was somehow sheer will.
Meanwhile, the rest of us ride on pure luck as we watch cancer destroy our loved ones. They gave my dad a month with a glial blastoma. He lasted about 6, most of which the dad I knew was not present for. Tbfh, I feel like he would have rather gone quick, not enduring the twisted shit we watched him go through.
Anthropomorphizing nature is an easy trap to fall into largely because the electric hams in our skulls is programmed to reach conclusions as quickly as possible for the sake of evaluating our reality, and we tend to put a lot of trust in that. Applying human traits to a non-human entity is just one of the many shortcuts we take to reach said conclusions.
not sure if you are questioning or seconding my opinion. but anyway - in hindsight many anthropomorphisms in the past have been closer to what we now consider known about nature than what was considered scientific state back then. science considered most animals as emotionless and mindless machines only few decades ago. now even fish have to be treated humane - and don't get me started on mammals and octopusses. from that point of view anthropomorphizing deserves some historical merit and shouldn't be easily discarded as childish nonesense.
While what you quoted is not incorrect, and worth pointing out, the analogy stands. In AA, you only get the chip if you abstain from drinking. The chip (a little coin) is an all-or-nothing deal.
In AA, we do get people attending who just want to control their drinking. They're usually sent by the courts (in the US, at least) due to some misdemeanor they commited while drunk, as though those of us battling ourselves are supposed to teach some 20-something how to be responsible adult because their parents failed them. Sometimes one of those court-sent people finds out they have a real problem, and end up sticking around. However, for the most part, the rest are there for a few weeks because they have to be, we sign their slips, and never see them again. We don't give out chips for that.
Food addiction is a better example I think. You have to learn to moderate, you can't just go cold turkey.
I am sure AA doesn't bother with moderation because abstaining is simply that much more effective.
Even if you went on a month long screen detox in the woods you are going to "relapse" at some point when you get back. The AA model is just not going to work in this situation.
My disagreement is about the appropriateness of the AA analogy to the author's point.
The author asserts "If that’s the case, the only healthy screen time is no screen time. Zero."
That is almost impossible these days. We increasingly require smart phones such that NOT having/using one is difficult, even for those who don't want one. Important information and services are moving to the internet, making a non-internet life more difficult. Yet the author wants use to consider that as a viable solution!
AA promotes abstinence, and supports people who want to maintain abstinence. As I often go for months without drinking alcohol, I know that there is still a lot one can do without drinking.
What would you do if your company required you to drink alcohol to work, your kid's school required you to drink alcohol to check on your kid's status, a restaurant required you to do a shot to get a menu, and you couldn't rent a bike without first drinking even more alcohol?
And that's why I don't like the author's use of an essentially impossible solution as the comparison.
While Weight Watcher's and other diet plans don't say "abstain from all food", which of course is impossible.
WW specifically uses a points-based system so that some foods, like "leafy greens, carrots, tomatoes, green beans, asparagus, onions, broccoli and radishes" have zero points, and can be consumed without limit. (Compare that to a calorie-based diet.)
By the WW analogy, some screen time, like logging into your bank to check on the accounts, would have zero points while others, like writing comments on HN :), would have points, setting a limit to one's daily use.
Which seems to map well to what the author is proposing ("parameters to evaluate quality, not quantity, of the time spent staring at your screens").
I also don't like "Go on, spend 4 hours on an app. Just make sure you decided to—and that you feel those 4 hours are life well spent." because if the author really believes the alcoholism analogy is true, then it's saying the author either doesn't believe any of the readers actually have a screen time problem, or believes it's okay for an alcoholic to spend 4 hours drinking at the bar with friends, so long if it feels like a life well spent. And something similar for the crack cocaine user.
P.S. In researching the Weight Watcher's/food analogy I found out that the existence of "food addition" is under debate, where the 'language of addiction' is used to explain one's feelings and provide a means of communicating distress and helplessness, rather than being an addition in the same way that drugs are addictive. See https://www.nature.com/articles/s41386-018-0203-9 . With my daily allotment of Internet Watchers points nearly gone, I'll not research the scholarly views of "internet addition".
They aren't, and I wish we'd stop regurgitating this idea because restaurants use it as a justification to get out of paying servers proper wages. The person at the checkout at my local grocer is just as much "part of the experience" when I buy groceries, but their employer pays for them to be there, as opposed to expecting me to do so. This gaslighting of consumerism as an experience is damaging, and allows the greedy to foist the cost of doing business onto the customer more and more.
The common thread between the two is calling consumerism an "experience." This isn't a theme park. The server, retail worker, or whomever is not an actor in a costume there for the amusement of the customer. They work for their employer, carrying duties that allow that employer's business to profit, and therefor, should be paid by the employer.
And yes, this is a distictly American issue, and needs to be abolished. In the US, I worked as a bartender for $2.65 an hour in 2005. Basically, my employer payed me nothing, since that was just covering taxes, and each customer that ordered a drink from me was my main source of income. It irks me to my core when people wave this off as some normalized "part of the experience" and not a problem of greed that requires correction.
It's still quite bizzare to me. The theme park employees are working for the employer too, just like the waiters and barmen working for the establishment. Going out for drinks with friends or for a dinner date is an experience, how could it be otherwise? I don't expect the staff to entertain me, sure, but that doesn't mean that it's just "engaging in consumerism" for the customers. I'm sorry if you have bad memories about the job, but your point of view is quite angsty and jaded.
> The common thread between the two is calling consumerism an "experience."
That is your interpretation, and tbh I expressed myself poorly. In Europe working in a restaurant earns at least minimum wage and likely more now, since the pandemic led to worker shortage. I am talking social in reference to experience. The waiter being a real person you talk to, who can inform you on menu choices. A restaurant isn't a McDonald's factory that serves calories at minimum cost price and maximum productivity. The automation trend will see people lose their jobs.
I would, personally. Not on the level of service, but on the way the worker should be compensated. I hate it when employees are pitted against each other at a workplace, like how they often do with sales people. I think this is exploiting them, and I don't like the idea of that, no matter what results it produces.
And you'd be wrong about tips. They are at quite a lot of places, in fact, I find that it's rarer when a system or culture explicitly does away with them. In Japan for example, people can even get upset and give back the tipped amount. And at many places, it's not called a tip, but it's rather a bribe, but frankly, I think they have a lot in common.
I get that everyone has different expectations, for a relevant number of people a restaurant is a place to eat nice food in the best state.
The US is something else altogether of course, but I can't rememeber many restaurants where I thought having a waiter a positive part of the experience. And I'm clearly not the only one, looking at the robot waiter development pace and actual sales data.
