When I see such person who simply can't resist looking at their displays during conversations, I know I am seeing a hard addict with host of other attention disorders. And the fool is feeding those, actively making them worse for some ultra short dopamine kicks that keep getting shorter till they make new baseline.

Not a stellar person in any meaningful way, rather an addict or an asshole. So much for perfectly acceptable.

If you want an actual solution, look for differences. If you somehow end up figuring out its about type of people using those, then there is no easy technical solution.

When anybody has doubts about how fucked up world and humans are, I just direct them into this medium-term conflict, facts are easy enough to find.

One day, cheap automated electric self driving taxis will cover cities, thats unavoidable I think, but we are not there yet.

I live in Switzerland, the place for trains, efficiency and its small and dense, an ideal situation right. Tons of people use trains every day, tons of people also bike for closer distances in good warmish weather but still highways are chock full and getting fuller every year. Public transport for out-of-city commuters is simply slower, often much slower.

This morning I was considering taking a motorbike to a train station that is 5km away, then 40 mins trains and 10 minute walk to work. I took the car instead for a change, I was faster despite having to cross the very center of bottlenecked and car-hostile big city (Geneva) in top rush hour. 65 mins door-to-door via public transport vs 45 in car. That's one way, meaning 40 minutes of my private life daily saved that I can spend ie with my kids and not staring in the phone or out of window.

Normally I take the motorbike if weather permits, if not I take the public bus to the train, adding additional 15 minutes each way. That sucks pretty badly. I doubt other countries have this figured out better, and not everybody can or wants to live in city centers, especially when raising small kids. We did it for 10 years, had a work commute of 5mins via escooter, but I rather have current commute and live and raise kids in small commune next to wild forest and vineyards than that.

All above is usually much worse in many parts of US.

This was pretty much known since Day 1 (famous dumb fucks quote about people sharing their personal details), and as we all should know at this point people don't change, not for the better at least.

Also there is very little of 'technological skill' to learn, clicking around could be understood by little kids, rest is just usage. Sure, hackers and generally brilliant folks may actually thrive, but they are rare and far apart in general population.

There is endless stream of highly addictive technology, and those kids have absolutely 0 defenses against it. Alcoholics also never notice when they crossed the threshold of a proper addiction, its quiet and sneaky business as usual till you hit the wall hard in some way.

What a great way to prepare for adult life, entering it with some heavy but peer-accepted psychological addiction or two. What could go wrong, raising a strong balanced individual right. Pride for any parent.

I have phone that's from Samsung, earplugs from Sennheiser, thinking about buying watch from Garmin (Fenix 8 pro), have chargers and powerbanks from Anker, laptop from Dell.

Bluetooth, USBC and other standards. Its beyond good enough for me, and I can switch each component for a better one from another company if I want (apart from those Sennheisers, no company makes better sounding earplugs and they integrate flawlessly for my needs).

Yes they are terrible, but we shouldn't just blindly replace them with anything and call it a day but do the (continuous) investigation for best solution, poisons are these days everywhere.

This. I am a senior software dev, living in Switzerland. Few years ago there was an issue with my residence permit renewal, process that should have taken few weeks took more than a year. No way to contact that Geneva immigration office, and you can't visit them personally, emails ignored. Official phone contact is just a single phone that often rang few times and then dropped the call, 19 out of 20 times. Few times it was picked up clearly annoyed and couldn't-be-bothered woman who just told me to wait, no further info. My boss applied for same after me, got the papers in 3 weeks.

Me and my kids (who have same permit as me) were basically living in Switzerland semi-illegally, while sporting high paying permanent banking job and wife is a doctor.

One day a call came which introduced themselves as Swiss police, a very elaborate scheme, stating that my ID was used in fraud and I am being investigated. They caught me in this period of fear of getting deported, ruining efforts of past 15 years and my whole family lives. I followed through, they were very clever, pulled just the right strings.

But then came the moment when all this could be solved if I just went to the shop and bought... Apple gift card. LOL. But man I felt extremely vulnerable and under tremendous stress during those few hours.

I get it, but thats problem with 'good theft', its still amoral, and well we all know history and how things actually happened. Inability to even properly acknowledge fuckups of one's ancestors leaves little room for moving further and learning hard from that, instead of some shallow blah to not stick out of the crowd.

I always lose few kgs of muscle on a vacation like that, despite ie full diving suit weighting maybe 40kg. Surfing is very active sport I didn't master yet, but can't imagine doing that around equatorial with that humidity, ie in that Sulawesi sea was 29-30C, air 32-33C day and night and 90-100% humidity.

Mountains also allow tons of various sports most of the year as you mention and attract such crowds.

Overall, people go in droves to mountains every year, summer and winter, to recharge. And its a different recharge compared to some beach holiday, much more active and I dare to say a more effective one (active vacations simply recharge better mental tiredness of modern living and working).

I live near Geneva, Switzerland and after moving here basically became mountain sports addict. Hiking, ferratas, climbing, a bit of alpinism in non-winter, and skiing / ski touring in winter. For exotic places there is diving to keep a bit of balance. Did also some paragliding too but had a nasty accident last year that almost killed me so stopped that. Rest I continue, and will do till the last moment I can still do them, they make me properly happy like a toddler. I live in best possible place in the world for people like me, 1h drive from home and I am right below Mont Blanc, towering almost 4km higher than Chamonix valley.

One drawback as you mention - higher mountains are basically high altitude deserts, snow and ice everywhere but humidity easily below 5% ie in Himalaya. Many folks trying ie Everest didnt get higher than base camp simply due to being often sick up there, amateurs and pros alike.

Quite creative and imaginative descriptions