This whole FOMO thing isn't as real, nor as detrimental, for kids as people try and paint it. That's not to say there's not an impact, but kids survive just fine - everyone misses out on this and that, even adults who opt out. Nobody ever keeps up or is involved with everything everyone's doing. Learning that that's okay, and how to handle that, at a younger age pays dividends as an adult.

Besides, there are many ways to still keep your kids connected to their friends without feeding the beast.

And I say this as a parent.

I agree with this (I want to be a parent very soon). I think I'm trying to articulate that while its possible to make a quiet place for your kid at home, they still live in a very internet-driven world.

I actually am curious about your experience on this. Basically, I'm worried that I'll try to make restrictions in the future, and it'll just be a war of attrition that I lose, since internet platforms touch so many parts of social life, especially for the young. Maybe things will be different in a decade.

>That said, if I don't use AI at all, since I pride myself on running a technical blog, not detecting technical errors would also be a problem. So it's a dilemma.

Is it? To err is human. Embrace the risk of technical errors and what/how we learn from them.

>The issue is that human writing is generally rougher. But if we insist on preserving only human writing, we end up having to define humanity's roughness as mere "barbarism."

Is it truly "barbarism", or is it just... human? What's wrong with writing being a bit "rough around the edges"?

>Instead we chose to assume scientists collectively behave on a higher plane.

People are people.

>It’s the fear, the enshittification, datacenter hostility, and the tech broligarchy

It's also peak "tech hubris". The broader world has largely complained about Silicon Valley's "we know better than you" attitude for a long time, and the push for AI/LLMs is that attitude on steroids.

In case folk don't connect the dots, this appears to be Shawn Nunley from the article.

Am I having deja vu? I saw this exact same thread a few days ago, with the very same comment about the non sequitur. When I search for it on HN, the search results say the thread was posted "3 days ago", but when I open the thread, it says "3 hours ago".

What's happening?

Second-chance pool. Dang can manually reset the timestamp on an article, which brings it back to the front page, and sneakily also resets the timestamp on any existing comments so nobody will question it.

the Youtube video about this server was just released last night - which is hopefully more interesting than just the rather short blog post.

>So instead we ended up with the only Calvin and Hobbes items in the physical world being those vinyl bumper stickers of Calvin pissing on things...

... and, of course, all of the various collections of the comics in print form, up to and including the full box set, that everyone can check out from libraries or purchase and keep in perpetuity. Ya know, the actual thing, the meat of it, the heart, the soul - not tangential merchandise.

>Some artistic vision.

Talk about completely missing the point.

Knowing Watterson, I'd wager he's taken certain paths to prevent this from happening.

I don't think he has the power to do anything.

Look at what happened to Frida Kalho. Her face has sadly become a synonymous for cheap stuff sold anywhere.

My wife and I take turns each night doing bedtime for our two girls, 4/6. I have the full C&H box set and, a whiiiiile back, my oldest asked what it was and if we could read it.

For over a year now, any time it's my time to do bedtime, we have to read C&H and cannot read anything else. We've been cruising through it from start to finish and are, within the next week or so, going to reach the end.

Both kiddos, especially my oldest, have been demanding that we start it over. I'll probably table it for a couple of years and then come back to it when they're just a bit older, but yeah... kids definitely know about it and really do appreciate/enjoy it.

Edit: To say nothing of the idea that, eventually, everything fades into obscurity. I feel like what you're lamenting is something that actually jives with Watterson philosophically.

Hmm, where have I seen a story before where a kid wants their parents to read the same book over and over. I can't quite put my finger on it...

>And the landline at home doesn't help you coordinate pickups and drop-offs as people start to do a wider variety of activities.

How did people coordinate these before even email became widespread?

Pick-ups and drop-offs? You walked yourself home, used your bike, or took the bus. This getting driven around is most ridiculous.

So many areas in the US are much less walkable and bikeable than they used to be. I say that as someone who bicycle commuted for years. When I rode my bike to school as a kid I dealt with 25-35 mph traffic. The traffic was much lighter, the vehicles were much smaller, the drivers weren't perfect but they were way less distracted, and the shoulders were in better shape.

We can try to raise our kids with values that are consistent with the ones we grew up with. But trying to give them the same conditions because "it's what we did" doesn't always match up with reality.

Is it true that pickup truck drivers often threaten to run over bikes to assert dominance or is that just one of those myths about how crazy America is?

It depends on your definition of "threaten", but the short answer is yes. I live in a mountainous area that's a destination for road bikers and mountain bikers. There's lots of sources of tension between cyclists and drivers.

On a regular basis I see people racing past cyclists, rolling coal at cyclists (I can't believe that's even a term now), blaring horns, and a number of other behaviors that fall under "threatening".

US vehicles, especially pickups, have outgrown a lot of rural roads that had their origins as footpaths and horse paths. Even with well-intentioned cyclists and drivers, it's often times a setup for conflict.

I wear Lycra, ride a funny-looking carbon road bike, and average about 3,000 miles a year. In college, I rode a beater bike everywhere for transportation instead of owning a car. I’ve never experienced that kind of thing, though I’ve heard occasional stories.

Drivers don’t pay attention and seem like they’re trying to kill you, but that feels more like recklessness than malice.

I got honked at and told to get out of the road today, on a quiet neighborhood street I ride on every day.

This is true, but it varies a lot based on local culture. "Let me buzz 'em / roll coal to teach 'em a lesson"

but you're not really going to see that in, say, Seattle

True, but the solution isn't to put another car on the road. Show that it's still possible, be the change and all that.

> How did people coordinate these before even email became widespread?

With a lot more difficulty.

We used to use payphones and call collect, then say a quick message when the collect service asked for your name.

"Who is calling?" "Hi mom practice is over come pick me up!"

Ah, beautiful times. I remember that me and my friend abused Orange's feature to send voicemail messages directly to the voicemail inbox, without calling the other person at all. Since it was billed by the second, if you spoke very fast, it became much cheaper than SMS.

"I'll be done with marching band practice at 6:30"

"Ok, I'll come get you then"

Works great until your kid's the one that can't join their friends on, say, grabbing dinner after band practice, because they have no way of telling you "hey, change of plans".

If your kid can only participate in things that are planned well in advance, your kid is going to be missing out on ~80% of gatherings. Because everyone else is in the habit of making spontaneous plans, made possible by interconnectivity.

Are we talking about 8 year olds, or 15 year olds?

I think it's fine to give your 8th grader a flip phone. A third grader isn't "grabbing dinner after band practice".

For sports practice, I'd just take the sports bus home; the 30-60 minutes between the end of practice and the time the bus left was perfect for a little quiet reading or homework.

For band practice, I'd call my parents from the office phone, or plan to get a ride home from an older student who lived nearby, or just accept that I might miss out on something when mom picked me up at 6:30 and that's ok.

Where I live, marching band is exclusively a highschool thing, and that's the example that the comment I was replying to gave. So 14-18

You can just borrow a phone

Pre-arranged times. Be there or else.

Payphones.

Time still exists. Payphones not so much.

And: payphones were ubiquitous. Car parks, bus stops, restaurants, bars, other businesses, random street corners, airports, bus depots, train stations. Probably several at a given high school at different locations. So long as you had loose change they were a reliable option. These started to disappear in the late 1990s, though support continued generally through the late aughts, and in certain locales (e.g., NYC) through the late 2010s.

There's some interesting technological anthropology in The Paper Chase, a film set at Harvard Law School in the early 1970s (released 1973), there is a payphone on the dorm floor, and it is the only phone available. That and a number of other elements date the film in ways that other set-dressing (costumes, architecture, cars) don't convey as emphatically.

The issue isn't that it couldn't be done without technology. The problem is when everyone else has moved on to the technology based solution (mobile phones) if you don't you're just out of luck.

We used landlines of course, and it was an utter pain in the behind.

There was no way of letting anyone know that you were running late once they were already underway to pick you up.