Not counting nice walks in prospect Park, I can get on the metro north train and go on a variety of hikes. It’s not 20 steps, but I also get all the other benefits of a city.
Also Manhattan isn’t known for smog, and there is a lot more to New York than Manhattan. Go look at like park slope or Astoria
They said the problem was “widespread”. I’m saying it’s not like everywhere you look, but it feels worse than it is if you only go to the high traffic areas where homeless people go to beg for help.
Cost of living is rising higher than salaries everywhere. This isn’t unique to New York.
The fact that homeless people exist is a poor reason to avoid New York, in my view. People act like you’re going to be wrestling with the homeless every day.
We should do more than ignore the homeless, but that’s a separate conversation.
If you live here you don’t really go through Penn station. That’s a major commuter hub.
I’ve lived here for years and only go there if I need to go to NJ transit for some reason (which isn’t often).
That’s like thinking all of NJ is Secaucus train station, or all of someplace else is just the airport. It’s not representative.
I’m confident whatever you are imagining is not the daily lived experience of new york city. People picture like times square in 1973 on new years eve and also classic film the warriors. Go look at like park slope on google street view (or another similar service of your choosing).
She’s a very selfish person who doesn’t care about other people. She only cares about what benefits her. So when someone says “there’s no material benefit to me” they sound like that kind of asshole.
Also it was a critically acclaimed show, not some obscure media.
That doesn’t logically follow. No more than saying “Building more highways is bad for the environment, ergo the highway administrators benefit from having more cars on the road.” You’re looking at a problem of induced demand and concluding the problem is on the demand-side of the equation.
What? Yes it does. Facebook needs users to generate revenue. With no users, they can’t sell ads or user data. How else do you think they make money? Do you not think making money is a benefit for the owners of facebook?
It’s one node in a massive web. And it’s easy to say “Well, you have to do your part because <insert consumerist morality here>”. But mostly it’s just some random asshole on the internet telling me not to use my telephone because AT&T is run by a richer set of random assholes. There’s no material benefit to me and no collective coordinated action that I’m seriously participating in.
You’re reminding me of Eleanor from the good place. Do you also litter? Refuse to return shopping carts?
I haven’t seen any real evidence to that effect.
Do you accept that facebook is harmful to the world, or would I need to try to prove that? There’s the time they tried to see if they could make people sad by adjusting the feed. (They could)
If you accept that, it’s a small step to “They benefit from having more users on their platform”. More users means more engagement, which means more ads, and advertisers pay more money for those ads. No one’s going to pay big bucks to advertise their stuff to an empty platform. Facebook’s going to have a harder time selling user data and metadata if users aren’t on there.
Now, getting one family to stop using facebook is a drop in the bucket. But every family that leaves makes it easier for the next family to leave.
Those aren’t the only email providers, and using email is less harmful than using Facebook.
email exists and isn’t run by the worst people on earth
Yeah I don’t know about the down votes. I tried to be clear I was talking about a preference and personal experience, but I guess some people took offense.
The last non fiction book I read that was really interesting was “The Ghost Map”. It’s about when people figured out Cholera. That’s kind of technology adjacent.
Yes, it’s very common. There are many reasons.
Sometimes I’m just excited to share something. Could be something trivial (“i saw a cat on the walk over and it looked right at me and said ‘meow’!”). Could be something bigger (“They finally fired Useless Bob at work”)
Sometimes people want to vent. Talking about something can be emotionally soothing.
Sometimes people want help or advice. “I can’t believe I’m spending $20 a day on lunch. The stupid sandwich I got wasn’t even good. What’s your strategy?”
Humans are social creatures.
Yeah, but YouTube isn’t as credible. And if it was, I’d still rather read something than spend twice as long watching half the information. Tastes differ
To me YouTube is an untrustworthy platform owned by one of the worse mega corps. But also I just don’t enjoy video as a medium
I dare say books still exist
The people who make decisions at Youtube clearly do not even use their own website or app and there is no way to give feedback either.
Ed Zitron, famously verbose web blog guy, wrote a post about how he thinks most of these big businesses are run by idiots that are out of touch with both the product and the users.
https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-era-of-the-business-idiot/
It’s simple: they neither know nor care what the customer wants, barely know how their businesses function, barely know what their products do, and barely understand what their workers are doing, meaning that generative AI feels magical, because it does an impression of somebody doing a job, which is an accurate way of describing how most executives and middle managers operate.
This is only me describing my personal taste, but:
Almost all video essays and podcasts I would rather just read. It takes half the time. Include pictures, diagrams, and animations if needed. But I can read much faster and retain much better reading than listening to someone talk. Listening at double speed is faster, but can be uncomfortable.
I can imagine some value in some other niches, like you’re saying, but the amount of slop and trash out there is too high for me, and the companies selling it are the worst.
Every time I see some parasocial YouTuber making That Face I just get irritated.
Sometimes I forget people watch YouTube on purpose. Other than music videos and the rare “how do I do this thing in this game?” I just don’t use it
I feel like an alien sometimes. Reading books like some sort of lost time traveler.
The ending of earthbound. I was playing it without a guide and hit “pray” in desperation, and what happened surprised me. It’s a little melodramatic but any sort of 11th hour save by people who care usually gets me.
Well, yes. Capitalism and friends don’t care about a healthy society. They care about the owners having all the riches. This is inevitable without intervention.
Also switched to Linux (popos) this month. It’s been fine. Games work. Browser works. No complaints, really.