Be it texting and driving, you can't have a gathering of people without everyone's face in a screen.
You can't? I don't have problems with that.
Or you can't have a mealtime because people have forgot manners and answers their phones in the middle of a meal.
You know what happened last week? The land line rang (actually, it played the closest thing I could find to the shoggoth sounds in At the Mountains of Madness, but that's not really relevant here) during dinner. I don't see the difference here.
The biggest difference is that you're out to dinner at a restaurant you won't hear it.
There are studies showing that people feel like they're getting a better quality product when they pay more for something,
That's why personal hygiene products (and clothes, and other gender-specific items) for women sometimes cost three times as much as they do for men.
Your average man looks at a stick of deodorant "A" and deodorant "B" and sees that "A" costs 20% less than "B" so he buys "A".
Your average woman looks at the female versions of "A" and "B" (which might be identical except for scent) and buys "B" because she assumes the higher price means a higher quality product.
Studies have shown when women's hygiene products are discounted, companies sell less of the product.
Obviously not all women or all men act that way, but that's what the studies those setting prices look at and why they price things like that. Women's wallets get screwed as a result of the differing psychology because they jack up the cost. Must suck to be a woman who shops like a man.
I'm sure you're absolutely correct about WholeFoods being the same for some people. The same thoughts that make some women buy overpriced deodorant makes WholeFood shoppers WANT to go the more expensive grocery chain.
You buy a store with a strong established brand image as a premium store and plan to totally reinvent the brand as a bargain low cost store.
They're losing a large chunk of the value of their acquisition. If they want a low-cost brand they might have been better served purchasing a low-cost chain that already had that brand established.
They're going to piss off their existing clientele and probably be shunned by their intended market because they have the exact opposite brand image currently.
I always bypass Whole Foods because they are expensive. That's what their brand means to me. That's where rich people shop. Amazon may plan to cheapen them, and may succeed, but I won't know because I'll be busy going to my average-person grocery store and avoiding Whole Foods.
Because you can't teach them everything. Some things take time. You can teach them 99% of things to watch out for but you will always miss something. A child raised in the South might not know what to look out for on a frozen lake to see if it safe to walk on. A child raised in Oklahoma might not know what a rip current is. Unless you've thought to tell them, a child may not know to not touch someone who has been electrocuted.
There are a million things and a million dangers, and quite simply, you won't remember every danger to tell a child to look out for.
And even if you tell a child not to talk to strangers- you might be surprised. There was a viral video a few years back where a news team (with parent's permission) did an experiment on walking up to young children (to whom they were strangers) and start talking to them.
Every single parent said "my child would never talk or go off with a stranger". Almost every single one did start talking to the "stranger". And the majority did start to walk off with the "stranger".
I think in many cases parents think their children are smarter than they really are- or more likely to trust their danger instincts than the really do. You can teach your kids to avoid strangers- but then when you're not around they might forget your advice.
An introvert doesn't askew all contact with humanity, they just chose to spend more time alone. I would never want to lose all contact with all people forever; but, if I prefer to go for a hike alone, or read a book alone, or be on my phone alone, or go kayaking in a safe location alone, that shouldn't be looked on as an abnormality.
A lot of extroverts feel like introverts are broken because they don't want to be surrounded by other people all the time. That's not true. There is "me" time and there is "with other people time". Introverts just prefer more "me" time.
No one wants to be truly alone. (or almost no one).
Here's hoping this takes the same path as light drinking before driving. Now it's the childred; soon it'll be the adults too. Anyone else here spend an hour every day just waiting for people to finish their sentences across a pause to look at a smartphone for no good reason?
As long as the cellphone exists, I'll own one. And use it.
However, with that said, if I could "uninvent" any technology on the planet it would be the cell phone. No reason being the only person on the planet not using one, but it sure as hell has had more negative impacts on society than positive ones.
I think for an individual, owning a smart phone is a good beneficial thing. For society, everyone owning smart phones is a bad thing.
Be it texting and driving, you can't have a gathering of people without everyone's face in a screen. (I'm an introvert, I don't like people, but sometimes I just want to get done with a meeting and move on).
Or you can't have a mealtime because people have forgot manners and answers their phones in the middle of a meal. (this is the Mother in law in my family... can't have a meal without her having a phone conversation). Or getting stuck for ever at Target because you're behind someone with the cartwheel app and they're scanning every item before the cashier does. (I avoid Target when I can because of this).
My cell phone is useful to me. Everyone else's cellphone is bloody annoying.
I'm not in favour of the law. There ARE circumstances where children younger than 13 might NEED cellphones for practical reasons. It's not really the government's place to say.
A rural child, like your dad, is a completely different thing. If he were wandering over fields, etc and other people not around... yeah, I can see in his childhood a cell phone being handy. If he got in trouble, bit by a snake, etc, calling home for help would be a good thing.
My son is currently 13. We live in a semi-rural environment. Certinaly no fields for him to wander. We haven't got him a mobile yet, but we're considering it.
Basically the reason my son (and his two younger sisters) want a smart phone is to play games, and because other kids have them. They already have at least one tablet each. A chromebook each, a DS each, and a game console at home.
None of them talk on the phone more than perhaps 2 times a year. 13 and younger shouldn't be left alone anywhere unsupervised anyway. They'll almost always be near an adult with a phone. (13 in safe places is probably OK... like wander off in the mall or in Target, etc).
My 13 year old will probably get a phone in the next year or so, but it's not going to be a powerful one he can play games on. It will deliberately be the cheapest piece of crap we can find... and not to save money, but he doesn't need another game device, and I don't want him having MORE screen time than he already has. A phone is easier to sneak screen time on than a tablet or console.
Are there adults that are addicted to their smartphones? Most definitely.
There are a whole lot more adults that are simply addicted to avoidant behavior. If it wasn't smartphones it would be TV. Before TV it would've been a book.
For times immemorial, extroverts have looked at introverts and decided since introverts would rather spend a large amount of time not socializing there must be something wrong with them.
No, introverts just don't want to spend time socializing. That's it. That's all. Take our phones, take our computers, we still don't want to sit around in a group of 20 people singing Kumbaya.
Is there any actual evidence that phones are bad for kids?
My kids got phones when they were 8. We can find them if they get lost, it makes it easy to coordinate pickups. It gives us more freedom to let them go and do what they want, since they can call if they get in situation they can't handle. In fact, we don't let them leave home without their phones. I don't see the downside. I don't think I need an anesthesiologist to tell me how to raise my kids.
I wouldn't feel safe with having my 8 year olds go somewhere alone without an adult. No matter how much I trust the kid, they don't know about certain dangers at that age, and there are certainly adults who you can't trust.
Maybe you live in a super sanitized safe area compared to me.
There's a reason that expression exists. Yes, you can kill with a knife, it's just a lot harder to do cleanly without sustaining injury yourself. There is also a chance for the person being attacked to defend themself. You point a gun at some kid's head, he has no chance to run or defend himself.
There would certainly be a period of time when there were still a lot of guns around over time they would get filtered out of society. At one point people could carry guns in Britain.
Fairly recently, Australia, a country with a similar gun culture and number of guns per capita as the US went through removing all their guns. That was a number of years ago and there has been only one mass shooting since that time. The number of gun crimes have plummeted.
Even if the US was only half as successful as Australia. Even if we were only half as capable as the Australians at stamping out gun violence... that would be very worthwhile to pursue.
That's about what I assume where you were getting the data from. The statistic may indeed be true, but it is far from meaningful.
Unless you compared republicans vs democrats within the same socio-economic group the data doesn't really tell you anything.
It's like saying eating Ice Cream makes you drown because in months when Ice Cream sales are highest more people drown. This is a true statistic but it's because hot weather makes you eat more ice cream and swim more. Ice Cream doesn't cause drowning.
Being a democrat has nothing to do with being a murderer via gun.
Honda called me for an airbag recall a year ago. Set up appointment to get airbag replaced.
Arrived early Saturday morning- they didn't have any airbags in stock and had put me down for an oil change that I didn't want from them. Waste of an early morning. They told me they would call me when they had the parts but it could take a few months.
A year later, got another airbag recall- called to confirm it was to replace a different airbag to the one they never replaced before that they used as a scam to try to sell me an oil change. Confirmed it was.
Went to the dealership on the opposite side of town and got both replaced.
Lack of 'knowhow' prevented this moron from killing anyone outright. About a 10% hit rate. Obviously a liberal, 'spray and pray'.
He knew what to do, just lacked the skill or the steady hand. You're probably right about him being a liberal, if he were a right winger he would have had more practice killing innocent people and would have got a higher hit rate.
I don't think he was doing much praying though if he's a leftie. Not to American God anyway. Probably French God or something like that. - that's how it works isn't it?
I know you are being sarcastic. But according to what I've read, firearm murders by Democrats outnumber those from Republicans 2 to 1.
What do you read? Seriously - do you have a source for that? Preferably not Alex Jones or Breitbart...
I suspect it's probably true. Correlation not causation. I'm sure there is a race/economic factor involved. The poor have higher gun crime numbers. The poor are much likely to vote democrat.
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You can't? I don't have problems with that.
You know what happened last week? The land line rang (actually, it played the closest thing I could find to the shoggoth sounds in At the Mountains of Madness, but that's not really relevant here) during dinner. I don't see the difference here.
The biggest difference is that you're out to dinner at a restaurant you won't hear it.
Whole Foods is still way cheaper than buying groceries in Canada, and you guys are complaining about the price?
That's why I don't fly up to Canada to buy my groceries.
People who shop at Whole Foods do not want to rub shopping carts with the dirty people from Walmart.
I saw the strangest thing in Walmart about a week ago. I walked in and saw an attractive woman.
There are studies showing that people feel like they're getting a better quality product when they pay more for something,
That's why personal hygiene products (and clothes, and other gender-specific items) for women sometimes cost three times as much as they do for men.
Your average man looks at a stick of deodorant "A" and deodorant "B" and sees that "A" costs 20% less than "B" so he buys "A".
Your average woman looks at the female versions of "A" and "B" (which might be identical except for scent) and buys "B" because she assumes the higher price means a higher quality product.
Studies have shown when women's hygiene products are discounted, companies sell less of the product.
Obviously not all women or all men act that way, but that's what the studies those setting prices look at and why they price things like that. Women's wallets get screwed as a result of the differing psychology because they jack up the cost. Must suck to be a woman who shops like a man.
I'm sure you're absolutely correct about WholeFoods being the same for some people. The same thoughts that make some women buy overpriced deodorant makes WholeFood shoppers WANT to go the more expensive grocery chain.
I vote for BJs. Always
BJs all closed down in our area. They're not really a general purpose grocery store though, they're more like a Costco with less variety in inventory.
It does seem a bit odd.
You buy a store with a strong established brand image as a premium store and plan to totally reinvent the brand as a bargain low cost store.
They're losing a large chunk of the value of their acquisition. If they want a low-cost brand they might have been better served purchasing a low-cost chain that already had that brand established.
They're going to piss off their existing clientele and probably be shunned by their intended market because they have the exact opposite brand image currently.
I always bypass Whole Foods because they are expensive. That's what their brand means to me. That's where rich people shop. Amazon may plan to cheapen them, and may succeed, but I won't know because I'll be busy going to my average-person grocery store and avoiding Whole Foods.
Why don't they know what to be careful of??
Because you can't teach them everything. Some things take time. You can teach them 99% of things to watch out for but you will always miss something. A child raised in the South might not know what to look out for on a frozen lake to see if it safe to walk on. A child raised in Oklahoma might not know what a rip current is. Unless you've thought to tell them, a child may not know to not touch someone who has been electrocuted.
There are a million things and a million dangers, and quite simply, you won't remember every danger to tell a child to look out for.
And even if you tell a child not to talk to strangers- you might be surprised. There was a viral video a few years back where a news team (with parent's permission) did an experiment on walking up to young children (to whom they were strangers) and start talking to them.
Every single parent said "my child would never talk or go off with a stranger". Almost every single one did start talking to the "stranger". And the majority did start to walk off with the "stranger".
I think in many cases parents think their children are smarter than they really are- or more likely to trust their danger instincts than the really do. You can teach your kids to avoid strangers- but then when you're not around they might forget your advice.
And yes, I know it's eschew not askew. Not sure why I typed that before the grammar Nazis get me. Only noticed I did that after I hit submit.
An introvert doesn't askew all contact with humanity, they just chose to spend more time alone. I would never want to lose all contact with all people forever; but, if I prefer to go for a hike alone, or read a book alone, or be on my phone alone, or go kayaking in a safe location alone, that shouldn't be looked on as an abnormality.
A lot of extroverts feel like introverts are broken because they don't want to be surrounded by other people all the time. That's not true. There is "me" time and there is "with other people time". Introverts just prefer more "me" time.
No one wants to be truly alone. (or almost no one).
We live in an average neighbourhood in an average city in the US with an average numbered house.
UPS is the only sevice that regulary delivers my packages to the wrong place or tells me that my house doesn't exist.
USPS and FedEx have no problem but UPS seem to be staffed by idiots.
Motherfuckers must be talking about the cool kids because that sure as hell wasn't me.
See... and I always thought you WERE the cool one. When I grow up, I want to be an anonymous coward.
Here's hoping this takes the same path as light drinking before driving. Now it's the childred; soon it'll be the adults too. Anyone else here spend an hour every day just waiting for people to finish their sentences across a pause to look at a smartphone for no good reason?
As long as the cellphone exists, I'll own one. And use it.
However, with that said, if I could "uninvent" any technology on the planet it would be the cell phone. No reason being the only person on the planet not using one, but it sure as hell has had more negative impacts on society than positive ones.
I think for an individual, owning a smart phone is a good beneficial thing. For society, everyone owning smart phones is a bad thing.
Be it texting and driving, you can't have a gathering of people without everyone's face in a screen. (I'm an introvert, I don't like people, but sometimes I just want to get done with a meeting and move on).
Or you can't have a mealtime because people have forgot manners and answers their phones in the middle of a meal. (this is the Mother in law in my family... can't have a meal without her having a phone conversation). Or getting stuck for ever at Target because you're behind someone with the cartwheel app and they're scanning every item before the cashier does. (I avoid Target when I can because of this).
My cell phone is useful to me. Everyone else's cellphone is bloody annoying.
Take a look at the US laws. Every single one.
I just did this. Now I know I shouldn't whistle under water or I might get arrested, and I know I shouldn't be lying on baker's shelves.
I'm not in favour of the law. There ARE circumstances where children younger than 13 might NEED cellphones for practical reasons. It's not really the government's place to say.
A rural child, like your dad, is a completely different thing. If he were wandering over fields, etc and other people not around... yeah, I can see in his childhood a cell phone being handy. If he got in trouble, bit by a snake, etc, calling home for help would be a good thing.
My son is currently 13. We live in a semi-rural environment. Certinaly no fields for him to wander. We haven't got him a mobile yet, but we're considering it.
Basically the reason my son (and his two younger sisters) want a smart phone is to play games, and because other kids have them. They already have at least one tablet each. A chromebook each, a DS each, and a game console at home.
None of them talk on the phone more than perhaps 2 times a year. 13 and younger shouldn't be left alone anywhere unsupervised anyway. They'll almost always be near an adult with a phone. (13 in safe places is probably OK... like wander off in the mall or in Target, etc).
My 13 year old will probably get a phone in the next year or so, but it's not going to be a powerful one he can play games on. It will deliberately be the cheapest piece of crap we can find... and not to save money, but he doesn't need another game device, and I don't want him having MORE screen time than he already has. A phone is easier to sneak screen time on than a tablet or console.
Are there adults that are addicted to their smartphones? Most definitely.
There are a whole lot more adults that are simply addicted to avoidant behavior. If it wasn't smartphones it would be TV. Before TV it would've been a book.
For times immemorial, extroverts have looked at introverts and decided since introverts would rather spend a large amount of time not socializing there must be something wrong with them.
No, introverts just don't want to spend time socializing. That's it. That's all. Take our phones, take our computers, we still don't want to sit around in a group of 20 people singing Kumbaya.
Is there any actual evidence that phones are bad for kids?
My kids got phones when they were 8. We can find them if they get lost, it makes it easy to coordinate pickups. It gives us more freedom to let them go and do what they want, since they can call if they get in situation they can't handle. In fact, we don't let them leave home without their phones. I don't see the downside. I don't think I need an anesthesiologist to tell me how to raise my kids.
I wouldn't feel safe with having my 8 year olds go somewhere alone without an adult. No matter how much I trust the kid, they don't know about certain dangers at that age, and there are certainly adults who you can't trust.
Maybe you live in a super sanitized safe area compared to me.
Tin can phones have been around since 1667. The extent to which they were mobile depended on the length of the conduit.
Hence the rhetorical question "how long is a piece of string?" was coined.
But... the Tin can wasn't invented until 1810
Just imagine the money to be made if people using tin can phones took the mouth pieces off and sold them as tin cans.
Never bring a knife to a gun fight.
There's a reason that expression exists. Yes, you can kill with a knife, it's just a lot harder to do cleanly without sustaining injury yourself. There is also a chance for the person being attacked to defend themself. You point a gun at some kid's head, he has no chance to run or defend himself.
There would certainly be a period of time when there were still a lot of guns around over time they would get filtered out of society. At one point people could carry guns in Britain.
Fairly recently, Australia, a country with a similar gun culture and number of guns per capita as the US went through removing all their guns. That was a number of years ago and there has been only one mass shooting since that time. The number of gun crimes have plummeted.
Even if the US was only half as successful as Australia. Even if we were only half as capable as the Australians at stamping out gun violence... that would be very worthwhile to pursue.
That's about what I assume where you were getting the data from. The statistic may indeed be true, but it is far from meaningful.
Unless you compared republicans vs democrats within the same socio-economic group the data doesn't really tell you anything.
It's like saying eating Ice Cream makes you drown because in months when Ice Cream sales are highest more people drown. This is a true statistic but it's because hot weather makes you eat more ice cream and swim more. Ice Cream doesn't cause drowning.
Being a democrat has nothing to do with being a murderer via gun.
Vaguely related rant:
Honda called me for an airbag recall a year ago. Set up appointment to get airbag replaced.
Arrived early Saturday morning- they didn't have any airbags in stock and had put me down for an oil change that I didn't want from them. Waste of an early morning. They told me they would call me when they had the parts but it could take a few months.
A year later, got another airbag recall- called to confirm it was to replace a different airbag to the one they never replaced before that they used as a scam to try to sell me an oil change. Confirmed it was.
Went to the dealership on the opposite side of town and got both replaced.
Anyone got a good car analogy for this?
Subby's Dad didn't wear a patch when he took Subby's Mom in the car on lover's lane. Now they both have viruses and WannaCry?
Lack of 'knowhow' prevented this moron from killing anyone outright. About a 10% hit rate. Obviously a liberal, 'spray and pray'.
He knew what to do, just lacked the skill or the steady hand. You're probably right about him being a liberal, if he were a right winger he would have had more practice killing innocent people and would have got a higher hit rate.
I don't think he was doing much praying though if he's a leftie. Not to American God anyway. Probably French God or something like that. - that's how it works isn't it?
Killing someone is "good for health"?
I know you are being sarcastic. But according to what I've read, firearm murders by Democrats outnumber those from Republicans 2 to 1.
What do you read? Seriously - do you have a source for that? Preferably not Alex Jones or Breitbart...
I suspect it's probably true. Correlation not causation. I'm sure there is a race/economic factor involved. The poor have higher gun crime numbers. The poor are much likely to vote democrat.