Uber Eats drivers definitely don't have them where I live. Food almost always arrives cold, even when the delivery time is very short. When I lived in NYC most deliveries were done by bike and all of them had insulated bags so the food was typically warm unless it had been super delayed.
Also food delivery drivers employed directly by restaurants typically have an insulated carrier in their car or on their bike to keep your food warm. Uber Eats drivers don't so the food gets cold way faster.
Not to mention humans 150 years ago who ate plenty of bread and still didn't have the problems we have with obesity and diabetes. Or even 50 years ago...
This is such a great comment. Thank you for having so much empathy and willingness to meet people where they are. I hate how smug people can be these days. At the end of the day it's counterproductive (unless the objective isn't to change people's minds but to enjoy feeling superior, which I suspect is true of a lot of people).
I've been out of the house all day (6+ hours) with my M1 Pro and it's only just starting to get close to needing to be plugged in. What have I been doing all day? Just running the 23 different docker containers required for my local dev environment. This thing is an absolute beast.
I've tried a couple of them. The problem is that they add so much friction to the basic functionality you want from a phone that they eventually become too frustrating to be worth it. Using a Light Phone gave me an enormous amount of respect for the work Apple has put into making their touch screen keyboard feel so responsive and type so "accurately" (by which I mean gracefully handle the inaccuracies that inevitably arise when typing on a touch screen). I just don't see a small startup ever being able to deliver a user experience that even comes close to what we've all gotten used to thanks to Apple, Samsung and Google. At the time that I bought a Light Phone I was desperate to be free of digital distractions but eventually I decided I would rather be distracted if it meant that I could effectively communicate with family and friends and maintain a social life without so much hassle.
I tried a Light Phone as well and I found that it made texting so difficult it was basically useless to me as a phone. I then tried a basic flip phone which was more useful but ultimately still added too much friction to my life to be worth it. Now I'm back to my iPhone. It would be great if Apple created the equivalent of those minimalist Android launchers that allow you to remove distracting apps and simplify the UI. At the end of the day a phone is a tool and none of the minimalist phones currently in existence work well enough to be a useful tool for me.
It's because a lot of people who frequent HN have difficulty with social skills and are always looking for a manual for how to handle tricky interpersonal situations. The problem is that their difficulty with social skills renders them not-so-great at assessing the quality of advice about social interaction so they upvote things that they think sound nice or valuable without realizing that that's not actually the case. I hope this comment doesn't come across as judgmental or mean, it's just something I've noticed as a person who works in tech but has always had strong social and communication skills. This article describes a communication style that is repellent to anyone with normal social skills who doesn't have cluster B tendencies.
I have a family member with BPD and this feels like the kind of article she would write. She loooooves hearing those hollow therapist-isms that I personally find artificial and deeply alienating. Someone commented elsewhere that the author of this piece committed suicide in 2020 and her husband published a memoir about her in which he suggested that she might have BPD...so that tracks. It reads like a manual for how to have a conversation that completely centers the other person in a way that the majority of people would find uncomfortable and disingenuous but that appeals to someone with cluster B tendencies whose main goal in relating to other people is to feel emotionally validated and cared for at all times. It's not a good strategy for relating to a normal person; normal people enjoy reciprocal conversations that feel authentic and involve a healthy degree of relating to the other person's experience.
My family member with BPD isn't really capable of connecting with other people in a reciprocal way...she only understands relationships in which she is the caretaker or she is the one being taken care of emotionally, so she sees all relationships through the lens of that dynamic. That's the vibe I get from this author as well.
This is one of those tricky things...interrupting someone is rude but pointing it out is rude too. It makes the tone of the conversation confrontational, which will almost never be received positively. The best way to deal with being interrupted is to handle it gracefully in the moment and if it continues to be an issue eventually address it with the person in a way that doesn't feel accusatory. A lot of people don't even realize that they're doing it or they're used to a different conversational style where it's normalized to interject when you have something to say. You can't call someone else out for being rude and expect them to be happy about it, especially if it's for something they're not aware that they're doing or that they personally don't consider rude.
I think conversation is one of those things that can't be distilled down into an exact science. You just have to figure out what is and isn't a good thing to say based on the context and they other person's behavior and tone. Any list like this will always feel off because good listening is an intuitive process.
Uhhhh no it's focusing on the fact that responding to someone in the way you describe as level 3 makes people uncomfortable. You want to put the other person at ease so you consciously avoid revealing the ways in which you've analyzed their behavior. Nobody wants to feel like they're being observed so intensely by the person they're talking to.
I think that certain aspects of the design of some electronic devices, particularly phones and tablets, are a huge part of the reason why they're so addictive. I'm specifically thinking about the screen resolution, brightly colored displays, and interactivity. How many people have you ever met who feel they have an addictive relationship to their kindle? I think if phones were grayscale e-ink displays with limited interactivity and no ability to play videos they would be much less addictive. When I turn my phone to grayscale it's immediately much less compelling.
If someone developed a new form of paper and suddenly millions of people were hooked on books published on that particular paper — wildly different books and only books printed on that kind of paper — it would make sense to conclude that there might be something about the new form of paper that's contributing to the problem. I'm sure I'm not the only one who found social media less compelling when I could only access it on a desktop computer. In my opinion the design of smartphones and tablets is not something we can just ignore when thinking about how and why they might be addictive. The devices themselves are brain candy just like the apps that run on them.
Well, yeah, but how is it not the device itself that causes it? I'm addicted to the dopamine rush from interacting with the device. The cause is both the addiction in my brain and the addictive properties of the device that gave rise to it in the first place.
I used a flip phone for a year after having had a smartphone for a decade and I felt similarly to you when I first went back to my smartphone. It was overstimulating and I hated it. I have always used an iPhone, though, and I find that they're a significantly better user experience than Android so I didn't notice the UX problems you described. More like the entire thing was just TOO MUCH COMING AT ME ALL THE TIME AHHHHHH! After a few months I was back to being addicted and it all felt normal again. I miss my flip phone a lot but life without a smartphone was just too annoying.
Basically, I despise my smartphone, but I'm still addicted to it. I use it even when I don't want to and when it prevents me from doing other things I'd rather be doing. I try to stop and eventually I always give in. It's a legitimate behavioral addiction and I believe the problem is both the design of specific apps and properties inherent to the device itself.
That's so freaky to think about! I don't have kids but I've noticed a lot of the same things in myself. If I turn the display grayscale it's like it instantly loses 80% of its allure, which has me convinced that the bright colors are a huge part of why these devices are so mesmerizing to our lizard brains. I'd imagine that that has an extra strong pull for little kids who are already drawn to bright colors!
It honestly does feel like they have magic screen powers to influence your brain. You'd likely understand what I'm talking about if you'd ever owned one. The interactivity, the high quality and brightly colored displays, the touch feedback and notifications...these devices are like brain candy. They're extremely pleasurable to use and if you get used to using them often it's very hard to pull yourself away from them.