My solution to this is carrying two devices. One turned off iphone and a TCL flip 2. The flip phone runs android 11 so I can use signal to stay connected with international family, but for anything else it is useless other than calling, texting, and basic email

> I long for the days of driving through the night with AM radio, where at least the ads were interesting.

AM radio sucked.

> AM radio sucked.

Right? Also it still exists and can be listened to. The ads were interesting? What?

I don't even know what the ads are on the podcasts I listen to because I can skip them instantly

This right here is exactly how you can be sure that the author has absolutely no idea what they are talking about. Nobody liked radio station ads and if they do, they can, quite literally, just tune into AM/FM radio and see for themselves how much they actually suck.

A million ways to complain about the state of technology, but this ain't it.

It still does, but it is cool you can make a radio for one with some wire and a razor blade.

The tech was great. I mean the ads sucked. Maybe it was better before I tuned in.

But playing chess is a game already.

Ironically, the story of the Bible is that caring about others can cost you an excruciating death.

Yes and pretty much all baby formula is bad. Vegetable oil is often the #1 ingredient and is not even close to having the same density as breast milk. It can be life saving, but it’s not an example of UPF being generally good.

Also supermarket whole wheat bread is very different than real bread if you look at the ingredients. It’s more like bread adjacent.

> Vegetable oil is often the #1 ingredient and is not even close to having the same density as breast milk

Density of what?

Sorry density of nutrients.

It may be less nutrient-dense than breast milk, but that doesn't make it "bad"

It’s also just worse for the baby in pretty much every metric. And yes it does make it bad. That means they have to get more liquids than they normally would and get gas. Why would you put bad in quotes? Do you know understand how a food can be good or bad?

I put bad in quotes because you're claiming something is absolutely bad, but all your points are about how it is relatively worse than breast milk (which is a pretty high bar).

Studies on the long-term health impacts of breast vs formula milk are difficult to take anything away from. They're often observational rather than interventional, and it's hard to separate the type of milk from the feeding method. For example, a baby may benefit from the "skin to skin" aspect of breast feeding, but you could replicate this with a niche formula feeding method.

I don't think we really know how much worse formula is for babies than breast milk. It's probably that there's an increased risk in early infections. But in developed countries with good maternity guidance, the actual absolute risks of infections and SIDS are very low with either breast or formula.

The nutritional content is absolutely worse. I am sure that long term, many children can recover from it at least physically and cognitively.

As far as making an absolute claim, colloquially, people say something is bad when they mean worse than the alternative. To make an extreme example, smoking is much worse for you than caffeine but they are similar in many aspects. I do not feel the need to say that smoking is relatively worse. I say "Smoking is bad".

I'm not convinced by the smoking vs caffeine analogy. Smoking has no physical upside and in the long-term is extremely detrimental to health.

The formula vs breast milk feels more comparable to something like still vs sparkling water. You need to get your fluids from one or the other. Sparkling is arguably marginally worse for your tooth enamel than still. Yet I don't hear people saying that sparkling water is "bad" for you.

Smoking does have a physical upside. It's a wonderful nootropic. Sparkling water has the exact same chemical makeup as regular water. Formula is trying to replace something that evolution has come up with that is purpose made to feed and develop the brains of infants and young children. That is not a good comparison at all.

Fine it has some cognitive benefits, but in terms of physical health it's absurdly net negative. Long term smokers have a huge likelihood of dying from a smoking-related illness. That's what people mean when they say it's bad... they're not internally comparing it to caffeine.

Sparkling water has a significantly lower ph than still water.

> Formula is trying to replace something that evolution has come up with...

Sure but the vast majority of what people use and consume is a replacement for what "evolution has come up with". That doesn't inherently make it "bad".

> Sure but the vast majority of what people use and consume is a replacement for what "evolution has come up with". That doesn't inherently make it "bad".

This is not true at all. What are you talking about? In general most people eat regular foods that come from the ground not ultraprocessed foods.

I don't know why you are nitpicking so much about the smoking example. I said it was an extreme example of something that is relatively worse but some people are comfortable calling categorically bad.

Maybe I misunderstood, but it seemed to me that the smoking example was evidence for your claim:

> colloquially, people say something is bad when they mean worse than the alternative [as opposed to absolutely bad]

I don't think it does support that claim, for the reasons I've given.

I think many don’t so why not just say the numbers.

Why does it need to change?

Instead of saying words to one of the many tens of thousands of religious comments that would presumably annoy you, you could also help research on this topic instead of dumping on someone trying to be encouraging who already hedged that not everyone agrees with them.

Businesses are incentivized to say it’s because of AI because it makes them look better. So not saying that when actually asked by a government entity is meaningful.

How does firing people resultant of the most disliked and unpopular technology on the planet, and avoiding marking it off on an obvious entry-point into regulatory burden "make them look better"?

Because it sounds better than saying "we're firing people to suppress wages and make even more absurd profits. oh, and we invested a collective $1.4T as an industry so far in AI but can't find a path to profitability".

Anecdotally, we (humans) appear to be more accepting and less critical of companies giving AI-related layoff excuses, vs. perhaps telling a more truthful story like "we are losing money and are scrambling to reach profitability" or "we'd like to make the stock price go up."

Though I do agree there are a vocal group of people that are loudly outspoken about AI. I would guess that those people are a minority of the total population though, and tend to skew either techy or geographically local to areas hardest hit by data center build-out.

No, the majority of the population is hostile to AI. This has been surveyed time and time again. I definitely disagree with your premise.

That may be true and I'm absolutely unfamiliar with the data, so I'll take you at your word.

Regardless, whether or not the majority of people are hostile to AI was not my main point. My point was that regardless of the public sentiment about AI, it seems that the general public is more accepting (or perhaps forgiving) of a CEO saying "We are laying off people because of AI" than, for example, "We are laying off people to save money and preserve shareholder value." (I am paraphrasing in both of these cases; obviously a real statement would be more obfuscated in corporate-speak in either case).

That seems odd to me, _especially_ if the majority of the public is hostile to AI.

The majority of shareholders (not retail 401k) are not as hostile at all.

Wow I’m so glad that didn’t happen.

You'd rather we end up with Chinese humanoids? Because they're coming either way.