Oh I had that book, and Scary Stories to Tell In the Dark, so I just assumed that story was in the latter. Funny what you misremember! I definitely remember that one clearly. Now I want to go look at the list of stories…

Oh yeah, that makes sense.

Salem to Sacramento shouldn’t take that long unless there is gnarly traffic. As a kid, my family regularly did San Jose to Seattle in 16 hours.

The US is a huge place with lots and lots of different types of communities. From my understanding, some of the older cities on the east coast may have old town walking districts that are probably more like what you’re used to.

I will give you a personal example. I live in Silicon Valley, not in San Francisco or Oakland but rather in what some might call a suburb of those cities, though my “town” has over 80k residents. I live in an area of my city that was once unincorporated and is about two miles from the old town city center. The closest grocery store is 0.7mi from me according to Google maps, and it’s a small family-owned grocer that I’m super happy to have. The larger supermarket is a mile and it’s down a large stroad.

It takes me about 45 minutes to drive to SF with no traffic. If I want to go to Los Angeles, it’s a six hour drive minimum without traffic going 80mph.

My gen alpha kids got it in 3rd grade. Or rather one did and one is about to.

I’m so irritated because I allowed myself to get out of the habit. I worked at a place for eight years where the marketing department insisted on not using it as part of their style guidelines and we were all supposed to follow suit. I disagreed in principle (and actually I’m pretty sure the marketing director agreed with me, but was overruled by the executive director) but still had to adapt, and I guess eight years was long enough that I don’t automatically put it in anymore and it pisses me off that I now have to think about it.

That’s not what they’re saying. It’s essentially a “door ajar” warning. The sensor is what’s failing, rather than the physical part.

I wasn’t actually so mad at first. They bought back our smaller cheaper car and we felt very compensated. But for the second car, which was much bigger and more expensive, they only offered a “fix” which they said wouldn’t affect performance (yeah right), and a small amount in restitution. It felt like a slap in the face. In hindsight I would have gone about things differently but let’s just say that I have little to no faith in the way our justice system works anymore due to how we decided to proceed after that, and we will never buy a car from VW ever again.

Meanwhile, we actually replaced those cars with Teslas. And now we feel like we’re kind of back in the same place, having given money to a company that is pretty shit. We try to vote with our wallets as much as possible but there is no ethical consumption under capitalism, after all. It’s just really depressing and disheartening and makes me not want to buy anything anymore.

Please tell me about any sewing-related communities you’re subbed to because I want to make sure I am also subbed to them! (I love linen)

I’m in the opposite camp. What are the reasons you don’t like Rivian? (I don’t like VW because we had not one, but two vehicles caught up in Dieselgate. They’re dead to me. Which is a shame because I really liked them.)

Ooh, I was struggling to come up with one but you helped me think of one: vanilla-scented anything is gross in my opinion. Real vanilla is fine but the synthetic stuff is nasty. Unfortunately for me, all of my friends seemed to love vanilla-scented candles and lotions and I couldn’t escape it as a teen and college student. Bleh.

Regarding stickiness, perhaps it’s because the internet is ubiquitous now. Fifteen years ago, those of us on Fark and Digg and Reddit came to the internet for a lot of things. Notably, we kept in touch with friends that way (MySpace and Facebook) and in particular, we got our news that way. My parents were incredulous forever and still kinda are that I “don’t watch the evening news.” Now everyone uses it for everything. The big difference is that the early adopters are naturally more open to change because they adopted something that was a change. The rest of the population was slowly pushed into it. Now they don’t want to leave the sites that they’re used to (e.g. Reddit and Facebook) because they aren’t that open to change in the first place.

I (maybe, kinda) miss what Facebook was like in, er, 2008-ish. But then again I was also 25 so maybe I just miss what life was like back then.

Yeah, as I age I definitely wonder what is going to be my “product of the times” prejudice. I try really hard not to be prejudiced but it can be hard. For instance, I really don’t understand poly relationships. But I’m also not going to yuck someone else’s yum, especially when it comes to the rights of someone to do what they want if it isn’t harming anyone else.

For the first two decades of the century, what it meant to be Texan—as explained by the state’s politicians—was largely wrapped up in a feeling of competition with California.

As a Californian, I can’t help but think of that Mad Men meme: “I don’t think about you at all” or some such. Do all Texans really think this way or does this author just have a huge California-shaped chip on his shoulder?

Musk thinks he already did that with the model 3, right? Billionaires have no concept of “affordable” after all.

Yes! This is my dad to a T. Meanwhile, my husband and I (oldish millennials) “cut the cord” fairly early on but more importantly, we actually have the TV off occasionally. That only happens in my parents’ house if my dad isn’t home. When I was a kid, he’d be working in the garage — where he had a TV — but we weren’t allowed to change the channel in the living room because he’d go back and forth and didn’t want to miss anything.

It’s a hard balance, being parents right now. I’m going to make an assumption and guess you mean you see them in public, yeah? The thing is (I say this as a parent of currently 9 and 7 year olds), our society — at least, my society in the US — still feels a bit like it expects children to be “seen and not heard” while in public. If even seen, to be honest. I don’t see it as much here on Lemmy but I saw anti-kid posts on Reddit all the time. I don’t mean childfree; I mean they constantly complained about other people’s kids. Yes, sometimes that can be due to a lack of structured parenting, but kids are also just little socially-inept, impulse-driven creatures who are still figuring the world out. The urge to hand them a magical little device that will occupy them and keep them “seen and not heard” while you are out somewhere is perilously strong.

All that being said: just last week I was sitting to the side at my son’s martial arts class, and next to me was a mom on her phone who had a young girl, maybe 3 or 4, next to her. The girl was squirmy but quiet. I could not help noticing that the mom barely looked up from her phone the whole time. I felt really bad for the girl.

Even my gen alpha kid was learning cursive in third grade last year. I don’t expect him to write using it much but at least he knows how to read it.

I live in the Bay Area and I’ve seen a surprising number of them. But then again I think their R&D office is in a nearby city so maybe it’s just a bunch of employees driving them.